Term Papers on Art As An Insight Into Jane Eyre’s Life

Term Paper Title	Art As An Insight Into Jane Eyre’s Life
# of Words	1252
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.01

Art as an Insight into Jane Eyre’s Life

     It is said that art is like a mirror to the soul, a way to see what the artist is feeling deep down in their heart.  It is as if their most personal thoughts and ideas are reflected in their work, either consciously or unconsciously.  Charlotte Brontë utilizes this fact in her imagery and portrait of Jane Eyre.  Color and vivid description play a vital role explaining the process of emotional and physical maturation throughout the novel, from young Jane’s recollection of the red room in Gateshead to her final reminiscence of Ferndean’s gloomy facade. There is no better example of this process than Jane’s own artistic abilities as they progress through life.
     To best examine and explore the progress of Jane’s emotional and temperamental development, it is important to construct a frame of reference, to have a base from which to work towards her final character.  Her childhood home, Gateshead provides the groundwork of her emotional/character being, which at the beginning of the story is an isolated creature, devoid of loving and nurturing contact and shunned by humanity.  Two excerpts from her stay at Gateshead illustrate this fact, her reading of Bewick’s “History of British Birds,” and her punishment for striking Master John, the stay in the red room of Gateshead.  In the opening scene, Jane is found perusing a copy of Bewick’s “History of British Birds,” concentrating on the descriptions of the certain landscapes in which some of the birds live.  Her words paint a mental picture, one that represents her childhood,

“Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive.  The words…gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.”1


To Jane, these words mean more than simple seascapes and scenes, to her they are symbols of the life she had lived until then.  She was the rock, standing alone not amidst a sea of billow and spray, but among an ocean of hostility.  The broken boat stranded on a desolate coast symbolized Jane’s inability to rise above her dependency, no way to connect her emotionally to anyone.  And the imagery of the cold moon glancing at a sinking wreck was Mrs. Reed casually monitoring the sinking wreck of her niece’s life, watching her slowly succumb to the negative feedback she constantly received.
     The foundation is finally set when she is locked up in the red room of the mansion, her late uncle Mr. Reed’s bedroom.  Two of her most vivid images of her stay there were the poster-bed and the armchair.  Describing them as a tabernacle and pale throne, respectively, Jane rounds out her description of her life by accentuating these images to represent her lack of religion in her life, and her subservience and dependency.
     As Jane leaves Gateshead for Lowood, she takes her first step towards the next phase of her life.  Through the subjection of the system at Lowood and the guidance of Miss Temple and Helen Burns, Jane matures.  She suppresses her former faults and impulses, and gains a certain independence – now being able to support herself, albeit as a paid employee.  She gains a certain serenity that exhibits itself in the artwork she produces while as a teacher at Lowood.  When she reaches Thornfield and Mr. Rochester demands to be shown her portfolio, she describes her work:
“The first represented clouds…rolling over a swollen sea…One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a [bird]…its beak held a gol...

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