Finding a Balance

Making a choice between feeling cold suppression or consuming passion can be difficult. Choosing one or the other leads to dangerous situations, which shows why finding a balance between the two opposing emotions benefits everyone. Through setting, Charlotte Bronte, the author of the classic novel Jane Eyre, conveys Jane's struggle to find a balance of suppression and passion.

Throughout the beginning of Jane Eyre, Bronte uses the setting to further describe Jane's emotions of suppression at Gateshead and Lowood. Jane's experience at Gateshead impacts her attitude and view of passion.

At the time, Jane's aunt, Ms. Reed, neglects Jane and always tells her that 'until [she] can speak pleasantly, [she should] remain silent'(Br?nte 11)'. After hearing this constantly, Jane eventually realizes that it is better to suppress her feelings of passion in order to appease her aunt and cousins' need for significantly controlling her life and feelings. Br?nte consistently conveys this idea through the environment and setting Jane finds herself in.

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At one point, Jane feels lonely and depressed, so Bronte uses the imagery of a window to describe how Jane feels 'protect[ed], but not separat[ed], · from the drear November day'(12). The depression and loneliness gradually become better at Lowood, where she spends the next chapter of her life. Although she tries to transform into a more positive person, her attempts fall short of success. When she first arrives at Lowood, she describes the weather to be 'positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog'(47).

Again, Br?nte uses a dreary day to symbolically represent Jane's emotion, but her outlook starts to brighten up. However, the 'drizzling yellow fog'(47) of Jane's suppressive emotions seems to get the best of her.

Later, at Thornfield, where the fire burns too bright both literally and figuratively, Br?nte uses the setting to portray the passion Jane felt. Her view of passion finally expands because of the freedom she has to feel however she wants. However, too much passion overtakes her. With superabundant emotion and passion, she 'was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped [her] vitals'(367) which she describes as a 'terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning!'(367). The fervor that Jane experiences with Mr. Rochester so intense that 'not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than [she] was loved'(367). Towards the beginning of Jane's passionate phase, Once again, Br?nte uses the setting of Thornfield to describe this.

Towards the end, Br?nte describes Jane's balance of both passion and suppression at Ferndean through the setting. The passion she feels at Thornfield and the suppression she has to endure with St. John at the Moor House has calmed down at this point in the story. She learns from her mistakes of being overtaken by both emotions at Thornfield, thus she finds a way to balance both feelings while at Ferndean. To Jane, finding out how to balance the two conflicting emotions felt like leaving 'the wet and wild wood, into some cheerful fields'(509). The 'wet and wild wood'(509) represents her suppression and passion in the past while the 'cheerful fields'(509) symbolize her peaceful and balanced future. Br?nte uses the environment around her to convey emotions.