Fire and Water Imagery in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre Essay -- Jane E

Fire and Water Imagery in Jane Eyre   Ã‚  Ã‚   In Jane Eyre, the use of water and fire imagery is very much related to the character and/or mood of the protagonists (i.e. Jane and Rochester, and to a certain extent St. John Rivers) -- and it also serves to show Jane in a sort of intermediate position between the two men. However, it should also be noted that the characteristics attributed to fire and water have alternately positive and negative implications -- to cite an example among many, near the beginning of the novel, reference is made to the devastating effects of water ("ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly", "death-white realm" [i.e. of snow]), and fire is represented by a "terrible red glare"; later, fire is represented as being comforting in Miss Temple's room, and it is water that saves Rochester from the first fire. These literal associations with fire and water become increasingly symbolic, however, as the novel progresses, where the fire / water / (ice) imagery becomes a representation of the emotional a nd moral dialectic of the characters, and it also becomes increasingly evident that the positive and negative potentialities of fire and water also show the positive and negative potentialities of the characters whom they represent. Rochester is very much associated with fire, with the "strange fire[s] in his look", and particularly with his "flaming and flashing eyes". By extension, so is everything associated with him (i.e. his first wife and Thornfield). Jane's first reaction to Thornfield itself, destined to fall victim to fire, is to be "dazzled" by the "double illumination of fire and candle", just as she is later to be "dazzled" by the fire of Rochester himself. On one level, this "fire" is the Romantic fir... ... Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1991 David Lodge, Fire and Eyre: Charlotte Brontà «'s War of Earthly Elements Gates, Barbara Timm, ed. Critical Essays on Charlotte Bronte. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990.    Jane Eyre. Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Perf. William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsborough, and Anna Paquin. 1996    Kadish, Doris. The Literature of Images: Narrative Landscape from Julie to Jane Eyre. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1986.    Lodge, Scott. "Fire and Eyre: Charlotte Bronte's War of Earthly Elements." The Brontes: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Gregor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970. 110-36.    McLaughlin, M.B. "Past or Future Mindscapes: Pictures in Jane Eyre." Victorian Newsletter 41 (1972): 22-24.    Solomon, Eric. "Jane Eyre: Fire and Water." College English 25 (1964): 215-217.