Nature-Jane Eyre Essay, Research Paper

Charlotte Bronte makes use of nature imagery throughout “Jane

Eyre,” and comments on both the human relationship with the outdoors

and human nature. The Oxford Reference Dictionary defines “nature” as

“1. the phenomena of the physical world as a whole . . . 2. a thing’s

essential qualities; a person’s or animal’s innate character . . . 4.

vital force, functions, or needs.” We will see how “Jane Eyre”

comments on all of these.

Several natural themes run through the novel, one of which is the

image of a stormy sea. After Jane saves Rochester’s life, she gives us

the following metaphor of their relationship: “Till morning dawned I

was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea . . . I thought sometimes I

saw beyond its wild waters a shore . . . now and then a freshening

gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne:

but . . . a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove

me back.” The gale is all the forces that prevent Jane’s union with

Rochester. Later, Bront , whether it be intentional or not, conjures

up the image of a buoyant sea when Rochester says of Jane: “Your

habitual expression in those days, Jane, was . . . not buoyant.” In

fact, it is this buoyancy of Jane’s relationship with Rochester that

keeps Jane afloat at her time of crisis in the heath:

“Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or

believe, Mr. Rochester is living.”

Another recurrent image is Bront ’s treatment of Birds. We first

witness Jane’s fascination when she reads Bewick’s History of British

Birds as a child. She reads of “death-white realms” and “‘the solitary

rocks and promontories’” of sea-fowl. We quickly see how Jane

identifies with the bird. For her it is a form of escape, the idea of

flying above the toils of every day life. Several times the narrator

talks of feeding birds crumbs. Perhaps Bront is telling us that this

idea of escape is no more than a fantasy-one cannot escape when one

must return for basic sustenance. The link between Jane and birds is

strengthened by the way Bront adumbrates poor nutrition at Lowood

through a bird who is described as “a little hungry robin.”

Bront brings the buoyant sea theme and the bird theme together in

the passage describing the first painting of Jane’s that Rochester

examines. This painting depicts a turbulent sea with a sunken ship,

and on the mast perches a cormorant with a gold bracelet in its mouth,

apparently taken from a drowning body. While the imagery is perhaps

too imprecise to afford an exact interpretation, a possible

explanation can be derived from the context of previous treatments of

these themes. The sea is surely a metaphor for Rochester and Jane’s

relationship, as we have already seen. Rochester is often described as

a “dark” and dangerous man, which fits the likeness of a cormorant; it

is therefore likely that Bront sees him as the sea bird. As we shall

see later, Jane goes through a sort of symbolic death, so it makes

sense for her to represent the drowned corpse. The gold bracelet

can be the purity and innocence of the old Jane that Rochester managed

to capture before she left him.

Having established some of the nature themes in “Jane Eyre,” we

can now look at the natural cornerstone of the novel: the passage

between her flight from Thornfield and her acceptance into Morton.

In leaving Thornfield, Jane has severed all her connections; she has

cut through any umbilical cord. She narrates: “Not a tie

holds me to human society at this moment.” After only taking a small

parcel with her from Thornfield, she leaves even that in the

coach she rents. Gone are all references to Rochester, or even her

past life. A “sensible” heroine might have gone to find her

uncle, but Jane needed to leave her old life behind.

Jane is seeking a return to the womb of mother nature: “I have no

relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her

breast and ask repose.” We see how she seeks protection as she

searches for a resting place: “I struck straight into the heath; I

held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded

knee-deep in its dark growth;

I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite

crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were

about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.” In fact,

the entire countryside around Whitecross is a sort of encompassing

womb: “a north-midland shire . . . ridged with mountain: this I see.

There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves

of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet.”

It is the moon, part of nature, that sends Jane away from Thornfield.

Jane narrates: “birds were faithful to their mates.” Seeing herself as

unfaithful, Jane is seeking an existence in nature where everything is

simpler. Bront was surely not aware of the large number of species of

bird that practice polygamy. While this fact is intrinsically wholly

irrelevant to the novel, it makes one ponder whether nature is really

so simple and perfect.

The concept of nature in “Jane Eyre” is reminiscent of Hegel’s

view of the world: the instantiation of God. “The Lord is My Rock” is

a popular Christian saying. A rock implies a sense of strength, of

support. Yet a rock is also cold, inflexible, and unfeeling. The

second definition listed above for “nature” mentions a thing’s

“essential qualities,” and this very definition implies a sense of

inflexibility. Jane’s granite crag protects her without caring; the

wild cattle that she fears are also part of nature. The hard strength

of a rock is the very thing that makes it inflexible. Similarly, the

precipitation that makes Jane happy as she leaves Thornfield, and the

rain that is the life-force of everything in the heath, is the same

precipitation that led her to narrate this passage: “But my night was

wretched, my rest broken: the ground was damp . . . towards morning it

rained; the whole of the following day was wet.” Just like a

benevolent God, nature will accept Jane no matter what: “Nature seemed

to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was.”

Praying in the heather on her knees, Jane realizes that God is great:

“Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I

grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it

treasured.”

Unsurprisingly, given Bront ’s strongly anti-Church of England

stance, Jane realizes at some level that this reliance on God is

unsubstantiated: “But next day, Want came to me, pale and bare.”

Nature and God have protected her from harm, providing meager shelter,

warding off bulls and hunters, and giving her enough sustenance in the

form of wild berries to keep her alive. It is Jane’s “nature,” defined

above as “vital force, functions, or needs,” that drives her out of

the heath. In the end, it is towards humanity that she must turn.

Nature is an unsatisfactory solution to Jane’s travails. It is

neither kind nor unkind, just nor unjust. Nature does not care about

Jane. She was attracted to the heath because it would not turn her

away; it was strong enough to keep her without needing anything in

return. But this isn’t enough, and Jane is forced to seek sustenance

in the town. Here she encounters a different sort of nature: human

nature. As the shopkeeper and others coldly turn her away, we discover

that human nature is weaker than nature. However, there is one crucial

advantage in human nature: it is flexible. It is St. John and his

sisters that finally provide the charity Jane so desperately needs.

They have bent what is established as human nature to help her.

Making this claim raises the issue of the nature of St. John-has

he a human nature, or is he so close to God that his nature is

God-like? The answer is a bit of both. St. John is filled with the

same dispassionate caring that God’s nature provided Jane in the

heath: he will provide, a little, but he doesn’t really care for her.

We get the feeling on the heath, as Jane stares into the vastness of

space, that she is just one small part of nature, and that God will

not pay attention to that level of detail. Similarly, she says of St.

John: “he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little

people, in pursuing his own large views.” On the other hand, St. John

exhibits definitely human characteristics, most obvious being the way

he treats Jane after she refuses to marry him. He claims not to be

treating her badly, but he’s lying to himself: “That night, after he

had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget even to shake

hands with me, but left the room in silence.” What is important here

is that St. John is more human than God, and thus he and his sisters

are able to help Jane.

From the womb, Jane is reborn. She sees the future as an “awful

blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by.” She

takes a new name, Jane Elliott. With a…

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