heme in Jane Eyre

1. Love
Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved, Jane searches for love in the world a sense of
being valued and belonging to a family, or having friends. Thus, Jane says to Helen Burns: "to gain
some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly
submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking
horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest." Yet , in the course of the novel, Jane must learn how to
gain love without sacrificing herself in the process.
2. God and Religion

Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to find the right balance between moral duty and earthly
pleasure, between obligation to her spirit and attention to her body. She despises the hypocrisy of
Mr. Brocklehurst while Jane admires Helen Burns' life philosophy of the Christian principle "turning
the other cheek" which in turn helps her in adult life to forgive Aunt Reed and the Reed cousins for
their cruelty. Jane meets at least two main religious figures: Mr. Brocklehurst and Helen Burns. Both
represent a model of religion that Jane ultimately rejects as she forms her own ideas about faith and
principle.

Mr. Brocklehurst, who oversees Lowood Institution, is a hyocritical Christian. He professes aid and
charity but does the opposite by using religion as a justification for hunishment and various forms of
privations. For instance, he cites the Biblical passage "man shall not live by bread alone" to blame
Miss Temple for having fed the girls an extra meal of cheese and bread to compensate for the
inedible breakfast of burned porridge. He warns Miss Temple that she "may indeed feed their vile
bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!" Indeed, Mr. Brocklehurst illustrates
the dangers and hypocrities that Charlotte Bronte has perceived in the nineteenth-century
Evangelical movement. Mr. Brocklehurst adopts the rhetoric of Evangelicalism when he claims to be
purging his students of pride, but his method of subjecting them to various privations and
humiliations would cause the typhus fever to the students.
Mr Brocklehurst is a hardhearted person who behaves arrogantly for instance when he orders that
the naturally curly hair of Julia Severn, one of Jane's classmates be cut so as to lie straight in the
following: "that girl's hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow," that is entirely un-
Christian. Mr. Brocklehurst's instructions are difficult to be followed, and his hyocritical support of his
own luxuriously wealthy family at the expence of Lowood students shows Bronte's wariness of the
Evangelical movement.

Helen Burns is a complete contrast to Brocklehurst, she follows the Christian creed of "turning the
other cheek" and by loving those who hated her. On her deathbed, Helen tells Jane: "I'm going home
to God, who loves me." and her astonishing the doctrine of endurance. Jane herself cannot quite
profess Helen's absolute, selfless faith. Jane does not seem to follow aparticular doctrine , but she is
sincerely religious in a non-doctrinaire. Later on, Jane is seen frequently praying and calling God to
assist her.
Write an eassy about Helen Burns' doctrine of endurance and how Jane reacts to it?