Externals Have a Great Effect on The Young.

What I wished to talk about today was the way physical beauty is treated in Jane Eyre. 

As a child Jane Eyre was abused by her rich and beautiful cousins. But it was her who was despised because of her lack of external appeal and social status.  

The first time this issue is raised is when Jane Eyre is crying out at the injustice of the world which adores her spoilt cousin for her physical beauty while not giving a damn about the character.   

“Her beauty, her pink cheeks, and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault.”

This observation of Georgina being rewarded for her physical beauty is then reiterated by a conversation between Bessie and Abbott:  

“- a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition” (Bessie said)

“Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!" cried the fervent Abbot. "Little darling! - With her long and her blue and such a sweet colour as she has; just as if she were painted!” 

As the reader goes on there are different instances that reflect the aversion of Jane Eyre towards physical beauty  or anyone who was beautiful because it reminds her of that which her childhood abusers had and she didn't. She comes to regard those who are beautiful as haughty and cruel, and associates them to a social class that is way higher than that which Jane Eyre occupies. 

Furthermore it is this lack of physical beauty in Mr Rochester that emboldens Jane Eyre to first talk to him. Bronte explains this by saying:

"Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will" 

Bronte then clarifies Jane Eyre's attitude towards physical beauty in these lines:

“I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fie, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic."

But all these standards applied to everyone else she came in contact with. For her own self she wanted that physical beauty which had been denied her:

“It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance, or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer: I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it to myself; yet I had a reason and a logical, natural reason too.”  

As for what this reason was I'll leave it to the psych majors I don't have any more words or time to elaborate on this.