FIRE AND EYRE: Exploring Bronte's use of fire imagery in Jane Eyre

Rochester: “I have seen what a fire spirit you (Jane) can be when you are indignant”

           Not only does Rochester liken Jane to a fire, even I couldn’t help noticing how  Jane’s language herself  is a “LANGUAGE OF FIRE” I would say,  rife with literal  and figurative references to fire that act as a reflection of her inner turbulent life, summed in "Did anybody ever see such a picture of passion?”. I interpret fire as both good and bad in Jane Eyre. It breathes life into  her but also brings her on the brink of social ostracism and destruction. Fire is used as an objective correlative to show Jane’s passionate side that cannot resist itself in the face of injustice,  Jane also possesses  a natural inclination for warmth : “I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons , dreadful to me was the coming home with nipped fingers and toes”. And yet I was interested by how images of  fire are continuously pitted against  water  images . For example Jane is  secluded from the fireside enjoyed by the Reed family and she looks out at the “dreary November day….a pale blank of mist and cloud and the wet lawn”. As much as we admire this warmth and fiery  temperament yet the novel suggests there is no space for it  in the national or domestic sphere. It must be stored and locked up in the Red room. The Red room in my opinion is an embodiment of male establishment where the patriarchal hand works its way in to the internal life of the female and oppresses or polices her fire (passion) so much so that Jane recalls:“ my habitual mood of humiliation, self doubt, forlorn, depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire”. Fire imagery, in the red coloured room  represent Jane's ardent nature contrasted with "the room was chill, because it seldom had a fire". The chill augments the futility of passion in the novel. Jane is aware of being unable to control herself : “ A ridge of lighted heath, alive , glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead would have represented my subsequent condition when half an hours silence had shown me the madness of my conduct”.

     In Lowood, the fire in Miss Temples room is described as a “good fire” and “ cheerful”: Here fire has a positive effect and  is used to describe Jane’s realization that she can find friendship, acceptance and kindness in the character of Miss Temple. But at the same time hell is “ a pit of fire”  thus reinforcing its negative effect . Fire  is also seen as having the ability to yield true character; Rochester studies Jane in the presence of fire which  becomes  the only way that Jane can be understood ;"the flame flickers in the eye, the eye shines like a dew it looks soft and full of feeling”. On the contrary Jane studies Rochester’s face in the moonlight  because passion  engulfs  one’s reason and sensibilities.

 Fire imagery evolves in the novel into a passion of a sexual nature when Jane meets Rochester. With references such as “Come to the fire”, Rochester invokes her sexuality, encouraging her to let her passions loose. He says "You are cold, because you are alone; no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you".  This is Jane’s dilemma in the novel where she has to choose passion over reason or vice versa. She has the example of Bertha Mason who represents her own untamed passion. Jane unconsciously makes reference to her relation to Rochester as  “wondering amongst volcanic looking hills” . To myself then the novel by  portraying fire in Jane as a more  destructive than a constructive force  appears to be participating in  a broader national concern which is to show that female passion if gone awry  can lead to discord and disruption in the private sphere. It literally manifests this discord in Bertha committing arson and turning Thornfield into  “a blackened ruin”. While passion is  a form of rebellion against a patriarchal structure and paves  way for feminist individualism,  yet it is doomed to failure because its consequence is either death or being labelled a mad woman. Jane too participates in the novels larger aim as her act of quelling the fire on Rochester’s bed with water is an act of “TAMING”  what Rochester otherwise called “a soul made of fire”.