Psychology and Jane's childhood

This novel is placed in the realm of massively triumphal themes (for the new Victorian era) where the idea of economy, independence, Christian duty, emotion vs. passion and nationhood are all given a fresh vibrancy. All these notions overlap in the model of psychology which plays its effective overarching role from the very beginning.  

The window into Jane’s mind and how intimate the narrative is with the protagonist’s psyche is manifest in how the same line of ideas follow from Jane’s childhood to her later life. First we encounter two religious figures with a tension between them; Brocklehurst and Helen. Brocklehurst’s preaching teaches mortification of the flesh as means of taming the passionate inclinations of Jane, and also everybody else in their school as a uniform principle (killing all ideas of female independent identity). Helen Burns seems to offer Jane another method by which tension may be resolved. She shows Jane that she can release her negative emotions, and make them less destructive through forgiveness, and that, by loving her enemies her hatred and anger may fade. The important point here is that she speaks of forgiving the criminal and not the crime. These contrasting figures personify aspects of Jane’s own character since childhood and reflect in the decisions she takes later in her life.

How Jane does eventually leaves Thornfield embodies in it the principle of placing morals at a higher pedestal than passion- the teaching of our very own Brocklehurst. While that of forgiving Miss Reed, returning to her and also reconciling to Rochester by the end show some elements of Helen’s softness. However, the entire idea of a ‘new/fresh’ morality is very strongly advocated here since Jane’s decisions are not even once at dictated by her emotions, timidity, submission or a misguided understanding of her religion, as is the case with Helen ad Brockehurst.  

Next, in the notion of an upward female mobility also Jane establishes a new precedence, the one opposed especially to Austen’s proposal of female elevation through marriage. As opposed to this we witness how Jane’s persona is anchored in the belief of a new femininity since childhood. Her calling of John a ‘murderer’, her clear excellence in knowledge and history that is above of all her spoilt cousins, and her strong judgments about the evilness of her aunt and how ill her uncle would think of his wife all signal towards an exceptionally strong female figure- a revolution for that time. The ‘voice’ of the omniscient narrator takes the reader to the psychology of Jane and how events unfold thenceforth.

The importance of childhood lessons, memories and experiences play a crucial role in understanding the growth, development and psychology of the protagonist.