Thematic Response Jane Eyre

Thematic Response (TR)
Love or Independence
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is a story of a woman in search of love and Independence. Love is an important subject relating to the book. In addition to her quest of love romantically, but also in a way of being wanted or valued in society.   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” (Eyre, 75). Jane wanted love from others in a way of sympathy or pity ,but gaining love by being her and not harming herself.   Her love for Rochester is quite apparent. When she saw him, she felt as though his " presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire." Her fear of forfeiting her independence initially was the reason of rejecting the proposal from Rochester. She felt that is was against church and state that she "married" Rochester, even though he was legally married to Bertha. It would have made her a mistress and it was not worth her sacrificing her morality. Jane tried to talk her self out of love while addressing the reader: "I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me" (Eyre, 200).   In the end, Jane followed her heart by choosing Rochester over St. John. Jane expressed that “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. . . . We are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result” (Eyre, 525). Her marriage must be equal parts and until she testes her autonomy, she will then marry him.