Jane Eyre - Fire & Water

Write an essay on Bronte's use of water and fire imagery.

In Jane Eyre, the use of water and fire imagery is very much related to the character and/or mood of the protagonists (i.e. Jane and Rochester, and to a certain extent St. John Rivers) -- and it also serves to show Jane in a sort of intermediate position between the two men. However, it should also be noted that the characteristics attributed to fire and water have alternately positive and negative implications -- to cite an example among many, near the beginning of the novel, reference is made to the devastating effects of water ("ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly" , "death-white realm" [i.e. of snow]), and fire is represented by a "terrible red glare"; later, fire is represented as being comforting in Miss Temple's room , and it is water that saves Rochester from the first fire. These literal associations with fire and water become increasingly symbolic, however, as the novel progresses, where the fire / water / (ice) imagery becomes a representation of the emotional and moral dialectic of the characters, and it also becomes increasingly evident that the positive and negative potentialities of fire and water also show the positive and negative potentialities of the characters whom they represent.

Rochester is very much associated with fire, with the "strange fire[s] in his look", and particularly with his "flaming and flashing eyes". By extension, so is everything associated with him (i.e. his first wife and Thornfield). Jane's first reaction to Thornfield itself, destined to fall victim to fire, is to be "dazzled" by the "double illumination of fire and candle", just as she is later to be "dazzled" by the fire of Rochester himself. On one level, this "fire" is the Romantic fire of passion that seizes Rochester and Jane (the use of "fever" to describe passion that occurs so frequently in the text has, in the context of its reliance on water and fire imagery, a significance definitely beyond that of a Romantic cliché); but on the other level, it is also the fire of "the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone" -- in short, hell. This is manifested most evidently in the case of the first Mrs. Rochester, who has a "fiery eye", a "lurid visage" that "flame[s] over [Jane's]", is associated with a "fiery West Indian night", and who quite literally turns Thornfield into an inferno after an (unsuccessful) attempt at burning Rochester in his bed. However, this negative association with fire also occurs with Rochester himself, if only to a certain extent. His passion for Jane causes him to try to tempt her into a step which might not only doom her to the "fire and brimstone" of the afterlife but also a living hell -- as she says about the thought of becoming his mistress, she would be "fevered with delusive bliss one hour -- suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next". [yes!] Moreover, in his rôle as Byronic hero / tempter, the infernal association is not inappropriate either. It is perhaps significant that one of his earlier remarks to Jane is that he will "pave hell with energy" and form "good intentions as durable as flint" -- followed immediately by the "new statute: unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules", a "statute" that precipitates his attempted bigamy and the emotional torment and purgatory (if not "hell") that he undergoes following the failure of his attempt. [good!!]

St. John Rivers stands at the other extreme, as his name might suggest; but the water he represents is neither the life-giving "fountain of the water of life" (Revelation of St. John, 21:6) nor the life-enhancing "river". Rather, he represents the "extreme" form of water, i.e. ice (which has potentially destructive capabilities, as Jane correctly suggests), and this association is both physical and emotional. It should be noted that he is described as being pale (one thinks of the "death-white realm" of snow and ice, hostile to life [good], that Jane was reading about at Gateshead), very much in contrast to the darker visage of Rochester, perhaps symbolically "burnt" by his passions ; his "cloak [...] cover[s] his tall figure all white as a glacier", and he is frequently described as being "frozen", "frigid", his kisses "ice kisses". By his own admission he is "cold: no fervour infects me". It is precisely his coldness that occasions Jane's recognition of her need for "fire" after the initial reaction away from it. [note: ice too can burn. Also: is Rivers so devoid of passion? Can he not feel burning desire?]

Jane, on the other hand, is in an intermediate position between the two, as observed above; she is more frequently associated with water (a symbol, at least in part, of reason, as opposed to fire, symbol of passion), but it is nevertheless not immobile (as ice would be -- she compares herself to a "foaming" stream that would only chafe against Rivers' "frowning giant of a rock" -- a comparison reminiscent of the glacier image ) and is most of the time life-enhancing -- Rochester speaks of her "refreshing" him and of the regeneration effected "while the sun drinks the dew"; but the water she represents is seldom serene. "Buoyant but unquiet sea", the comparison she uses to describe her emotional state after she has saved Rochester from the first fire, is perhaps the most apt description for the water she represents; moreover, there is, as is evident from her relationship with Rochester, a good deal of potential for fire. At Gateshead, after the confrontation with Mrs. Reed, she compares her state of mind during the confrontation to "a ridge of lighted heath", but is not unaware of the fact that after the "flames" of the confrontation are "dead", the "ridge" is "black and blasted" -- an image of devastation that, perhaps significantly, anticipates the way Thornfield is later destroyed -- through passion, that is, whether directly (that of Bertha) or indirectly (that of Rochester, whose relationship with Jane is no doubt partly the cause of Bertha's sudden attacks, as can be evinced by her tearing up Jane's bridal veil the night before the wedding) -- it should be noted that Jane is also accused (not unfairly) of being "passionate" at Gateshead, and that she herself speaks of the "flame of resentment extinguished" when she visits Gateshead to see the dying Mrs. Reed, and so the equation of fire with passion is reinforced. Also, this latent fire, perhaps dampened by the "serenity" of Miss Temple's Lowood, is sensed by Rochester, who tells her in his guise as gypsy fortune-teller: "You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you." This dichotomy, evident ever since she provides the water to save Rochester from being burnt but ends up feeling emotionally "feverish", becomes increasingly pronounced from this period onwards -- the rain, storm and lightning (which could after all be taken as a symbol of fire) that destroys the oak is perhaps symbolic of the (at this time) disastrous -- and destructive -- conjunction of water and fire. [interesting] It is perhaps significant that Jane's speculations (after the failed marriage) on what would have happened had she accepted Rochester's proposition also involves water and fire in a destructive conjunction (the "fever" of "delusive bliss" and the "bitterest tears of remorse and shame"). But it is fire that fascinates her at the moment, at risk of her forgetting reason -- she is rather annoyed by Mrs. Fairfax's reservations about the advisability of marrying Rochester and the "damp of her doubts" that results -- though at the crucial moment she ultimately opts for reason over passion by leaving Rochester and Thornfield, a moment perhaps anticipated by her "bath[ing her] head and face in water" and "dr[inking] a long draught" after the vision of Bertha with her "fiery eye" and "lurid visage" tearing up a veil -- perhaps a symbolic act ultimately showing the need for the water of reason to relieve the destructive fires of passion. [good] It is also significant that when she returns to Rochester at Ferndean, having learnt to balance the two sides of her nature (in reply to Rivers' "I am cold", she says -- in a jesting tone, but certainly not without significance for the reader -- "Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice") after encountering both extremes, she gives him a glass of water -- literally to "refresh" him, but also to symbolically regenerate him; this use of water in this context (i.e. preceding the second engagement) as a life-symbol (as opposed to the storm of the first engagement) is also particularly appropriate -- and it is also worth noting that in certain parts of Europe there used to be a custom whereby a girl would give her betrothed a glass of water (cf. Hofmannsthal's libretto for Strauss's Arabella); and if marriage represents the continuation of life, then the water-symbol becomes even more explicitly a symbol of life. [good]

As such, the representation of both fire and water, alternately life-giving and life-denying, is possibly symbolic in that both extremes must be moderated in order for them to be of benefit to society without doing harm to themselves (it should be noted that Rivers, for whom there is no such moderation, is said to be approaching death at the end of the novel). [yes -- so?]

35/50. Good as far as you take it. Rivers deserves greater attention than he gets. The change in water imagery which surrounds Jane should be noted more. Water imagery in regard to Rochester deserves more attention. Still, you write well and do [?] service to the question. Well done.

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Fire & Water

Write an essay on Bronte's use of water and fire imagery.
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