Jane Eyre : themes

Question 1

Passion (disconnected from self)

Answer 1

‘Strange little figure there gazing at me’

Question 2

Passion (debilitating)

Answer 2

‘My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down’

Question 3

Passion vs moral control

Answer 3

‘Is it better to be a slave in a fool’s paradise .. suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse’

Question 4

Passion (st john)

Answer 4

‘I am cold, no fervour infects me’

Question 5

Passion (danger of lack)

Answer 5

‘His large heart, weary of despotic constriction’

Question 6

Passion (fire vs ice imagery)

Answer 6

‘If you are ice then I am fire’

Question 7

Passion vs Restraint

Answer 7

‘conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat’

Question 8

Love (importance of affection)

Answer 8

‘When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world’

Question 9

Love (inherent connection)

Answer 9

‘I feel akin to him - I understand the language of his countenance and demeanors’

Question 10

Love (beauty)

Answer 10

‘Gratitude and many associations, all pleasurable made his face the object I best lived to see’

Question 11

Love (equality)

Answer 11

“My bride is here… because my equal is here”

Question 12

Love (St John)

Answer 12

‘It seemed I had found a brother, one I could be proud of, one I could love’

Question 13

Love (Rivers sisters)

Answer 13

‘They had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration’

Question 14

Autonomy (bird imagery)

Answer 14

‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will’

Question 15

Autonomy (necessity)

Answer 15

‘I desired liberty, for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer’

Question 16

Autonomy (power of free soul)

Answer 16

‘Whatever I do with its cage I cannot get at it’

Question 17

Autonomy (wealth)

Answer 17

‘It was a legacy of life, hope and enjoyment’

Question 18

Autonomy (self love)

Answer 18

‘If all the world hated and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends’

Question 19

Religion (Brocklehurst)

Answer 19

‘The dread judge’
‘straight, narrow, sable-clad shape’

Question 20

Religion (New testament christianity)

Answer 20

‘The bible bid us return good for evil’

Question 21

Religion (st john)

Answer 21

‘Pure lived, conscientious, zealous as he was- had not yet found the peace of God’

Question 22

Religion (Rochester’s redemption)

Answer 22

‘I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker’

Question 23

Religion (jane’s revelation)

Answer 23

‘I felt the might and strength of God’

Question 24

Class (high class)

Answer 24

“Expression of almost insoportable haughtiness”
‘Furrowed with pride’

Question 25

Class (mrs fairfax)

Answer 25

‘They are only servants, and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s authority

Question 26

Injustice (tyrant john)

Answer 26

'You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver

Question 27

Injustice (fear of John)

Answer 27

‘Every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near’

Question 28

Injustice (Jane's anger)

Answer 28

‘Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?’

Question 29

Gender roles (St john)

Answer 29

“He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.”

Question 30

gender roles (bronte's manifesto)

Answer 30

‘women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts’

Question 31

Gender roles (equality)

Answer 31

‘if we both stood at God’s feet, equal as we are!’

Question 32

Madness (dehumanised Bertha)

Answer 32

‘Clothed hyena’

Question 33

Madness (violent passion)

Answer 33

‘It snatched and growled like some strange wild animal’

Question 34

Forgiveness (Mrs Reed)

Answer 34

‘To you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did’

Question 35

Forgiveness (Helen)

Answer 35

'Love your enemies'

Question 36

Entrapment (women)

Answer 36

"women suffer from too rigid a restraint".

Question 37

Entrapment (red room)

Answer 37

'a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars'

Question 38

Entrapment (Lowood institution)

Answer 38

‘an inmate of its walls’

Question 39

Gothic (red room)

Answer 39

‘All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality’

Question 40

Gothic (thornfield, foreshadowing)

Answer 40

'like a corridor in some Bluebeard's castle'

Question 41

Entrapment (Rochester)

Answer 41

'I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck'