Thursday, June 12, 2014

A Limb Removed


       Here is a short and sweet Literary Analysis on Jane Eyre that I wrote for school. Normally the Literary Analysis we wrote were on the theme but this one is on Biblical Principles. 

A Limb Removed
       In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë depicts the fictional life of a woman named Jane Eyre. During the course of her life, Jane suffers through loss, heartbreak, and her own faults, but she discovers friends, family, and love. Throughout the book there are numerous biblical principles portrayed, including the one found in Matthew 5:29-30, which says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”
       This biblical principle can be found when Jane is told of Rochester’s secret and leaves Thornfield. When Rochester pleads with Jane to stay at Thornfield, even though she is tempted to stay, she knows she cannot because “laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?” (343). As much as she would have liked to dismiss her principles at that moment, she knows she cannot because where is their worth if she can pick and choose when she follows them? Jane knows that if she were to stay, being so near to Rochester would create temptations she would never be strong enough to conquer. She has to leave Thornfield to cut off her temptation. Jane’s action renders her understanding of Matthew 5:29-30.
       Another part of the book that portrays this principle is when Rochester loses his hand and sight in the fire. Rochester was a proud creature whom surrendered to no man and made his own rules and regulations. God had to literally cut off his hand and eyes to make him see his fault and begin to redeem him. Rochester acknowledges this himself when he says: “You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness?” (486). Instead of cutting off what made him sin himself, God had to step in and do it for him or else he would never had surrendered, and surrender he did. “I began to experience remorse, repentance, the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere,”(486). Through the removal of his self-pride and prestige, Rochester is humbled and brought to repentance so that his “whole body [would not] go into hell.” This clearly portrays the principles of Matthew 5:29-30.
       A biblical principle running throughout all of Jane Eyre is as found in Matthew 5:29-30, which explains that we are to cut off whatever causes us to sin because it is better to lose that than to lose your whole self to hell. Brontë exemplifies this through both Jane’s character and the redeeming of Rochester. There are many biblical principles in this book, including that which is portrayed in Matthew 5:29-30.