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.
