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[Abstract] Acclaimed as a classic work of literature in the English-speaking world, Jane Eyre has been generally accepted as a richly woven tapestry of feminine imagination, a tableau of romanticism in the Victorian era, and an early treatise on humanities. The present thesis first analyzes the conflicts and fusion between deities and humanities, and then focuses on the gradual fusion of the two during every stage of her life, and finally explores into background of her religious beliefs, revealing the miraculous transition from an untaught girl to a mature Christian. Jane’s narration lends intensity to the story, and her personality serves as both a catalyst and a prism, and it is through her unique point of view that most of the novel’s major issues are explored.
[Key words] Jane Eyre humanities deities conflict fusion
1. Introduction
The English word “Religion” is rooted from the Latin word “Re-ligio” which means the binding of finite (human being) and infinite (god). E. B. Taylor (1832-1917), an English religionist and anthropologist in twentieth century, considers that religion is man’s solicitudes for god, and faith in human spirit.
When Christianity came into being, its creed and the Christian ideology have great influence on Euramerican literature. Many works were created according to the Bible stories, or affected by Christian conception and language. The English writer Charlotte Bronte’s representative work Jane Eyre was inevitably influenced by this trend, but was labeled as an anti-Christian work when published. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte presented her religious consciousness on the relationship between humanities and deities. It deals ultimately with their relationship with God as well as her individual soul’s attestation and resonance to God.
2. Conflicts Between Deities and Humanities
Jane Eyre has been regarded as an anti-Christian work since it was first published. Until now, there are still many writings attack Jane Eyre’s anti-Christian inclination because of her rebellious spirit against some orthodox Christian creeds. It certainly defies the Holy Book’s creed “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”. Set in early nineteenth-century England, a refined young woman is supposed to cast aside these kinds of improper behavior that Jane holds. She speaks up for her own rights and feelings, but this kind of spontaneous and vigorous exclamation and action elicits conflict with Christianity. 2.1 Tolerance and resistance
As a child living in Mrs. Reed’s house, Gateshead Hall, young Jane is immature and has not received education of Christianity. After her altercation with John, Mrs. Reed’s rude son, Jane is forcibly removed to an isolated red room where she senses a presence. She gains no acceptance but experiences overt class subordination, whereas her consciousness realizes that it is unjust. Young Jane’s resistance roots in natural humanity, which is partially approved but finally disapproved in the New Testament. The focus of the conflict is the faith “All men are created equal”, which shapes characteristics of Jane Eyre in Gateshead Hall during her childhood. When the inborn right is unmercifully deprived, her insuppressible hatred towards Mrs. Reed leads to sensuous delight of retaliation. Vengeance goes contrary to Christian creed, saying “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”(New Testament, Proverbs, 18:35). Consequently, helplessness before her defiance and introspection after resistance bring Jane inward bewilderment and struggle.
2.2 Stoical tolerance and earthly unfairness
In Lowood School, the stern and Spartan conditions severely test Jane’s resolve and moral strength. Jane not only extricates herself from the awkward predicament, but also suffers from cold, humidity as well as inward struggling. Mr. Brocklehurst is known to be a philanthropist and pious Calvinist, whose hands would shake at the sight of curled hair on those Lowood girls’ heads, but actually appears to be a hypocritical and stonehearted man. He limits the students’ food and clothes, asking teachers to punish students’ flesh to save their souls.
When Helen Burns is striped, Jane thought it is unbearable and holds deep hatred. She believes in eye for eye, and tooth for tooth when confronting unfair treatments. But Helen tells her to be tolerant and return good for evil just as the Bible bids them, which causes Jane’s perplexity and bewilderment. She suspects that Helen might be right and she herself wrong, but she would not actually be not able to ponder the matter deeply. She cannot comprehend this doctrine of endurance and still less can she understand the compassion and forbearance she expressed for her chastiser.
2.3 Conversion to Christianity and temptations
At Thornfield, the conflicts between humanities and deities proceed to another setting where Jane is urged by passion and falls in love with Mr. Rochester, a cynical sinner. Before Jane falls in love with Mr. Rochester, she considers herself at last in safe haven. Provoked by Rochester’s emotional manipulation, she hotly declares herself his equal and soul mate. Their love and attraction for each other give rise to Jane’s overlook of the existence of God for the moment. Jane feels that she cannot see God for His creature in those days and has made Mr. Rochester an idol. Jane falls in the sin of anti-Christianity, which is the second commandment in Ten Commandments. After the abortive wedding, when Rochester implores Jane to stay and live with him, it turns into a real difficulty for Jane to refuse his proposal. However, she cannot stand being his mistress, and her heart is simmering with a feeling of remorse for the temptation. 2.4 Religious zeal and true love
After Jane’s abrupt departure from Thornfield, she finds refuge at the home of St. John Rivers, a young minister, and his sisters, Diana and Mary. Though he is kind and intelligent, St. John chooses to narrowly and rigidly interpret his religious vocation. St. John certainly presents no true love to Jane but he proposes to her in the name of a call to serve God. For St. John Rivers, the humanities and amenities of life had no attraction, which conflicts with Jane’s comprehensions and belief. St. John seeks happiness in heaven, while Jane is determined to find hers here on earth. Though Jane can hardly comprehend this kind of religious zeal and comply with the non-humanity proposal, she vacillates under his pressure and tempted to cease struggling with him, which is a struggling between religious zeal and true love. Jane again falls into perplexity and helplessness.
3. Fusion Between Deities and Humanities
In many ways, Jane Eyre, as an early feminist, staunchly confronts a variety of constraints imposed on her freedom but frequently worries about the excessive passion. When pushed beyond the limits of her tolerance for pain and injustice, Jane reacts impetuously. But actually Jane Eyre is a spiritual pilgrimage for its heroine. It ultimately deals with their relationship with God, and reveals the power of religion that enlightens Jane Eyre in every stage of her life, thus guides her out of the blindness of humanities and becomes a diligent pilgrim hence force.
3.1 Blindness of humanities
When living in Gateshead Hall, Jane is only an untaught little girl. Her resistance against unfairness is out of involuntary conscious and forced by the agonizing. To some extent, little Jane Eyre gives expression to some beliefs of the New Testament, whereas her behavior is basically non-Christianity. At that time, she reads the Bible with pleasure, and lacks formal education of Christian, let alone comprehending and looking upon the ways of the world with religious conception. Jane also has little idea of poverty, contrarily she thinks of poverty only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices. Therefore, Jane needs the direction from God, leading her to the self-improvement in religious spirit.
3.2 Guide of deities
To come into the Lowood Boarding School is the doorstep of guide from God. Living and studying in Lowood School is the first step Jane takes toward the society, and from then on, her natural humanities begin to be inspired by Christian spirits, and her religious consciousness is enlightened. In there Jane meets her best friend, Helen Burns and Maria Temple. Helen’s stoicism, thoughtfulness, and intelligence touch Jane deeply, and the two become close friends. Maria Temple acts as a sort of fairy godmother to both Helen and Jane, offering them solace and encouragement. When Helen Burns is striped, Jane considers it unbearable, but Helen told her to be tolerant and return good for evil just as the Bible bids them. Helen also denies Jane’s understanding that resistance is natural. Jane’s comprehension for religion is out of the ordinary, sincere but incompatible with her behavior, while Helen puts away the entire earthly world, reaching her profound inner world, which is too profound and recondite for Jane to catch up with her. However, she is deeply influenced by Helen and her spirit, assimilating her tolerance and endurance of suffering into her own so as to console her helpless and restless soul.
Helen Burn’s death impels Jane to make her first earnest effort to comprehend the true meanings concerning heaven and hell. On Helen’s gravestone inscribes with her name, and a Latin word reads “Resurgam”, meaning “I shall rise again”, which is endowed with profound symbolic meaning by the author. For one thing, it indicates eternal religious spirit, and for another it implies Jane Eyre, her best friend, would carry on the resurgent spirit during the following stages of her life.
Another religious instructor of Jane is Miss Temple, who acts as a governess, a mother, and a good companion and employs deeper and more comprehensive influence on Jane within eight years in Lowood. Jane has imbibed from her something of her nature and a lot of her habits. She has more harmonious thoughts and appears a disciplined and subdued character, and she has better-regulated feelings and better allegiance to duty and order. These virtues are instructed by Christianity and impel the pilgrims to strive for these virtues.
Helen Burns and Miss Temple have decisive effects on the changes of Jane’s character. Jane cultivates religious qualities such as tolerance, endurance and self-control on the whole in Lowood. She also owns the best part of her acquirements under their instructions, and gives expression to it in her words and behaviors: She would not have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries, and Solomon’s words are cited to express her religious consciousness and feeling, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” (The Old Testament, Proverbs, 15: 17)
3.3 Tentative fusion of humanities and deities
The guide from deities can improve one’s spiritual extension rather than remove his natural attribute. When Miss Temple leaves Lowood School, Jane begins to feel the stirring of old emotions. In her inner world, Jane yells out for humanity of freedom, which is described as pursuing the truth of life. From an innocent little girl to a mature lady, Jane is not able to discard the freedom and happiness while accepting deities. Conflicts are inevitable in the process of fusion between humanities and deities, and both experience various kinds of trials. From Lowood School to Thornfield, it is a period Jane experiences self-practices, self-improvement between humanity and deity under her religious instructions and the two arrives in fusion. With each passing day, Jane is getting increasingly mature and the religiousness in Jane’s character is becoming subconscious. It is a well-known scene that in Gateshead Hall, Jane says she would never call Mrs. Reed aunt and sees her as long as she is alive. However, when Jane is summoned to Gateshead to attend to the dying Mrs. Reed after a year at Thornfield, she gets off without hesitation. Jane does just as Helen teaches her: love enemies, bless them and do good to them. She forgives all her spiteful insults.
After arriving in Thornfield and settled down, Jane has power of self-affirmation in the new environment, which has been imbibed from others before. Her first compulsion is to thank God and impetrate for future blessings.
Edward Rochester strains his foot the first time he meets Jane who offers him help, which symbolizes his previous wandering and is doomed to mend his way with the help of Jane. Rochester owes his moodiness to the fact that he keeps his insane wife, Bertha Mason, locked up in the attic. The first fire is a warning of his hidden secret and persistence in error. His ignorance of God’s majesty elicits punishment from God. For his irresolute past, Jane inspires him with Christian spirit. With the process of intercourse between Mr. Rochester and Jane who leads a life like a nun, their topics of conversations are imbued with religious and life meditation. On the night Mr. Rochester proposes to Jane, she clarifies her standpoint of her natural desire for equality and happiness. Jane is not a saint, whereas her humanity has been harmoniously integrated into the deities.
After the abortive wedding, Jane loses her love and quenches her hope. In desperate and helpless dilemma, she again appeals to God. Relying on reverence of God and support from religious belief, suffering in choice of soul and flesh, Jane is determined to leave, which recapitulates mighty effects of religious consciousness.
3.4 Bigoted deity and awe-stricken humanity
Jane leaves Thornfield and becomes destitute and homeless, her suffering from the moral degradation, blends with the physical suffering is a symbolic chasten for her sin, the whole consciousness of her life is perished, her hope is extinguished, and her faith is deadly stricken. However, no matter in marsh of moor, or in threat of death, Jane never gives up her trust for God. She believes in the power of God and adjures for his help. Because of her reverence for God, Jane is taken in by St. John Rivers and his family and gets rid of moral degradation. Although Jane admires and emulates John’s courage and devotion and vigor, she still cannot understand his rigid interpretation of religious vocation and religious zeal. During a long, painful hesitation and struggling after John proposes to her, Jane again turns to God. Just then appears a token of Christian mysticism—a premonition of Mr. Rochester’s voice that is verified later calling her back to Thornfield finally prompts her departure. 3.5 Fusion of humanities and deities
After receiving mysterious summons from Mr. Rochester, Jane complies with God’s plan. From departure to return, it is the choice of humanity as well as the instruction of God. Returning to Thornfield and acquiring happiness that conforms to nature is the final fusion of humanities and deities. Mr. Rochester becomes an acceptable mate for Jane only after he has symbolically atoned for his past transgressions: Thornfield Hall is burnt down in the second fire and Mr. Rochester is disabled. After experiencing rigorous punishment and trials, Mr. Rochester is full of reverence for God, and his reunion with Jane Eyre impels him to make confession, and becomes a Christian out of gratitude and admiration for God.
4. Conclusion
Through the illustration and analysis of her life and process of religious consciousness, Jane’s belief can be seen as an embodiment of human spirit in a period of time and the reflection of ideological trend rather than by chance.
From the process of conflicts and fusion between humanities and deities, readers can comprehend the author’s unique religious conception. Charlotte strengthens the importance of love and free will, believing in that everyone can regenerate by true repentance. It accords with God’s will and also satisfies humanistic demands. She delivers respect and awe for deities and at the same time puts humanities amid. Charlotte Bronte affirms the rational existence of humanity status in religion, attempting to locate a middle road between human passion and religious zeal so as to re-conciliate conflicts between the two, through Jane Eyre this religious apprehension is expressed.
References:
[1] Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre [M]. London: Penguin English Classics, 1985.
[2] Margaret Smith. The Introduction to Jane Eyre [M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
[3] The Christian Remembrance. China Christian Council, 1997.
[4] The Discipline of the Wesleyan Church [M]. Kansas: Wesleyan Publishing House, 1989.
[5] The New Testament. China Christian Council, 1994.
[6] The Old Testament. China Christian Council, 1994.
[7] 穆睿清. 外国文学参考资料[M], 地质出版社, 1984.
[8] 圣经. 中国基督教协会, 1994.
[9] 祝庆英. 简爱[M], 上海译文出版社, 1995.
[10] 朱雯. 外国文学精解[M], 上海文艺出版社, 1987.
[Key words] Jane Eyre humanities deities conflict fusion
1. Introduction
The English word “Religion” is rooted from the Latin word “Re-ligio” which means the binding of finite (human being) and infinite (god). E. B. Taylor (1832-1917), an English religionist and anthropologist in twentieth century, considers that religion is man’s solicitudes for god, and faith in human spirit.
When Christianity came into being, its creed and the Christian ideology have great influence on Euramerican literature. Many works were created according to the Bible stories, or affected by Christian conception and language. The English writer Charlotte Bronte’s representative work Jane Eyre was inevitably influenced by this trend, but was labeled as an anti-Christian work when published. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte presented her religious consciousness on the relationship between humanities and deities. It deals ultimately with their relationship with God as well as her individual soul’s attestation and resonance to God.
2. Conflicts Between Deities and Humanities
Jane Eyre has been regarded as an anti-Christian work since it was first published. Until now, there are still many writings attack Jane Eyre’s anti-Christian inclination because of her rebellious spirit against some orthodox Christian creeds. It certainly defies the Holy Book’s creed “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”. Set in early nineteenth-century England, a refined young woman is supposed to cast aside these kinds of improper behavior that Jane holds. She speaks up for her own rights and feelings, but this kind of spontaneous and vigorous exclamation and action elicits conflict with Christianity. 2.1 Tolerance and resistance
As a child living in Mrs. Reed’s house, Gateshead Hall, young Jane is immature and has not received education of Christianity. After her altercation with John, Mrs. Reed’s rude son, Jane is forcibly removed to an isolated red room where she senses a presence. She gains no acceptance but experiences overt class subordination, whereas her consciousness realizes that it is unjust. Young Jane’s resistance roots in natural humanity, which is partially approved but finally disapproved in the New Testament. The focus of the conflict is the faith “All men are created equal”, which shapes characteristics of Jane Eyre in Gateshead Hall during her childhood. When the inborn right is unmercifully deprived, her insuppressible hatred towards Mrs. Reed leads to sensuous delight of retaliation. Vengeance goes contrary to Christian creed, saying “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”(New Testament, Proverbs, 18:35). Consequently, helplessness before her defiance and introspection after resistance bring Jane inward bewilderment and struggle.
2.2 Stoical tolerance and earthly unfairness
In Lowood School, the stern and Spartan conditions severely test Jane’s resolve and moral strength. Jane not only extricates herself from the awkward predicament, but also suffers from cold, humidity as well as inward struggling. Mr. Brocklehurst is known to be a philanthropist and pious Calvinist, whose hands would shake at the sight of curled hair on those Lowood girls’ heads, but actually appears to be a hypocritical and stonehearted man. He limits the students’ food and clothes, asking teachers to punish students’ flesh to save their souls.
When Helen Burns is striped, Jane thought it is unbearable and holds deep hatred. She believes in eye for eye, and tooth for tooth when confronting unfair treatments. But Helen tells her to be tolerant and return good for evil just as the Bible bids them, which causes Jane’s perplexity and bewilderment. She suspects that Helen might be right and she herself wrong, but she would not actually be not able to ponder the matter deeply. She cannot comprehend this doctrine of endurance and still less can she understand the compassion and forbearance she expressed for her chastiser.
2.3 Conversion to Christianity and temptations
At Thornfield, the conflicts between humanities and deities proceed to another setting where Jane is urged by passion and falls in love with Mr. Rochester, a cynical sinner. Before Jane falls in love with Mr. Rochester, she considers herself at last in safe haven. Provoked by Rochester’s emotional manipulation, she hotly declares herself his equal and soul mate. Their love and attraction for each other give rise to Jane’s overlook of the existence of God for the moment. Jane feels that she cannot see God for His creature in those days and has made Mr. Rochester an idol. Jane falls in the sin of anti-Christianity, which is the second commandment in Ten Commandments. After the abortive wedding, when Rochester implores Jane to stay and live with him, it turns into a real difficulty for Jane to refuse his proposal. However, she cannot stand being his mistress, and her heart is simmering with a feeling of remorse for the temptation. 2.4 Religious zeal and true love
After Jane’s abrupt departure from Thornfield, she finds refuge at the home of St. John Rivers, a young minister, and his sisters, Diana and Mary. Though he is kind and intelligent, St. John chooses to narrowly and rigidly interpret his religious vocation. St. John certainly presents no true love to Jane but he proposes to her in the name of a call to serve God. For St. John Rivers, the humanities and amenities of life had no attraction, which conflicts with Jane’s comprehensions and belief. St. John seeks happiness in heaven, while Jane is determined to find hers here on earth. Though Jane can hardly comprehend this kind of religious zeal and comply with the non-humanity proposal, she vacillates under his pressure and tempted to cease struggling with him, which is a struggling between religious zeal and true love. Jane again falls into perplexity and helplessness.
3. Fusion Between Deities and Humanities
In many ways, Jane Eyre, as an early feminist, staunchly confronts a variety of constraints imposed on her freedom but frequently worries about the excessive passion. When pushed beyond the limits of her tolerance for pain and injustice, Jane reacts impetuously. But actually Jane Eyre is a spiritual pilgrimage for its heroine. It ultimately deals with their relationship with God, and reveals the power of religion that enlightens Jane Eyre in every stage of her life, thus guides her out of the blindness of humanities and becomes a diligent pilgrim hence force.
3.1 Blindness of humanities
When living in Gateshead Hall, Jane is only an untaught little girl. Her resistance against unfairness is out of involuntary conscious and forced by the agonizing. To some extent, little Jane Eyre gives expression to some beliefs of the New Testament, whereas her behavior is basically non-Christianity. At that time, she reads the Bible with pleasure, and lacks formal education of Christian, let alone comprehending and looking upon the ways of the world with religious conception. Jane also has little idea of poverty, contrarily she thinks of poverty only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices. Therefore, Jane needs the direction from God, leading her to the self-improvement in religious spirit.
3.2 Guide of deities
To come into the Lowood Boarding School is the doorstep of guide from God. Living and studying in Lowood School is the first step Jane takes toward the society, and from then on, her natural humanities begin to be inspired by Christian spirits, and her religious consciousness is enlightened. In there Jane meets her best friend, Helen Burns and Maria Temple. Helen’s stoicism, thoughtfulness, and intelligence touch Jane deeply, and the two become close friends. Maria Temple acts as a sort of fairy godmother to both Helen and Jane, offering them solace and encouragement. When Helen Burns is striped, Jane considers it unbearable, but Helen told her to be tolerant and return good for evil just as the Bible bids them. Helen also denies Jane’s understanding that resistance is natural. Jane’s comprehension for religion is out of the ordinary, sincere but incompatible with her behavior, while Helen puts away the entire earthly world, reaching her profound inner world, which is too profound and recondite for Jane to catch up with her. However, she is deeply influenced by Helen and her spirit, assimilating her tolerance and endurance of suffering into her own so as to console her helpless and restless soul.
Helen Burn’s death impels Jane to make her first earnest effort to comprehend the true meanings concerning heaven and hell. On Helen’s gravestone inscribes with her name, and a Latin word reads “Resurgam”, meaning “I shall rise again”, which is endowed with profound symbolic meaning by the author. For one thing, it indicates eternal religious spirit, and for another it implies Jane Eyre, her best friend, would carry on the resurgent spirit during the following stages of her life.
Another religious instructor of Jane is Miss Temple, who acts as a governess, a mother, and a good companion and employs deeper and more comprehensive influence on Jane within eight years in Lowood. Jane has imbibed from her something of her nature and a lot of her habits. She has more harmonious thoughts and appears a disciplined and subdued character, and she has better-regulated feelings and better allegiance to duty and order. These virtues are instructed by Christianity and impel the pilgrims to strive for these virtues.
Helen Burns and Miss Temple have decisive effects on the changes of Jane’s character. Jane cultivates religious qualities such as tolerance, endurance and self-control on the whole in Lowood. She also owns the best part of her acquirements under their instructions, and gives expression to it in her words and behaviors: She would not have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries, and Solomon’s words are cited to express her religious consciousness and feeling, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” (The Old Testament, Proverbs, 15: 17)
3.3 Tentative fusion of humanities and deities
The guide from deities can improve one’s spiritual extension rather than remove his natural attribute. When Miss Temple leaves Lowood School, Jane begins to feel the stirring of old emotions. In her inner world, Jane yells out for humanity of freedom, which is described as pursuing the truth of life. From an innocent little girl to a mature lady, Jane is not able to discard the freedom and happiness while accepting deities. Conflicts are inevitable in the process of fusion between humanities and deities, and both experience various kinds of trials. From Lowood School to Thornfield, it is a period Jane experiences self-practices, self-improvement between humanity and deity under her religious instructions and the two arrives in fusion. With each passing day, Jane is getting increasingly mature and the religiousness in Jane’s character is becoming subconscious. It is a well-known scene that in Gateshead Hall, Jane says she would never call Mrs. Reed aunt and sees her as long as she is alive. However, when Jane is summoned to Gateshead to attend to the dying Mrs. Reed after a year at Thornfield, she gets off without hesitation. Jane does just as Helen teaches her: love enemies, bless them and do good to them. She forgives all her spiteful insults.
After arriving in Thornfield and settled down, Jane has power of self-affirmation in the new environment, which has been imbibed from others before. Her first compulsion is to thank God and impetrate for future blessings.
Edward Rochester strains his foot the first time he meets Jane who offers him help, which symbolizes his previous wandering and is doomed to mend his way with the help of Jane. Rochester owes his moodiness to the fact that he keeps his insane wife, Bertha Mason, locked up in the attic. The first fire is a warning of his hidden secret and persistence in error. His ignorance of God’s majesty elicits punishment from God. For his irresolute past, Jane inspires him with Christian spirit. With the process of intercourse between Mr. Rochester and Jane who leads a life like a nun, their topics of conversations are imbued with religious and life meditation. On the night Mr. Rochester proposes to Jane, she clarifies her standpoint of her natural desire for equality and happiness. Jane is not a saint, whereas her humanity has been harmoniously integrated into the deities.
After the abortive wedding, Jane loses her love and quenches her hope. In desperate and helpless dilemma, she again appeals to God. Relying on reverence of God and support from religious belief, suffering in choice of soul and flesh, Jane is determined to leave, which recapitulates mighty effects of religious consciousness.
3.4 Bigoted deity and awe-stricken humanity
Jane leaves Thornfield and becomes destitute and homeless, her suffering from the moral degradation, blends with the physical suffering is a symbolic chasten for her sin, the whole consciousness of her life is perished, her hope is extinguished, and her faith is deadly stricken. However, no matter in marsh of moor, or in threat of death, Jane never gives up her trust for God. She believes in the power of God and adjures for his help. Because of her reverence for God, Jane is taken in by St. John Rivers and his family and gets rid of moral degradation. Although Jane admires and emulates John’s courage and devotion and vigor, she still cannot understand his rigid interpretation of religious vocation and religious zeal. During a long, painful hesitation and struggling after John proposes to her, Jane again turns to God. Just then appears a token of Christian mysticism—a premonition of Mr. Rochester’s voice that is verified later calling her back to Thornfield finally prompts her departure. 3.5 Fusion of humanities and deities
After receiving mysterious summons from Mr. Rochester, Jane complies with God’s plan. From departure to return, it is the choice of humanity as well as the instruction of God. Returning to Thornfield and acquiring happiness that conforms to nature is the final fusion of humanities and deities. Mr. Rochester becomes an acceptable mate for Jane only after he has symbolically atoned for his past transgressions: Thornfield Hall is burnt down in the second fire and Mr. Rochester is disabled. After experiencing rigorous punishment and trials, Mr. Rochester is full of reverence for God, and his reunion with Jane Eyre impels him to make confession, and becomes a Christian out of gratitude and admiration for God.
4. Conclusion
Through the illustration and analysis of her life and process of religious consciousness, Jane’s belief can be seen as an embodiment of human spirit in a period of time and the reflection of ideological trend rather than by chance.
From the process of conflicts and fusion between humanities and deities, readers can comprehend the author’s unique religious conception. Charlotte strengthens the importance of love and free will, believing in that everyone can regenerate by true repentance. It accords with God’s will and also satisfies humanistic demands. She delivers respect and awe for deities and at the same time puts humanities amid. Charlotte Bronte affirms the rational existence of humanity status in religion, attempting to locate a middle road between human passion and religious zeal so as to re-conciliate conflicts between the two, through Jane Eyre this religious apprehension is expressed.
References:
[1] Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre [M]. London: Penguin English Classics, 1985.
[2] Margaret Smith. The Introduction to Jane Eyre [M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
[3] The Christian Remembrance. China Christian Council, 1997.
[4] The Discipline of the Wesleyan Church [M]. Kansas: Wesleyan Publishing House, 1989.
[5] The New Testament. China Christian Council, 1994.
[6] The Old Testament. China Christian Council, 1994.
[7] 穆睿清. 外国文学参考资料[M], 地质出版社, 1984.
[8] 圣经. 中国基督教协会, 1994.
[9] 祝庆英. 简爱[M], 上海译文出版社, 1995.
[10] 朱雯. 外国文学精解[M], 上海文艺出版社, 1987.