In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront uses various characters to embody aspects of reason and passion,

thereby establishing a tension between the two. In fact, it could be argued that these various
characters are really aspects of her central character, Jane, and in turn, that Jane is a
fictionalised version of Bront herself. From this it could be argued that the tension between
these two aspects really takes place only within her own head. Bront is able to enact this
tension through her characters and thus show dramatically the journey of a woman striving for
balance within her nature.

A novel creates its own internal world through the language that it uses, and this fictional world
may be quite independent from the real physical world in which we live. Writing in the style of an
autobiography, Bront distinguishes Jane Eyre, who quite clearly from the purely fictional worlds
of Angria and Glasstown, locates her work within the world of Victorian England. But although
Bront's world is undoubtedly based on nineteenth-century society, it should be remembered
that the world conjured in Jane Eyre is not reality: it is but a world constructed by Bront in which
to tell a story.

A novel based only on the mores and customs of Victorian society would surely hold limited
appeal today, except as a historical document, yet Jane Eyre retains power and force even in a
post-modern world, as shown by its continued popularity and the many TV and film versions it
has inspired. Perhaps Jane Eyre retains such power and relevance because Charlotte fabricated
the book from the cloth of her own psyche, her own passionate nature, and so, although our
culture has changed drastically since the book was written, the insights into human nature which
Bront gave us remain.

Taking this view makes the characters in Jane Eyre seem denizens of Charlotte's own psyche.
Some of them, such as the passionate Bertha and the cold St John, personify aspects of her
character, her emotional and logical natures. Others, such as Brocklehurst and John Reed, which
seem more two dimensional, could be viewed more as scenery, foils against which the main
characters define themselves. Jane herself is Charlotte's most highly resolved character. Over the
course of the book readers come to know every aspect of her intimately as she moves through
Bront's world. Readers also come to know her through her reflections, as she embodies aspects
of the other characters. Charlotte seems to know Jane intimately, so intimately that it seems
likely that Jane is Charlotte's avatar within her fictional world. If Bront is Jane, it follows that the
other characters which came from Bront might also be aspects of Jane. Through these aspects
we see a development of tension within Jane between emotional and logical natures, and this
tension is played out in the events of the book.

Taking this argument further, if the book is seen as a reflection of Bront's own psyche, the
source of the various supernatural events described within the book must be Bront herself. Thus
she not only plays the main character in her story but also the supporting cast and the spiritual
force which intervenes on Jane's behalf at crucial moments throughout. In this light Jane's
meeting with her cousins, which many critics have seen as intolerably far-fetched suddenly
makes sense. There are no coincidences in this book. Jane is kept from harm by the ever-present
pen of her creator, just as Charlotte herself presumably felt protected and guided by her own
protestant faith. Jane meets her cousins because Charlotte felt it was time for her to do so. No
other explanation is required.

Passion and reason, their opposition and eventual reconciliation, serve as constant themes
throughout the book. From Jane's first explosion of emotion when she rebels against John Reed,
Jane is powerfully passionate. Just as Bertha's passion destroys Thornfield, Jane's passion, which
destroys her ties to Gateshead, leaves the way clear for her progression to the next chapter of
her life at Lowood. However, as Bertha's passion eventually proves fatal, it becomes clear that
Jane must gain control over her passion or be destroyed.

We see the dangers of nature and passion untempered by reason in the scene in which Charlotte
almost marries Rochester. Jane cannot 'see God for his creature' of whom she has 'made an idol.'
If the God of the novel is Charlotte, and Jane is Charlotte's creature, we can see that in losing
sight of God through overwhelming passion for Mr Rochester, Jane runs the risk of loosing
herself, of losing sight of Charlotte who she embodies. In this case, passion nearly gains a victory
over reason. Jane nearly looses her own personality in her overwhelming love. Only Bront's
intercession through the medium of the supernatural preserves her character from passionate
dissolution in the arms of Rochester.

The opposite is true when Jane is tempted to marry St John. Jane longs 'to rush down the torrent
of his [St John's] will into the gulf of his existence, and there to loose my own' Again Jane almost
looses herself, however, this time reason is nearly the victor. Jane's passionate nature is nearly
entrapped by St John's icy reason and self control. Once again Charlotte intercedes on her
characters behalf, this time with a disembodied voice which directs her to return to Rochester,
and saves her passionate nature from destruction. St John's death in India could be said to show
the danger that Charlotte saw in icy reason without emotion. Conversely, Bertha's death in a
conflagration of her own making shows the danger of the unthinking passion which Jane feels for
Rochester. Thus, these two deaths could be said to represent the more subtle death of
individuality, in which Jane risks loosing herself and her separate identity.

It is interesting to note that Bertha is portrayed as being ugly, 'a vampyre', a 'clothed hyena'
whilst St John is uncommonly handsome. This fits with Bront's use of fire and ice imagery to
symbolise reason and passion. Ice may be hewn into any form, where it will remain, fixed and
perfect as long as it stays frozen. Fire on the other hand can be hard to control. It cannot be
moulded into exact shapes, it is constantly changing, and if unchecked will consume the ground
on which it burns, leaving black cinders and ash, just as Bertha is blackened and swollen. This
use of imagery gives us an interesting paradox, since much of the book seems to concern Jane's
attempt to reconcile her passionate and reasonable natures. When ice and fire are combined the
result is warm slush, hardly a suitable metaphor for a desirable state of being. One or the other,
perhaps both must be destroyed. For how then can there be a reconciliation between the two?

Throughout the book Charlotte provides Jane with a number of mentors, each of whom provides
her with a piece of the puzzle. The first is Brocklehurst. His Calvinistic philosophy teaches the
mortification of the flesh as the way to obtain balance. By crushing Jane's physical body, he
hopes to burn excess passion out of her, leaving a balance in which reason may be the ultimate
victor. However, this method, like all other false or incomplete doctrines presented in Jane Eyre
ultimately ends in death. Typhoid comes to Lowood and Bront punishes Brocklehurst with
shame and scandal. Interestingly, Brocklehurst's philosophy is re-enacted for Rochester when his
pride and unreasoning passion is burnt out of him in the fire at Thornfield. Rochester flesh is
mortified as he looses an eye and a hand. Through this somewhat drastic method, Rochester,
who becomes a more suitable match for Jane, perhaps somehow attains a balance of his own.

Helen Burns seems to offer Jane another method by which tension may be resolved. She shows
Jane that she can release her negative emotions, and make them less destructive through
forgiveness, and that, by loving her enemies her hatred and anger may fade. We see this
philosophy in action when Jane visits her dying aunt and is able to forgive her. She receives a just
reward for this kindly act, the knowledge of an uncle living in the East Indies. However, Helens
selfless acceptance of all the crimes perpetrated against her does nothing to change those
crimes, or to deter their repetition. Had Helen been at Gateshead rather than Jane she would
never have escaped. Helen's beliefs prove to be only an incomplete part of a whole, and so, she
too dies.

At the end of many trials Charlotte permits Jane to return at last to her lover. It is a wiser Jane,
and also perhaps a wiser Charlotte who welcomes this happy event. At this point it seems that
the tension between reason and passion should have been resolved. However, this is not the
case. There is no sense of any realistic resolution of tension between Jane's reasoning and
passionate natures. Perhaps Jane could have attained logical emotion, or emotional logic, or to
extend the Bront's fire and ice metaphor, some sort of interplay between the two like sunlight
glinting on the sea or torches focussed through a crystal lens. Instead, Jane and Rochester live in
'perfect concord', their happiness is complete. They feel no passion or intrigue, only a warm
sentimentality that seems wholly out of place in a book which has traversed such a vast ranges
of emotion. Instead of fire and ice, Charlotte gives us warm slush. Perhaps she never resolved
the tension between reason and passion for herself, and so was unable to write convincingly
about it. Maybe, because of this she simply tacked on the happiest ending she could contrive, or
maybe she wrote what she hoped to gain for herself, without understanding how she could get it.
As an account of one woman's journey of spiritual growth, whether Jane's or Charlottes, Jane Eyre
succedes admirably. However, in the arrival it fails. Perhaps this is because at the time she wrote
the book, Charlotte herself hadn't found happiness with a partner. Whatever the reason, the
ending remains profoundly unsatisfying, and the weakest element of the book.

Jane Eyre may be seen in a postmodernist light as an expression of Charlotte Bront's own
character. The players she peoples her world with seem to be aspects of herself, and Jane seems
to represent her totality. Throughout the book a tension is established between the forces of
reason, championed by St John, and those of passion, headed by Bertha. This tension exists
within Jane's head, and also presumably within Charlotte's, but Bront uses the medium of the
novel to play out this conflict among all her characters, and so brings it out into the light.
Eventually the champions, Bertha and St John are killed off, symbolising the danger Bront saw
in taking either of these paths to the exclusion of the other, and also symbolising the less
obvious death that Jane risks, that of loss of self, either by surrendering to Rochester, or to St
John.

The perveyors of incomplete solutions to this conflict are also killed. Brocklehurst, dies
symbolically when he is removed from his position as headmaster of Lowood, Helen Burns dies of
consumption. At the end of the story, the tension which Bront has built up between reason and
passion is not satisfactorily resolved, which weakens the ending somewhat, however Jane Eyre
succeeds because it is taken directly from a young woman's psyche. It speaks to us today
because it takes its inspirations from an internal reality that has remained constant.
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses various characters to represent aspects of reason and
passion, thereby establishing a tension between the two. In fact, it could be argued that these
various characters are really aspects of her central character, Jane. From this it could be argued
that the tension between these two aspects really takes place only within her mind. Bronte is
able to enact this tension through her characters and thus show dramatically the journey of a

woman striving for balance within her character. As a prerequisite for marriage, Jane uses this
determination in her relationships with Mr. Rochester and St. John.