Jane Eyre

A person's morals are vital for their decisions, but sometimes an external presence, such as love, can affect an individual's morality, contradicting their morals. Jane Eyre takes place in nineteenth-century England, begins with Jane is a ten-year-old girl living with her aunt because her mother and father had passed away. Jane’s aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her cousins;John, Eliza, and Georgiana. During her stay with the Reeds, she is abused, tortured, and desires to escape. Eventually, she is sent to a school called Lowood, where she meets a young girl named Helen Burns, whom she befriends. Helen becomes a very important person to Jane, but later dies after an epidemic of Typhus at the school. Jane spends 8 more years at Lowood, before deciding to become a governess and accepting a job at Thornfield Manor. There, she tutors a girl named Adele. After some spending time at Thornfield, she develops feelings for her employer, Mr. Rochester, but her morals stop her from loving him. She returns to Gateshead, the home of Mrs. Reed, after Mrs. Reed suffers a stroke. Mrs. Reed, nearing death, gives Jane a letter from her uncle, John Eyre. She leaves Gateshead, and goes back to Thornfield, where Jane confesses her love for Rochester, and he asks her to be his wife. During the wedding, a man named Richard Mason objects to the wedding, revealing that Rochester is already married to mad women named Bertha Mason. After these chaotic events, Jane runs away. Jane finds herself at Marsh End, where she meets St. John, who wants to marry Jane, believing she is the ideal girl for him, Although he does not love her.. She declines due to her love for Rochester. After leaving Marsh End, she is reunited with Rochester and they get married. In, Jane Eyre, the author uses the experiences and actions of the character Jane to demonstrate the effect of her encounters on her morality, the mix of her Romantic and Victorian beliefs, throughout which can steer one towards the pursuit of happiness.

In the beginning of the story, Bronte uses Jane's encounters at Gateshead to show her original mix of Romantic and Victorian values. During Jane's time at Gateshead as a child, she learns her morals, through the torture and struggle she faced, she, in addition to her Victorian values, has a romantic, idealistic mindset, desiring to disregard her period at Gateshead. An example of her Victorian values and her morality is when she finishes her punishment in the red room, where she reflects on the events before, "No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering. But I ought to forgive you for you knew not what you did: while rending my heart-strings" (Bronte 25). This illustrates the Victorian values of Jane during her time at Gateshead because after her punishment in the daunting red-room she is passive and not vengeful, demonstrating her realistic understanding of what her role is, thus displaying her Victorian values. In addition to the previous point, another instance where Jane's Victorian values are shown are when she is having a conversation with Mr. Lloyd, "Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the world only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation" (Bronte 29-30). This exhibits her Victorian values because she is taught what is needed to succeed in her life, and that morality is important, thus showing the relationship to Victorian values because she understands the importance of morality. During her time at Gateshead Jane had her Victorian values, Jane also possessed some Romantic Values. or example, when she is having a conversation with Mr. Lloyd, she states, "If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a women" (Bronte 29). This is an example of her Romantic values because she wishes to leave Gateshead, which at the time seemed impossible in regard to her current situation. This exemplified her Romantic values because it's an unrealistic aspiration to desire to leave the place of her pain. Similar to the remark before, another example of her Romantic Values is before she leaves for Lowood, when she speaks to Mrs. Reed, "I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if anyone asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty" (Bronte 44). This is an example of her romantic values because shows that she longed to leave, and disregard her time at Gateshead, showing her idealistic ideas, in the desire to forget Gateshead and her time there because she knew that she did not have much of a choice to decide on what she wanted, making it unrealistic to desire to leave Gateshead. During her time at Gateshead, she possessed Victorian and Romantic values, and she aspired to push away her experiences and run away from Gateshead, but her Victorian values are shown through her calm and understanding reactions to the cruelty and torture at Gateshead.

As the novel progresses, Jane arrives at Thornfield and Bronte uses her interactions and relationship with the character Rochester to display the effect of love on Romantic and Victorian values. After Jane's experience at Gateshead and Lowood, she develops a sense of morality, but that is affected by her relationship with her boss, Rochester. She strives to contain her morality, but her romantic values, are shown after she develops feelings for her boss Rochester, "'He is not to them what he is to me,' I thought: 'he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine; -I am sure he is- I feel akin to him-I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him... I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered: -and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'" (Bronte 204). Her desire to love Rochester affects her morality because she has departed from her Victorian values, because she is loving a man that she knew is against her moral beliefs. This demonstrates the effect of love on Victorian values, as it can stir you away from moral sanctity. Her love of Rochester influences