The novel contains many female characters and their role or portrayal in society according to Bronte. The characters range from school teachers to a rebellious young girl to a crazy mentally psycotic hidden wife. These aren't however the only characters in the novel that are portrayed in a feminist wayor in a non feminist way. Jane is a very passionate person, yet throughout the years she becomes more subtle than she was when she was a child.
At Thornfield a hidden insane wife is revealed to Jane after a proposal from the husband of the hidden wife, Bertha. Although conisdered a beast and is described as inhuman, Bertha and Jane are similar. Bertha is the overpassionate Jane would have become if she did not control it throughout the years, but why did Jane not turn out to be like Bertha? What controlled Jane and how did it change her to become the Jane she was in the end of the novel?
Not only does Jane not become Bertha but she changes herself into an older Jane and a slightly different Jane, but she travels through many experiences in her life that create the Jane she is at the end of the novel. There are many different crucial scenes in the novel that shape Jane's life the way it was.
Jane seems to get herself into firey situations in the novel, which expresses her passion and when she is being a passionate woman. There are also times when there are icy siuations that bring about Jane's passion.
Jane is finding herself through the novel, or is it that she has found who she is she just needs contributions to mold who she should become?
"Bertha and Jane are similar" Ah, yes...there's your paper: a 'compare and contrast' approach to Bertha and Jane, one that attempts to sort through all their similarities (both are passionate, Bertha's lair seems reminiscent of the red room, etc.) and their differences (think of the many times in which Jane finds the fire "too hot"--in the Gypsy scene, at Moor's End--and the way in which Bertha is always setting fire to everything)--and then decide what it is that Bronte is communicating to her reader through the contrast of these two central women. (You're right, I think, to suppose that it has something to do with the proper role of passion--some, but not too much).
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