Lavender's AP Lit Class Blog
Friday, October 14, 2011
Jane + Rochester = Meant to Be
I've decide that for the Jane Eyre essay, I'm going to cover the topic of how Jane and Rochester were meant for each other. I want to show how throughout the book it seems as if every force in nature is trying to separate them.
Jane is afraid to love and open herself to a man. Roch has been heart broken in the past and he's afraid to make the next move. It seems as if they'll never get together even though we all want them to.
When Roch finally declares his love and proposes to Jane, the chesnut tree where he proposed to her is struck in half. This makes it seem that if Jane and Roch ever get married, their love for each other will be broken or lost.
Then, it turns out he already has a wife, making it impossible for Jane to be with him. Even the chestnut tree breaks, symbolizing what would happen if they married.
Jane runs away and finds another man who wants to marry her but for all the wrong reasons. While Roch has been burnt in a fire at his house.
But my favorite part that I'll be sure to use will be in the ending where Jane compares Roch with the chestnut tree. We all thought it was a symbol of them breaking apart. But when Jane sees it again, she notices how it's still together "whole" and new things are growing around it. She says Roch is still like that and the chestnut tree symbolizes how they were always supposed to be together.
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Very interesting choice! I think your ideas sound great so far. You should find more examples where nature seems to split Jane and Rochester apart and perhaps you could relate the nature idea back to Emerson since Jane seems to interact a lot with nature.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, thats a pretty good argument. i dont have anything to go against your theory, its pretty solid.
ReplyDeleteKristie,
ReplyDeleteFocus on the chestnut tree. Keep your analysis grounded. Rochester knows what he is doing is wrong (even though his many comments--on pages 252 and 295--seem incomprehensible to us on a first read). You need to explain how Bronte uses the image of the chestnut tree to support the fact that Rochester is right to know that what he is doing is wring. Just be sure to avoid the sort of plot summary that marks this post. Keep in mind that your reader has already read the novel (and doesn't need to be re-told its events). Again, we're after analysis, not summary.