Fire And Water Imagery In Jane Eyre Essay

In addition, firstly, fire and water imagery symbolize in Gateshead, when Jane is speaking of her loneliness in Gateshead's famous red room where Mr. Reed died. Red room described its haunted atmosphere of fear by the description of the physical aspects of the room because of the Gothic status of this novel. But some critics argue that red room was a symbol of the womb for Jane in order to reborn as an obedient child, that is why she locked in the red room. The first stage of Jane’s life with Reed family was angry and hungry for instance, she was angry because of her isolation, moreover, she was hungry for a family love. Fire is symbolic of her emotions, which shows her internal anger when she called cruel and murderer to her cousin John Reed because she is an orphan and a poor child.
In the Reed house, when Jane is reading Bewick’s History of British Birds while sitting in the window with "folds of scarlet drapery” enclosing her from the right and “clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating her from the drear November day" at Gateshead Hall (Bronte 1). The cold and wet window with red curtains depict the theme of fire and water. Solomon argues in his article Jane Eyre: Fire and Water that these two nature imagery which shows Jane's character, her strengths, and weaknesses which depend on the other people and location around her. Her absorbent personality, easily impacted by these dominant tropes that lie within certain characters of the novel, but she is never fully controlled by any of them. It is this duality within her that allows her to escape both extremes, the fiery Edward Rochester, and the ice-cold St. John Rivers, and to finally land in a “golden mean” between “the flames of passion and the waters of pure reason” (Solomon