Jane Eyre
Prompt #18 · Jane Eyre
Prompt Type: Symbol/Motif
Fire and ice imagery recurs throughout the novel, associated with different characters and emotional states. Analyze how Brontë uses this symbolic pattern to explore the tension between passion and restraint. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.”
Chapter 26
Argument
This ice imagery represents the emotional devastation Jane experiences after discovering Rochester's marriage, using pathetic fallacy to externalize her internal shift from passionate warmth to frozen desolation. The metaphor demonstrates how passion has been violently restrained by moral and social reality, transforming summer (passion) into winter (restraint).
Quote 2
“I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.”
Chapter 19
Argument
Rochester's fire imagery here represents passion as a vital force requiring contact and connection to ignite, positioning isolation as coldness and emotional engagement as warmth. This establishes fire as the symbol for passionate feeling that must be actively kindled through human connection rather than suppressed.
Quote 3
“Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?”
Chapter 35
Argument
The ice imagery associated with St. John represents the dangerous extreme of restraint—cold rationality and religious duty that suppresses all passion. This contrasts sharply with Rochester's fire, showing how excessive restraint can be as destructive as unchecked passion, with ice metaphors conveying emotional violence through avalanche and frozen sea imagery.
Quote 4
Chapter 20
Argument
Rochester's fire imagery here explicitly links passion to volcanic danger—a crater that may 'spue fire any day'—positioning his emotional intensity as both vital and potentially destructive. This establishes fire as representing not just warmth but uncontrolled passion that threatens to erupt, contrasting with the frozen restraint Jane must impose after discovering his secret.
Quote 5
“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are!”
Chapter 23
Argument
Jane's passionate declaration uses fire imagery implicitly through 'living water' and spiritual heat, asserting her emotional equality against social conventions that would freeze her into passivity. This demonstrates the novel's central tension: Jane must balance passionate self-assertion (fire) with moral restraint (ice), refusing to be either an unfeeling 'automaton' or a creature of pure impulse.