Divinism In Jane Eyre

The evolution of religion is a remarkably vague area of study- for everything that we do know, there is so much more we don’t know. Mainly, ancient religions are especially unknown due to lack of comprehensible documentation and as such, there is much speculation over what main divinity people worshipped. For instance, one theory suggests that there was a main female figure, known as the Mother Goddess or Great Goddess, whose influence is still felt today in many works of literature and art. In fact, within Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte futuristically utilizes the characters of Diana and Mary Rivers as representations of this Great Goddess in order to provide Jane with maternal figures that enforce her decision to not sacrifice herself for the sake of others.
The Mother Goddess theory is a relatively new idea in the archaeology realm- it came around in the 1970s and while it doesn’t hold much traction with academic historians anymore, it has much popularity with the artists of the world. When defining this movement, Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris put it best in their article describing the arguments for and against the Mother Goddess theory: “Recent decades have seen the emergence of a new movement which claims that human society and religion …show more content…
By naming her characters after Diana and Mary, Charlotte Bronte was invoking this parallel in Jane Eyre, although the Mother Goddess theory was not developed until long after the novel had been published. Basically, the aforementioned characters represented two different sides to the Great Goddess, while also offering Jane maternal role models to present her with alternatives to giving control of identity to the patriarchy. Jane never has to sacrifice who she is and can remain undeniably her, all thanks to the support of said maternal figures and her own inner