Head in Heart
Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, once said, “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.” In a battle between the head, the thoughts, ideas, and logic, and the heart, the feelings, emotions, and passion, one often faces a critical choice: to follow one’s head or one’s heart. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane, an orphaned young lady on an odyssey to find love and true happiness, is faced with this conflict of balancing both her good sense of morality and her strong willed, passionate heart. Along her journey she meets Edward Rochester, a wealthy, middle-aged, passionate man, and St. John, an ambitious, stolid, religious fanatic. Through her relationships with Rochester …show more content…
Jane learns that the Rivers are in fact her cousins, and St. John Rivers reveals to Jane that her uncle has died, leaving her a vast fortune, and the ability to provide for herself. St. John Rivers then offers Jane the chance to fulfill her need for principle; to marry him and become the wife of a missionary leading a correct, straight Christian life. Being a dull, unfeeling, “hard and cold” man, St. John proposes to her not out of love, but rather as a business deal, “a scheme of marriage” (Brontë 453, 471). As appealing as this is to Jane’s head, “a love of the senses,” emotion, and feelings are missing from this plan; “[Jane’s] heart is mute” on the matter (Brontë 453, 463). Although Jane’s mind desires the missionary lifestyle, Jane is lured away by the vacancy of love and stifling of feeling that come with this level of religious commitment. Jane comes to the realization that “if[she] join[s] St. John, [she] abandon[s] half [her]self” (Brontë 466). Jane flees from the grasp of St. John, understanding that being “forced to keep the fire of [her] nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry…this would be unendurable” (Brontë 470). A loveless marriage, devoid of all passion, will not bring Jane to the happiness she
Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, once said, “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.” In a battle between the head, the thoughts, ideas, and logic, and the heart, the feelings, emotions, and passion, one often faces a critical choice: to follow one’s head or one’s heart. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane, an orphaned young lady on an odyssey to find love and true happiness, is faced with this conflict of balancing both her good sense of morality and her strong willed, passionate heart. Along her journey she meets Edward Rochester, a wealthy, middle-aged, passionate man, and St. John, an ambitious, stolid, religious fanatic. Through her relationships with Rochester …show more content…
Jane learns that the Rivers are in fact her cousins, and St. John Rivers reveals to Jane that her uncle has died, leaving her a vast fortune, and the ability to provide for herself. St. John Rivers then offers Jane the chance to fulfill her need for principle; to marry him and become the wife of a missionary leading a correct, straight Christian life. Being a dull, unfeeling, “hard and cold” man, St. John proposes to her not out of love, but rather as a business deal, “a scheme of marriage” (Brontë 453, 471). As appealing as this is to Jane’s head, “a love of the senses,” emotion, and feelings are missing from this plan; “[Jane’s] heart is mute” on the matter (Brontë 453, 463). Although Jane’s mind desires the missionary lifestyle, Jane is lured away by the vacancy of love and stifling of feeling that come with this level of religious commitment. Jane comes to the realization that “if[she] join[s] St. John, [she] abandon[s] half [her]self” (Brontë 466). Jane flees from the grasp of St. John, understanding that being “forced to keep the fire of [her] nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry…this would be unendurable” (Brontë 470). A loveless marriage, devoid of all passion, will not bring Jane to the happiness she