In the classic novel, Jane Eyre, the attitudes and beliefs of the author, Charlotte Brontë, are reflected, especially those over superstition and spirits. Brontë is appears to be a large believer in good and bad omens, shown when a tree is struck by lightning and through Jane’s dreams leading up to the wedding. The night of Mr. Rochester’s proposal there is a great storm, and the next morning young Adele tells Jane that “the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away,” (Brontë 262) – the same great horse-chestnut under which Mr. Rochester had proposed to Jane. The night before her wedding Jane has bad dreams, saying, “I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small
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All of these bad omens and superstitions that Brontë writes of before the wedding are confirmed when Jane discovers that Mr. Rochester already has a wife, a lunatic that’s kept locked up. Charlotte Brontë’s attitude towards ghosts and/or spirits is quite different to that of bad and good omens - she thinks that ghosts and spirits are simply people making something big out of something small. In the very beginning of the book, when Jane is locked in the scary red room, she sees a moving light, saying, “I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by someone across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mine was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world,” (Brontë 11). Brontë almost mocks those who say they’ve had supernatural experiences by portraying it as something children come up with, or as mere dramatizations of something completely normal. If anybody were to read between the lines of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, they would find that Brontë’s attitudes and beliefs over superstition and other-worldly spirits very well expressed through
All of these bad omens and superstitions that Brontë writes of before the wedding are confirmed when Jane discovers that Mr. Rochester already has a wife, a lunatic that’s kept locked up. Charlotte Brontë’s attitude towards ghosts and/or spirits is quite different to that of bad and good omens - she thinks that ghosts and spirits are simply people making something big out of something small. In the very beginning of the book, when Jane is locked in the scary red room, she sees a moving light, saying, “I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by someone across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mine was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world,” (Brontë 11). Brontë almost mocks those who say they’ve had supernatural experiences by portraying it as something children come up with, or as mere dramatizations of something completely normal. If anybody were to read between the lines of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, they would find that Brontë’s attitudes and beliefs over superstition and other-worldly spirits very well expressed through