The Religion Enlightenment of Jane Eyre

Abstract: Jane’s religion choice was enlightened through Bronte’s artistic comparison, by which makes little Jane change from an innocent girl into a penetrating Christian woman.

Key words: comparison, religion, environment, children and adult

As for Charlotte Bronte, born in a poor country clergyman family in 1816.her childhood may be the prototype of Jane’s. Bronte was sent to a cherish boarding school only aiming at adopting clergies’orphans at 8 years old, which due to her mother’s death. Where she got orthodox Christian education, however, with her father’s influence as a clergyman of Wesley, she became a Protestant instead of a traditional Christian. Now look back to her work, Bronte enlightens such a young girl in only nine chapters by a persuasive and nature method.

Facing with Jane’s childhood, we can easily find out that there are so many contradictions existing around her. Let’s consider about Bronte’s art of comparison in this part.

Environments

In Jane’s childhood, there are two places offered by Bronte as her homes. One is her aunt’s- Mrs. Reed’s Gateshead Hall, while the other is Mr. Brecklehurst’s cherish school Lowood. In Gateshead which is filled with mean, greedy and hypocritical people, Jane lived in the nursery with vassalages. She was not allowed to stay with other children nor read books. Her families looked down her, laughed at her, and took corporal punishments on her. In such a greedy atmosphere, she became a girl with turbulent impulse of nature, and she experienced piled of sufferings. So she didn’t get enlightenment, when facing with these difficulties, she chose to revenge. At last it dawned on Jane that the school would be a complete change: it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life. And there came the Lowood.

Lowood is quite different from Gateshead, where Jane lived equally with other girls. Although she was required to obey community rules, recite Bible to learn to live like a Christian, learn French, geography, history, music, painting and so forth., all these lectures help Jane to take her first step to know more about Christian and the outer world, and it is at that time that Jane become to develop into a penetrating and thoughtful person. Compared with Gateshead, in Lowood, Jane has more freedom and dignity. From Jane’s perspective, she would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries. We can safely draw a conclusion that this comparison between the two environments suggests that Jane came to like the Christian surroundings there.