1980. A recurring theme in literature is the classic war between a passion and responsibility. For instance, a personal cause, a love, a desire for revenge, a determination to redress a wrong, or some other emotion or drive may conflict with moral duty. Choose a literary work in which a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with his or her responsibilities. In a well-written essay show clearly the nature of the conflict, its effects upon the character, and its significance to the work.
Living in sin is an outdated concept to those of us living
in the present, but back in the days of corsets and feathered bonnets, the idea
of living as man and wife without being actually married was shocking to say
the least. To a young girl raised from birth to be devoted to the Christian
faith and doctrine, the very idea would be synonymous with degradation and an
assurance of hell in the afterlife. To a young girl hearing this proposal from
a broken man who needs her, who also represents the only chance she has at
bettering her life, the idea is far more tempting. This very scenario, the
choice to throw her principles away for love or to cling to them and suffer, is
presented to Jane Eyre on the very day she was meant to be married, and the choice
she makes defines her character and sets the moral tone of the novel that
shares her name.
Jane’s
true choice is not between purity and ruin; more accurately it is the choice
between her duty to herself and her duty towards Rochester. From their first
conversation, in which they debate about salvation, Jane is established as
Rochester’s moral compass. Her true worry when she leaves him is that he will
collapse into hedonism and damn him. However, Jane still chooses to go, largely
due to the philosophy she learned from Helen Burns in her childhood—that as
destitute and alone as she may become, her first responsibility is to her soul.
In the end, her decision to leave is her recognition of her own value to
herself. Regardless of how much she loves Rochester, she realizes that she
cannot be responsible for both him and herself.
Jane would not be Jane if she bent ‘the laws given
by God and sanctioned by Man’ to her own desires, but that does not mean that
it didn’t cause her pain to leave Rochester. Her decision also ruined any
chance of gaining a second employment—she was stranded without home, income, or
reference of character in an uncaring and mistrusting society. She reaches the
brink of starvation, but that is where the harmful effects begin to reverse
themselves. Because she leaves Rochester’s employment at the same time she ends
her engagement with him, Jane is given the chance to become her own woman, and
discover her own merit. Although she misses him, she constantly affirms that
she would rather be free and lonely than to be a slave to love. In choosing to
leave Jane proves her worth; in her time away she proves her capability.
Jane’s happiness at the end of the work is the true indicator of the
moral nature of Jane Eyre. It affirms
that those who make the right choices will be rewarded. Had Jane chosen the
path that Rochester wanted, she would have become subservient and morally
compromised. Her happiness would have been superficial and it would have
evaporated quickly. Instead, she made her own way into her own life and job,
and came back as an independent woman and an equal contributor to her own
marriage. Not only did she maintain her responsibility to herself as a human
being, she was made aware of her ability to care for Rochester. Jane’s choices
are indicative of her strength as a character, and her choice to leave
Rochester turns the entire book into an argument about willpower, morality, and
marriage in an era where those concepts were seemingly set in stone.
The
events in Jane Eyre are carefully structured so that any given good
thing couldn’t possibly have happened if a bad thing hadn’t happened first. Had
Jane never left Thornfield, she would never have met her cousins on good terms.
Had Jane never left Thornfield, as a matter of fact, she would have been burnt
in her bed by Bertha Mason, a punishment reminiscent of hellfire for a woman
who made the wrong choice even by her own moral code. Jane gains far more than
she loses from her choice to remain true to herself, but her struggles with
herself along the way prevent the novel from being too preachy.
