Topic > Charlotte Bronte's description of coming of age illustrated in her book "Jane Eyre"

Today's social norms emphasize individualism and freedom through adulthood, an idea not uncommon in past eras. Artists of all ages use the motif of adulthood to demonstrate independence and strength, while the idea of ​​adolescence is used to illustrate the process by which one gains experiences to strengthen one's path to becoming an adult. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay An example of this in today's era through modern means is the observation of an ignorant, revenge-seeking Tang Dynasty princess in Xia Da Choukakou's manga: “All your life you have known the world only through the keyhole. You long to see beyond what can be seen to what should be seen, but you lack the conviction to expand it, to pursue a destiny of your own making. Even so, I see a burning ambition hidden within you, an unknown and unforgotten promise to be so much more. For the sake of a future filled with bliss, grasp the fallen kingdoms and provide yourself with a new path to follow. By doing so, one day, perhaps not now or even in ten years, you will have the vision you have always desired and invoked but which was never granted to you. Always remember this: a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling will never become queen." Growing up in this case is not just a physical transformation; Choukakou assumes that one must also grow as a person and individual through one's experiences and produce one's own future and path in life before one can truly be called an adult. Similar to Xia Da's Choukakou, Charlotte Bronte uses nearly identical themes in Jane Eyre to demonstrate the protagonist's growth into a true adult in both mind and body through the lessons she learns in the novel and in adolescence from different characters. In her youth, Jane Eyre, an orphan taken in by her evil relatives, the Reeds, wants nothing more than to be free from Gateshead Hall, a home where she has always known misery and humiliation at the hands of her cousins ​​and her aunt. Due to his immature attitude and ignorance of the world outside of Gateshead, his desire for liberation from the evil Reed family turns into a deep desire to escape pain and discomfort through growth, an act that involves having the independence and power. which she was never aware of. Jane believes that by growing up and possessing the freedom and power that comes with it as quickly as possible, she will be able to avoid the difficulties associated with being a child who can do nothing, but, as she ages in the novel, Jane's initial idea that adolescence is just a physical transformation with added benefits has been proven false. To provide the learning experiences needed to propel Jane into true adulthood, Bronte strategically uses Jane's experiences of John Reed's antagonism as a child, Helen Burn's friendship at the toughest part of her life. and Edward Rochester's love of physical maturity as the catalyst for Jane's growth. Through Bronte's use of successive characters to instill in Jane the experiences necessary to shape her throughout her life, Bronte emphasizes the idea that growing up is an ongoing process that goes beyond simple physical change and requires experiencing the ups and downs of life. and develop mentally to shape yourself and your future. During her childhood, John Reed, Jane's malevolent cousin, bullies Jane despite being four years older than her, inadvertently promoting Jane's moral sense.Jane and her rebellious and rebellious attitude towards everything she considers injustice. against her. Due to Jane being a poor orphan, John considers her inferior and subservient to him, an excuse he uses to mistreat her without being punished. Jane recounts how this harsh treatment and lack of help from her family and servants traumatized her: “He bullied me and punished me; not two or three times a week, nor once or twice a day, but continually: every nerve I feared him, and every bit of flesh in my bones shrank as he approached. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, for I had no recourse either against his threats or his inflictions” (Bronte 12). Jane's early memories of John evoke fear within her due to his constant bullying to spite her for being poor and living in her house despite not originally belonging to Gateshead while Jane can do nothing but endure it in silence. As the male head of the Reed family, John despises Jane's upbringing and orphan status due to his wealth and social class along with his mother's strong prejudice against Jane. John's bullying, contrary to how his age should have made him more mature, consists of physical hits and immature psychological taunts that focus primarily on his lack of wealth and parents to break his pride and spirit. Jane fears most of all how John will terrorize her for seemingly no reason, to the point that "every nerve [she] was afraid of [him]." The servants neither help nor side with her for fear of offending John while Jane herself is unable to fight back for fear of an unknown terror in the form of Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed never scolds John for his behavior as she also hates Jane for attracting her husband's attention while he was still alive, so she always treats Jane with contempt along with John and encourages his bullying by not telling him otherwise. Because of this, Jane grows up in Gateshead without allies or love, constantly pressured by John Reed's bullying and unnerving violence while everyone turns a blind eye to her suffering. This early taste of injustice, for which Jane can find neither a reason nor a solution, gives Jane the experience of cruelty and wickedness, allowing her to develop a strong sense of defiance towards injustice once she has tired of simply enduring the pain of loneliness. Later, one of John's beatings goes awry after Jane finally fights back for the first time, an event that triggers Jane's rebellious character after receiving one-sided punishment from Mrs. Reed. From then on, Jane begins to rebel more often against the injustice of the Reeds, and says: “I resisted all the way: a new thing for me. . . I was aware that a moment of mutiny had already made me subject to strange punishments and, like every other rebellious slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to do everything” (16). Jane describes herself as a “rebellious slave” who must “do everything” to rebel against her captors in her “despair”; this implies that she considers herself a prisoner under the influence of the Reed family in Gateshead and that, although she is technically their ward, she does not live as such under their “penalties” and must therefore rebel to the maximum. His desperation stems from the fact that he knows that he can neither escape nor truly live in peace in Gateshead and that he will never be happy if he is anywhere near the Reed family. With this belief, Jane resists “all the way” because the Reeds' cruel behavior will undoubtedly not change whether or not she rebels against them. As a result, Mrs. Reed punishes her for the smallest and most insignificant actswhile her son is left free from punishment, illustrating the consensual hatred between Jane and Mrs. Reed's family. Despite the punishments, Jane rebels because she firmly believes that injustice must be faced and counteracted because she herself has already experienced injustice without penalty many times and knows the frustration and helplessness of it all. Through her previous situation of bullying and misery, Jane learns that rebelling and suffering the consequences later is much better than suffering and doing nothing about it, ultimately educating her on the importance of being able to do something instead of lack of choice. Jane's first step in the novel towards growth comes through the ability to choose and this newfound morality, something a child shouldn't have to worry about at her age but which was nevertheless her first period of freedom in Gateshead, proving the idea of Bronte according to which growing must grow. step by step you need to experience good and bad situations to develop mentally and shape your life. At Lowood Institute, a charity school for girls with little funding, facilities and daily life, Jane befriends Helen Burns, a kind, older girl who, bearing all her punishments with dignity, silence and serenity, teaches Jane that Patience and tolerance are a necessity in life. Lowood is a desolate and harsh place and, although free from the cruelty of the Reed family, Jane finds herself suffering from Lowood's poor state of being and at one point even misses the comforts of Gateshead. Even so, Jane finds a friend in Helen Burns while she couldn't in Gateshead. However, their personalities and perspectives diverge greatly, a fact Jane discovers when Helen confronts her beliefs: "'Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not help it: it is weak and foolish to say that you cannot bear what is your lot having to endure. I listened to her with wonder: I could not understand this doctrine of resistance; and still less could I understand or sympathize with the tolerance she expressed for her punisher” (101). of the rebellion in Gateshead: enduring the pain in silence Initially, Jane cannot understand why Helen will suffer so brazenly without lashing out or why Helen is so tolerant of her punishments despite doing nothing to justify such sanctions Helen is the exact opposite of Jane, and while Jane wants to show her sense of justice by challenging injustice in a rebellious and indignant way, Helen is simply content to bear her punishments in a benevolent way. Helen explains that the punishment is "[her] destiny that she must endure" meaning that she must endure whatever punishment is thrown at her so that she can ascend to Heaven with a pure soul; he implies that rebelling in his mortal life isn't worth going to Hell in the afterlife, so he chooses to endure the pain so he doesn't have to suffer in his next life. Helen constantly tells Jane this, and almost every time Jane refutes her preaching with her own opinions on how to counteract wickedness. Helen constantly reminds Jane that rebelling against higher authorities is not worth the risk nor the end result, but Jane's tense attitude towards the injustice resulting from her time in Gateshead prevents Jane from listening to Helen or changing her ways. Overtime, however, Jane slowly converts. to Helen's way of thinking, starting when Mr. Brocklehurst, Lowood's hypocritical and cruel supervisor, accuses Jane of being a liar and forces her to stand on a stool as a public punishment meant to embarrass her. Jane subconsciously takes Helen's words to heart and doesn'trails against injustice as he did in Gateshead. Instead, she stands on the stool in silence as a girl passes by and holds her with a look, and she thinks: “What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray gave me! How bored I was by the new feeling! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had overcome a slave or victim and given him strength in transit. I mastered the growing hysteria, raised my head and took a firm position on the stool” (124). Jane finally realizes that the accomplishment of not being rebellious is more rewarding than the satisfaction of getting revenge on someone who wronged her. This is different from her time in Gateshead, where simply enduring the pain would have made her an easier target for John Reed; at Lowood, as she endures the punishment in silence as Helen ordered, she gains the sympathy of the girls around her. In that moment she describes herself as a “martyr” who has given strength to a slave or victim with her actions and that a wonderful, new feeling is born within her in doing so. Instead of being rebellious and challenging Mr. Brocklehurst as she would have done if he were John Reed, Jane decides to pursue a calmer, more peaceful path of benevolence and patience. Thanks to her newfound patience and tolerance, Jane is able to experience Helen's version of dealing with punishment, and finds that she enjoys the feeling of euphoria she gets from it. While railing against her will no doubt have earned her further punishment, enduring the embarrassment in silence brings her support from the Lowood girls who also hated Mr. Brocklehurst. From this experience, Jane learns that, although injustice must still be faced, patience and tolerance are no worse than rebellion in how they satiate her desire for justice, albeit in different ways. Likewise, both are ways to address injustice. , but Helen's way of dealing with the situation has a more passive and positive effect than Jane's offensive and aggressive version, leading Jane to pursue a peaceful alternative to rebellion later on. Upon entering Lowood, Jane believed that resisting and opposing injustice was the best choice, but, after befriending Helen Burns, Jane realizes that patience and tolerance are just as important as her sense of morality. Jane's incorporation of patience and tolerance into her personality shows her maturity and growth into a young woman over the next few years, illustrating the fact that Jane had once been a bratty child whose first independent action was was to be rebellious, but now she is becoming more mature. and as an adult becoming tolerant, the exact opposite of her stubborn and righteous act before Lowood. Jane's openness to this change in her personality exemplifies how growing up and reaching adulthood slowly but steadily needs not only physical but also mental growth. After Jane becomes a young woman and leaves Lowood for Thornfield for the job of a governess, she meets Edward Fairfax Rochester, her employer who, despite her age difference, gruffness, and lack of good looks, learns to try envy and comes to love openly despite the scars of previous relationships. Mr. Rochester is twice Jane's age and not handsome at all, but Jane sees past his character and unconsciously falls in love with his personality. Being plain herself, Jane lacks confidence in her abilities to attract and woo Mr. Rochester, so she simply watches from afar and denies these feelings of infatuation despite subtle flirting and signs of reciprocated feelings. Be that as it may, when the news of theMiss Ingram, a beautiful and wealthy lady who will most likely marry Mr. Rochester, and of Mr. Rochester's compatibility reaches Jane, she tries to gather information about their union and, after being foiled, recounts, “When I was once again left alone , I reviewed the information I had obtained; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and sought with a stern hand to bring back those who wandered through the boundless and pathless reaches of the imagination back into the safe fold of common sense” (303). Jane is jealous in the aspect of love for the first time in the novel, and doesn't know how to feel about it since she is a beginner in love. Most of his relationships had been loveless in Gateshead and Lowood, with the exception of Bessie Lee, his guardian, Miss Temple, a kind teacher, and Helen Burns, his first friend, but even those friendships were founded on a tenacious love. Mr. Rochester is her first true love, but due to her inexperience she does not yet recognize these feelings as love. Because of this she neither admits to loving Mr. Rochester nor ever claims to be jealous due to the fact that she barely knows what love means, but her narration shows her trying to deal with her jealousy in the only way she knows how: hide it. Struck by a foreign, new feeling, Jane attempts to "bring back with a stern hand" common sense and logical thinking, believing that this jealousy she feels is a simple attack of irrationality. The information she gets about Miss Ingram and Mr. Rochester's affair brings out her jealousy, but she simply holds it back and doesn't think much about it. In a sense, Jane is simply turning a blind eye to her feelings and ignoring the pain in her heart at the idea of ​​Mr. Rochester together with an unknown woman who is both more beautiful and more successful than Jane. Over the course of the novel, Jane discovers that the feeling she has for Mr. Rochester is actually love and that she truly loves only him. He learns to deal with these feelings internally before realizing them externally despite Miss Ingram's threat when he relates: “I told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester: I could not dislove him now, simply because I found that he no longer noticed of me, because I could spend hours in his presence and he never looked in my direction, because I saw all his attention appropriated by a great lady, who disdained touching me with the hem of her skirt. his clothes as he passed. . . I couldn't unlove him, because I was certain that he would soon marry that very lady, because every day I read in her a proud confidence in her intentions towards him, because I saw in him from hour to hour a style of courtship which, although negligent and rather chosen, to be sought rather than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, charming, and in its very pride, irresistible” (351). Jane finally realizes that she truly loves Mr. Rochester, but by then it seems that he has already found an interest in Miss Ingram. However, Jane discovers that, at this point, she cannot "unlove" him even if he were to marry a woman more beautiful than her or if that woman hates her. Even though Jane sees Mr. Rochester courting Miss Ingram in a way that is foreign and enviable to Jane, she still cannot let go of her feelings for him. Surprisingly, despite not being her center of attention, Mr. Rochester's "courtship style" attracts Jane even more with his carelessness and nonchalance, a trait that Jane states is "irresistible" to him. Jane even tells the reader that she has grown to love Mr. Rochester and that she herself realizes that she doesn't either.