Amanda Mueller Mueller 1 ENG 202Professor Wrasman8, March 2014Passion and DesolationIn Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte provides great evidence to show Jane's journey through her thoughts and the madness in her relationship with Rochester. At 18, Jane accepted a teaching position at Thornfield Hall, where she fell in love with an upper-class man, Mr. Rochester. Rochester meets Jane and immediately falls in love with her. Jane feels the same way about Mr. Rochester from the beginning, but is hesitant and dissolute when situations arise. Charlotte Bronte uses beautiful imagery and specific symbols to unify and differentiate Rochester's desolation and passion and Jane's capricious relationship, making these lovers so complex. One specific symbol used is fire and ice. Fire is presented as a symbol of positivity, love, creativity and warmth, while ice is used to symbolize hatred, destruction and negativity, leading to desolation. Fire can serve as good and have a positive outcome even when it appears to be destructive. An example of this would be when Bertha sets fire to Mr. Rochester's bed curtains. This is a negative situation, but it takes a positive turn in the story when Jane saves Rochester, thus contributing to the beginning of a new love. Bertha's fire, one of the two, brings Jane and Mr. Rochester together in an intimate relationship. The second fire is destructive and Thornfield leads to Bertha's death. This allows Rochester to free himself from his past, but leaves him one-handed and blind. This incident helps Jane understand that it is up to her now. It helps her see that there is no inequality between them. After Rochester was blinded, his face was compared to that of "a...half of paper......and the act of flirting was important to their unique relationship saying, "I knew the pleasure of irritating and calming him from time to time; it was what I mainly liked." (p.187). "I had no intention of loving it; the reader knows that I had worked hard to eradicate from my soul the seeds of the love that I had discovered there; and now, at the first renewed sight of him, they revived of their own accord, great and strong! He made me love without looking at myself" (chapter 17). Jane had tried to dissuade her emotions from loving him, but it was impossible. “I am my husband's life as much as he is mine.” This final passage of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre brings to an end the tension between passion and desolation. What once terrified her was now the only thing she found comfort in. She and Rochester have become "...bone and flesh of his flesh" and share one heart..