Amanda Mueller Mueller 1ENG 202Professor Wrasman8, March 2014Passion and DesolationIn Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë gives great evidence to show Jane's journey through her own thoughts and the madness in her relationship with Rochester . At age 18, Jane accepts a teaching position at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with an upper-class man, Mr. Rochester. Rochester meets Jane and quickly falls in love with her. Jane feels the same way about Mr. Rochester from the beginning, but she is hesitant and dissolute when situations arise. Charlotte Brontë uses wonderful imagery and specific symbols to unify and differentiate Rochester's desolation and passion and Jane's wayward relationship, making these lovers so complex. A 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, which leads to desolation. Fire can also be good and have a positive outcome even though it seems destructive. An example of this would be when Bertha sets Mr. Rochester's bed curtains on fire. It's a negative situation, but one that takes a positive turn in the story when Jane saves Rochester, thus adding to the beginning of a new love. Bertha's fire, one of 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 shed his past, but leaves him handless and blind. This incident helps Jane understand that he now depends on her. This helps him see that there is no inequality between them. After Rochester is blinded, his face is compared to that of a "la... middle of paper ...and the act of flirting was important to their unique relationship saying, "I knew the pleasure of to annoy and appease him in turn; it was the one I liked the most. " (p. 187). "I had not intended to love him; the reader knows that I had worked hard to extirpate from my soul the seeds of love that were detected there; and now, at the first renewed sight of him, they rose spontaneously, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me” (Chapter 17). Jane had tried to talk herself out of her feelings of love for him, but it was impossible. “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine.” This final passage from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë puts an end to the tension between passion and desolation. What once terrified her was now the only thing in which she found comfort. She and Rochester have become “…bone and flesh of his flesh” and share one heart..