Passion and Madness in Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is filled with descriptions of emotional exchanges involving images of fire. Flame is associated with the passion that dominates Jane’s emotions. Brontë uses the metaphor of fire to exemplify passion and to tie Jane’s passion to madness. Bertha is linked to Jane and her passionate emotions through fire imagery. Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason are superficially opposing characters, but they are connected through the prevailing themes of fire, …

…comfortable existence she experiences at Ferndean. The warmth of the domestic hearth (a controlled fire) is the final use of fire at the end (Jane meets Rochester leaning over "a neglected handful of fire" (456)). So the imagery of fire is not employed solely for the melodramatic effects of showing contrasting emotions, but for Brontë's pursuit of the importance of preserving the self and the spirit through passion, and linking this to Bertha’s madness.