Art As An Insight Into Jane Eyre's Life

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and her punishment for
striking Master John, the stay in the red room of Gateshead. In the
opening scene, Jane is found perusing a copy of Bewick's “History of
British Birds,” concentrating on the descriptions of the certain landscapes
in which some of the birds live. Her words paint a mental picture, one
that represents her childhood,

“Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all
the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but
strangely impressive. The words…gave significance to the rock standing up
alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a
desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud
at a wreck just sinking.”1
To Jane, these words mean more than simple seascapes and scenes,
to her they are symbols of the life she had lived until then. She was the
rock, standing alone not amidst a sea of billow and spray, but among an
ocean of hostility. The broken boat ...

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she describes her work:

“The first represented clouds…rolling over a swollen sea…One gleam of light
lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a [bird]…its beak
held a gold bracelet…Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse
glanced through the green water.” 2

This painting is meant to be compared to Jane's first images of the sinking
ship in the moonlight. The foil takes form in her description. A half
sunken ship in daylight with a partially visible corpse. Psychologically,
this could be Jane's subconscious imparting the sense of closure, that her
old self was “slipping beneath the waves” as the corpse, with the bird and
bracelet symbolizing her ability to ...

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