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, passion, and madness.
             Fire in Jane Eyre also depicts this same notion of passion being an uncontrollable, almost violent force equated with madness. After the fiasco wedding, when Jane suddenly finds that her groom-to-be already has a wife, Rochester requests her pledge of fidelity in return for his pledge. Upon answering, Jane is apprehensive and is "experiencing an ordeal." (278) Jane describes her thoughts by saying that "a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved." (278) This powerful image embodies Jane and Rochester's passion, and how Jane nearly succumbs to this powerful force. In Jane Eyre, the image of fire conveys the potentially destructive force in eroticism.
             Jane has deep and conflicting emotions which are shown in Brontë's use of vivid metaphors and images such as fire. They create the passionate nature of the work using descriptions of "fiery iron" and "blackness and burning" to illustrate Jane's emotions at this point. Visions of fire also link Jane to Bertha because both characters are repeatedly involved with fire, especially in regards to Rochester, relating either to an internal "fiery" passion or through the physical setting of a fire. Fire imagery permeates Jane, Bertha, and Rochester, in the bedroom blaze which Jane saved Rochester from, in the langua...