Jane Eyre Metaphors and Similes Quotes

The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and 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.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 1. As Jane reads a book on birds, the author makes striking use of pathetic fallacy, with the images of the natural world accurately mirroring Jane’s own feelings and emotions. Jane is the rock standing alone in the swollen sea, the broken boat on a desolate coast, the ghastly moon peering at a sinking wreck. Each is a metaphorical symbol of her desolation at Gateshead, where she is isolated and unloved. The moon appears as a metaphor throughout the novel, presiding over the different situations Jane finds herself in. The rock here also symbolizes Jane’s strength and her resistance to the abuse she suffers at the hands of the Reeds.

Like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.
“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.”
“For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.”
“Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”
“No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 2. As Bessie and Miss Abbot drag Jane to the red room, her prison, she sees herself “like any other rebel slave” (simile) and fights her captors. On Mrs. Reed’s orders, they imprison Jane in the room for retaliating after her cousin John Reed throws a book at her and attacks her. The red room is the death chamber where her late Uncle Reed died. In this exchange the cruel maid Miss Abbot tells Jane that she is less than a servant. A second simile is used in this passage by nursemaid Bessie to compare Jane to a “mad cat.”

Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 2. Locked in the red room, Jane looks into the mirror and contemplates the bad situation she finds herself in, now that her kind uncle is dead and she is a ward of a family that despises her. She sees herself as a strange and unnatural figure, a spirit from another world. Using similes she compares herself to the scary phantoms, fairies and imps that populate the evening stories told to her by nursemaid Bessie.

All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?…Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged…John no one thwarted, much less punished.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 2. While locked in the red room, Jane questions her constant mistreatment by the Reed family. She asked why she could never please them or win their favor. Using a simile she compares all their wrong-doings and tyranny to a “dark deposit in a turbid well.” But while she is made to suffer, Jane protests that the misbehavior of her cousins Eliza, Georgiana and John is left go unchecked and unpunished. The Gothic style that permeates the novel is found in the language of this passage with Bronte’s use of words like “violent,” “disturbed,” “dark.”

“They are not fit to associate with me.”
Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 4. When the rebellious Jane hits John Reed on the nose for attempting to abuse her and declares that the Reed children are not fit to associate with her, Mrs. Reed attacks her. A simile describes Mrs. Reed sweeping Jane “like a whirlwind” into the nursery, where Jane is confined and told to shut up by Mrs. Reed, who boxes her ears.

To this crib I always took my doll. Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scare-crow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doted on this little toy; half-fancying it alive and capable of sensation, I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it happy likewise.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 4. The doll Jane clung to as a child is symbolic of the sense of home and feeling of being loved that she never had during her dark days with the Reeds. “Human beings must love something,” she says. So she cared for a doll the same way that a child loves a brother, sister or parent. It was her way of coping when she lived with a family that showed her no affection. Using a simile, she compares the shabbiness of her beloved doll to a scarecrow.

I looked up at – a black pillar! – such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 4. Mr. Brocklehurst appears as an intimidating figure when Jane first encounters him on his visit to the Reed home. The supervisor of Lowood School is not even described as a man, but rather a grim statue. A metaphor compares him to a black pillar and a simile likens his face to a carved mask.

“Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked.
“That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to change it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 4. Jane is summoned to the Reeds’ breakfast room, where she is questioned by Mr. Brocklehurst on hell, sin and the Bible. She instinctively rebels and dismisses the psalms as not interesting. He retorts by accusing her of having a heart of stone, metaphorically speaking, and commands that she pray to God to replace it with a heart of flesh.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 4. When Jane stands up to her Aunt Reed she feels a sense of triumph and vengeance. But as a child doing battle with an adult, her passionate outburst also leaves her with feelings of remorse and guilt. In one simile she compares the taste to “aromatic wine,” but in another the sensation is “as if I had been poisoned.” After this passage Jane goes on to say: “Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.”

“My dear children,” pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, “this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl, who might be one of God’s own lambs, is a little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her; keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save the soul; if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for…this girl is – a liar!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 7. Mr. Brocklehurst repeats what he has been told by Mrs. Reed and announces to the whole school that Jane is a liar. Declaring her an interloper and alien, he asks that she be shunned. Punish her body to save the soul, urges the clergyman man whose faith is all hell-fire and brimstone. Brocklehurst is abusive to the children in his school and represents the worst kind of extreme evengelical zeal. An appropriate metaphor likens the bible-thumping Brocklehurst, who weaponizes religion to frighten and intimidate little girls in his care, to black marble.

What my sensations were, no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me; in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feelings bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 7. Jane describes how Helen Burns helps her while she is being punished by Mr. Brocklehurst at Lowood. As she stands on the punishment stool, her “pedestal of infamy,” Helen reaches out to give Jane hope and strength during her trial of humiliation. Similes comparing Helen to a martyr and Jane to a slave are used to describe the moment. Helen’s depiction as a martyr is foreshadowing of her own death by tuberculosis at a very young age in the infamous Lowood School.

Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 7. Jane makes this observation after Helen Burns is flogged by her teacher Miss Scatcherd for something very minor. Using metaphrorical imagery she makes the point that some people can only see the tiny flaws in others, while blind to the full brightness of the person. Some you can just never satisfy – like Miss Scatcherd!

While sobbing out this wish in broken accents, some one approached; I started up – again Helen Burns was near me…She sat down on the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her head upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 8. It is easy to see why Helen Burns becomes Jane’s best friend at Lowood. At Jane’s time of crisis, having been embarrassed and humiliated by Mr. Brocklehurst, she draws strength from Helen being close to her. While Jane breaks down and sobs, Helen sits down on the ground beside her and offers her the healing balm of friendship. A simile describes Helen’s stoical attitude – “silent as an Indian.”

We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 8. Miss Temple invites Jane and Helen to her room and treats them to slices of seed-cake and tea, bringing Jane much comfort after her public humiliation by Brocklehurst. The importance of the new bond of friendship and affection between the head teacher and her two young students is underlined by metaphors comparing the fare they feast on to ambrosia and nectar, the food and drink of the Greek gods. Orphan Jane has discovered a new and loving surrogate family at Lowood.

I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 10. Jane is at a crossroads in her life. Living in Lowood School for eight years, she realizes that she has been cut off from the real world. She sees a wide world out there of life knowledge to be learned and sensations to be experienced for those with the courage to venture forth. She speaks metaphorically of the “field of hopes and fears” that await such people.

I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 10. Jane has spent six years as a student at Lowood and two years a teacher, and her mentor Miss Temple has married and moved away to a distant country. The routine of Lowood is no longer enough for Jane and she believes that is time for a change in her life. She feels that her liberty is being metaphorically scattered on the wind. She prays to God to grant her freedom, or at least a “new servitude.”

When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the eerie impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase, and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room, I remembered that after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I was now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my heart, and I knelt down at the bedside and offered up thanks where thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore aid on my further path, and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so frankly offered before it was earned. My couch had no thorns in it that night; my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly; when I awoke it was broad day.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 11. On arriving at Thornfield at night Jane has been warmly greeted and shown to her room by the housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax. As she starts this new chapter in her life, Jane feels safe and secure and protected in Thornfield mansion. When she says her couch has no thorns in it, this a metaphor suggesting that she slept comfortably and soundly.

I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward. On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momently: she looked over Hay, which, half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys; it was yet a mile distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 12. During a walk to Hay Jane sits and observes Thornfield and the surrounding countryside, taking in the rising moon. Bronte frequently uses the moon metaphor to symbolize change. In this case it is foreshadowing Jane meeting Mr. Rochester for the first time, although she doesn’t know it is him. This occurs a few minutes later when he falls off his horse on the causeway as “the moon was waxing bright.”

“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
“Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.”
“It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform – I have strength yet for that – if – but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may.”
“Then you will degenerate still more, sir.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 14. Rochester does not believe in repenting his sins. He sounds almost hedonistic when he says that he has the right to take pleasure out of life, since he is denied happiness because of his hardhips and trials. He metaphorically describes remorse as the “poison of life.” Jane on the other hand believes that religious repentance is the cure for remorse and warns him that he will degenerate even more if he does not reform.

“Why would I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the moor.”
“It will sting – it will taste bitter, sir.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 14. Rochester asks Jane why he should reform if he can enjoy the taste of sweet, fresh pleasure. He uses a simile to compare the freshness and sweetness of such pleasure to the wild honey gathered by the bee on the moor. The very moral Jane warns him that such pleasure will metaphorically sting and taste bitter.

I am paving hell with energy…I am laying down good intentions which I believe durable as flint.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 14. The passionate Rochester says this to Jane during their discussion on sin and redemption. Jane has been telling him that if he wants to reform and correct his imperfections he will. Rochester is alluding to the saying “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” meaning that the best of intentions can become corrupted and turn to bad. Good use of metaphor is made by Bronte here with the “Paving hell” image.

You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphinx.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 14. Rochester tells Jane that she is afraid of him because he talks in riddles. Using a simile, he compares himself to a sphinx. However, Jane assures him that while she is confused by his puzzling language she is unafraid: “Your language is enigmatical, sir: but though I am bewildered, I am certainly not afraid.” The sphinx is a mythical creature with the head of a woman and body of a lion. She killed those who could not answer her riddle.

I see, you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very merrily; believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat; controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother – or father, or master, or what you will – to smile too gayly, speak too freely, or move too quickly; but in time, I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 14. As Rochester gets to know Jane he believes there is more to her behind her outward reserve. Her time in Lowood has held her back and stifled her as a person, he feel. As a result she is afraid to laugh, speak freely or move too fast. He is confident that she will loosen up and be more natural around him. Using an extended metaphor he compares her to a caged bird that will soar when set free.

During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk – a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. “You like Thornfield?” she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows. “Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!”
“I will like it,” said I. “I dare like it.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Rochester makes this speech to Jane after they ascend the avenue at Thornfield and he stops and lifts his eyes up to the battlements. His eyes are said to reflect pain and shame as he refers to the as yet unknown hag he describes as “my destiny.” The hag is Bertha, the secret wife he keeps locked in his attic. Using a simile Rochester compares the hag to the witches of Macbeth, giving an other-worldly and Gothic atmosphere to the passage. Like Macbeth, Rochester too has a wife who went mad.

I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned, I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a refreshing gale wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne; but I could not reach it, even in fancy, a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium, judgment would warn passion.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Here the author uses a metaphor to compare Jane’s intense joy and confusion to a ship tossing and voyaging across a restless sea. Beulah is a Biblical allusion to the land of the Israelites, the earthly paradise to which the Jewish people must return. Jane’s love for Rochester is clear by the intensity of this passage. In the midst of her new emotions she sees an image of herself being borne beyond the “wild waters” of her confused feelings to her own “hills of Beulah.” This is foreshadowing that a change for the better is about to happen in Jane’s life, one that involves Rochester.
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