Research Task 4

Pages: 22, 85, 141, 242, 243, 244, 254, 268, 271, 272.

Janes’ day-dreams reflects the way that Jane learns to express her passions over the course of the novel. After a turbulent childhood, Jane fulfills a Victorian ideal of womanhood. Jane’s dreams thus reveal the raw emotions she attempts to mask in order to be an ideal Victorian lady. So this is why Jane pays “inordinate attention to the details of her dream life” (85)

The three watercolour imaginative landscapes which Jane painted while she was attending Lowood Schol reveal her great awareness for dreams. Jane describes the drawings as visions of her “spiritual eye” (242). Rochester declares, “I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and arranged these” (244)

The first painting shows a ship’s mast a bare hand, and a bracelet rising out of a turbulent green sea. The second painting is of a wild-rustled hill below a night sky in which a cosmic female form is visible. The third is a monumental bleak human head rising out of the ocean, supported by hands and resting on an iceberg. One could argue that these pictures represent Jane’s unconscious life and the extent of her suppression and passion.

The dreams in Jane Eyre can also serve as a warning of future events or a representation of events in Jane’s life. Some of Jane’s dreams also bring her trouble. Jane experiences two dreams about children on page 268 and 271, these dreams may reflect a fear inside Jane, namely that marrying Rochester will alter her identity.

In one of these dreams there are a barrier separating Jane and Rochester. This barrier can represent Rochester’s marriage to Bertha Mason.

Thus the dreams in Jane Eyre serve several complex functions. They serve as warnings of trouble or foreshadow good fortune, reveal Jane’s passionate inner self. They can also be seen as general symbols, direct reflections of Jane’s emotions or they emphasize several noteworthy moment in her life. Jane’s ‘preternatural’ dreams are intended to suggest her extrasensory perception, and so these dreams are comments on Jane’s situation as well as presentiments.

The dreams and painting operate as a narrative strategy as it shows us Jane’s emotions and it foreshadows events that will take place