A Biblical Archetypal Reading Of Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a classic work written by Charlotte Bronte, a distinguished British writer in the 19 th century. This novel has been popular and warmly loved by readers since it was first published in 1847. As a novel appealing to most people, it is with powerful Christian color and heavy flavor of the Bible. The images, themes, plots,narrative structure, writing technique, archetypal characters and other aspects are inextricably tied up with the Bible.Since the publication of Jane Eyre, the research on it appears numerously. The foreign scholars have studied the novel from plots, religious and moral views, feminism,psychoanalysis, post-colonialism, and narratology. In addition to these angles, the domestic researchers have interpreted it from the perspectives of aesthetics, psychology,ethnics and cultural philosophy. However, few scholars make research from the perspective of archetypal theory systematically and deeply.This dissertation tries to interpret the novel Jane Eyre from three aspects of biblical archetypal themes, biblical archetypal characters and biblical archetypal images by combination of Northrop Frye’s biblical archetypal theory and “Displacement” theory with textual analysis. The author attempts to elaborate the archetype theory, Northrop Frye’s biblical archetypal and “displacement” theory used in this dissertation, focusing on the generation and development of the biblical archetypal theory and how“Displacement” theory is displaced from psychology and anthropology prototype category to literature. The biblical elements such as “paradise lost” to “paradise regained”, the meaning of “fire” prototype, the theme of the Christian marriage doctrine and the power of God are discussed in the novel, from which the author of the dissertation manages to reveal biblical archetype used in the fiction, the relationships between the viewpoints of the author’s creation and the Bible, meanwhile, the author points out the significance of analyzing the novel from the perspective of biblical archetypal theory. In the terms of theme creation, it expounds the themes of “Paradise Lost”to “Paradise Regained” then to “Love” and “Redemption” in the novel corresponding to the themes of the Bible from the angle of the biblical archetypal themes so that readers can spy out that the “U-shaped” narrative structure adopted in the novel is affected by the Bible. From the perspective of characters, it depicts how Charlotte uses the archetypal characters in the Bible to correspond to the main characters in the novel during the creating process. Just as Jane is the archetype of“Eve”, Mr. Rochester is regarded as the embodiment of “Adam”, Bertha becomes“scapegoat”, and Helen sublimates for “Angel”. Then, in the terms of images, it mainly elaborates from the perspective of the biblical archetypal images, and finds out that the imagery of “fire” used in the novel carries very important connotations. It not only represents the strong and warm emotions and passions, but indicates the fates of the protagonist are closely related to the development of the plots from different aspects.Based on the previous research achievements, this dissertation intends to study the novel from the archetypal theory with the aim of making readers have a clear mind of how Charlotte uses the archetype in the Bible to mould the characters in the creation of the novel, the functions of the biblical factors in the whole novel and how the writing techniques reflect the author’s creation viewpoints. Undoubtedly, all the questions deserve a deep study.By answering the above-mentioned questions, we can not only interpret this novel deeply and intensively, but also study the writer completely and analyze the relationship between the Bible and the novel thoroughly so as to comprehend the novel’s rich religious implications and profound social and historical significance.