Many conflicts appear throughout Jane Eyre. The first conflicts are those with her aunt and cousins, as they look down on her, but she struggles to maintain her self-worth. The same struggle appears while she is at school. Jane is in conflict with the teachers/administration of the school because her aunt made her out to be a liar. Later in the story, she is in conflict, though not openly at first, with Grace Poole whom she believes to be evil or harmful in someway. She is also in conflict with Mrs. Fairfax when Jane tells her that she and Mr. Rochester are engaged; the older woman thinks it is unwise and not right. Nearer the end, she is in conflict with St. John Rivers as he wishes her to marry him and go to be a missionary.
The conflicts Jane has with other people are important to the story, but not as important as those she experiences within herself. These conflicts are conflicts of her self-image versus what people think she is, such as when she is accused of being a liar before the entire school and made to stand on a chair with a sign around her neck. The two biggest conflicts she has within herself, however, have to do with Mr. Rochester. The first occurs the day of the wedding after she has met his wife. She knows that he does not love the deranged woman, but she struggles with the love she has for Mr. Rochester and the moral responsibility she has to herself and God. The second big conflict is whether she should accept that Mr. Rochester is married and marry St. John Rivers taking up his work as a missionary, or tell him she will not marry him and spend her days with the memory of Mr. Rochester. In these conflicts, she must decide whether someone else's picture of right is right for her.
Other characters also face conflict. Mr. Rochester faces the conflict between his love for Jane and his knowledge that he is married. St. John Rivers faces conflict between his love for Rosamond Oliver and his perceived calling from God to be a missionary. These conflicts, like the inner conflicts Jane experiences, stem from self-image and moral duty.
There are numerous conflicts in Jane Eyre. One of the most important is the conflict between desire and morality. It is a conflict which affects both Jane and Rochester, albeit in different ways. In relation to Jane, she is torn between her love for Rochester and the dictates of her values, which correspond closely to society's prevailing moral code. She wants to be with Rochester very badly; she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. But she will not be his concubine; she will not live in sin with a married man, no matter how much she loves him and no matter how unhappy Rochester's sham marriage has become.
Rochester is also affected by this conflict, but his approach to resolving it is the exact opposite of Jane's. He is trapped in a failing marriage to a woman who is criminally insane. As far as he is concerned, he has every right to be happy, irrespective of what others might think. Love is so much more important to him than social conventions. Despite his stern countenance, Mr. Rochester is a man who follows his heart, and his heart tells him unequivocally that Jane is the love of his life.
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