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An idolatrous imagination? Biblical theology and romanticism in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.(Critical essay)

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From: Christianity and Literature
Date: 20060922
Author:Searle, Alison

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte explores from a biblical perspective the ways in which imagination is involved in idolatrous desire and eschatological anticipation. The novel "invokes imagination.... [It] is informed by the energies of high romanticism, by its visions of quest, of conquest, of "incident, life, fire, feeling"--of the aspiring ego, of creative vigour, and of restless desire" (1) (Glen, Charlotte Bronte 235). This is countered by a critique of the potential excesses of such a "high" Romantic imagination, shaped by Evangelical theology, which contested the idolatrous ...