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Scorching flames, conflagration, burning. The imagery of fire has long been linked to power and passion. Fire can enact complete obliteration, and yet can also forge a new beginning where only scattered ashes of the past remain. The symbolic motif of fire figures prominently in many works of great literature, including Charlotte Bronte’s canonical Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s revised Wide Sargasso Sea. Fire actually functions conversely in these two novels, representing creation in Jane Eyre and symbolizing destruction in Wide Sargasso Sea. In this paper, I will analyze the fire set in Mr. Rochester’s bed in Jane Eyre and the burning of Coulibri in Wide Sargasso Sea, two key scenes centered schematically around the framework of fire. Despite serving seemingly opposing metaphorical capacities, both of these moments reveal key symbolic themes central to their respective plots. Jane’s rescue of Rochester from his flaming bed contrasts supernatural, evil forces with the holy will of God, and highlights an interpretation of Jane as the sacred rescuer of Rochester from his tainted past. Rochester first views Jane as an elf, an otherworldly creature, represented here when his first response to her presence is to call her “witch, sorceress” (Bronte, 169). Yet, Jane is not the witch he first imagines, as she, herself, has earlier commented on an evil presence in describing “a demoniac laugh,” an “unnatural sound,” and questions if Grace Poole, who she suspects to be the perpetrator of the fire, is “possessed with a devil” (Bronte, 168). Mr. Rochester soon realizes, however, that Jane is not the embodiment of the evil source who has “plotted to drown” him. Rather, she represents a higher, more holy influence that essentially rescues him from the demonic influence of his first wife, who has tried to murder him through the use of fire, an image intrinsically tied to devils. However, the fire only succeeds in symbolically killing any ties to Rochester’s past with her, allowing Jane to be seen as the role of a sacred savior. Bronte casts Jane’s heroic act in a highly religious light, describing how she extinguishes the fire and “baptized the couch” with “God’s aid,” (Bronte, 168), and later having Jane implore Rochester to arise from bed "in Heaven’s name” (Bronte, 169). Through the fire and rescue, Rochester realizes that Jane is, in reality, his “cherished preserver,” (Bronte, 171) rather than an unnatural creature.
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