ind heruncle, but Jane needed to leave her old life behind.Jane is seeking a return to the womb of mother nature: "I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose." We see how she seeks protection as shesearches for a resting place: "I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that." In fact, the entire countryside around Whitecross is a sort of encompassing womb: "a north-midland shire . . . ridged with mountain: this I see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet."It is the moon, part of nature, that sends Jane away from Thornfield. Jane narrates: "birds were faithful to their mates." Seeing herself as unfaithful, Jane is seeking an existence in nature where everything is simpler. Bront was surely not aware of the large number of species of bird that practice polygamy. While this fact is intrinsically wholly irrelevant to the novel, it makes one ponder whether nature is really so simple and perfect.The concept of nature in "Jane Eyre" is reminiscent of Hegel's view of the world: the instantiation of God. "The Lord is My Rock" is a popular Christian saying. A rock implies a sense of strength, ofsupport. Yet a rock is also cold, inflexible, and unfeeling. The second definition listed above for "nature" mentions a thing's "essential qualities," and this very definition implies a sense ofinflexibility. Jane's granite crag protects her without caring; the wild cattle that she fears are also part of nature. The hard strength of a rock is the very thing that makes it inflexible. Similarly, theprecipitation that makes Jane happy as she leaves ...
