Although unrelated, the flaming candles in the recent Jane Eyre movie called to mind “The Tiger,” the poem by William Blake who wrote “Tiger, tiger burning bright etc.”
The flaming candles on display in the movie based on the novel by Charlotte Bronte may suggest a new poem i.e. “Candle, candle burning bright.”
To the viewer the candles looked more fiery than normal. Earlier they burned only drapery in the living room. Later they destroyed a substantial part of the Rochester mansion. Eventually he emerges alive but blind to spend his final days pampered by Jane’s love.
Both works employ fire. “Tiger” is a work of just six stanzas. Bronte uses fire twice in her noteworthy novel to start and grow a relationship with the older Mr. Rochester. According to a critic, Bronte shocked her contemporaries by depicting women loving instead of being loved as the Victorian tradition demanded. That love had been passive rather than assertive.
Despite the first paragraph there is as tenuous connection between Blake and Bronte. Both lived the same eleven years on earth. Bronte was born in 1816 and Blake died in 1827.
