Charlotte Bronte, Religious Romantic

Built on a religiously Romantic aesthetic, Charlotte Bronte\u27s works could not be easily understood by the evangelical movements within Victorian society and were, therefore, mistakenly censored as anti-Christian. However, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bronte\u27s world view stresses the interconnectedness of the religious and the Romantic spirits; thus, through nature, we learn to imagine what is unseen; through the imagination, we learn to think of others\u27 feelings; and through love, we learn to feel God\u27s unseen love for us. Bronte sought her inspiration in nature because she felt it could elevate the feelings and lead one to what she called Truth, a higher understanding of reality and God. The process of creation can also lead one to God as the imagination transforms inspiration and intuition into art and, through its medium, leads others to Truth. The imagination, though an important faculty, is not as important as loving well. The experience of loving intensifies our understanding of ourselves and of others; the experience of loving well leads us to transcend the bounds of human love and experience the purity of God\u27s love. Bronte\u27s novels embrace her religiously Romantic philosophy. The main characters are looking to love and be loved, and their search for kinship leads them to reflect on the beauty of nature, the importance of the imagination, and the place of God in their lives. Although these characters reject the tenets of orthodoxy in favor of a natural religion based upon intuitively derived doctrines, they, like Jane Eyre, are not anti-Christian