Defining the Relationship Between Passion and Reason
When it comes to life there are things people do because it is their passion, they fall in love with that thing, embrace it and seek to help it grow. There are strong feelings for that thing. On the other hand there is reason. Things people do for reason aren’t necessarily things they want to do but they do it anyways, it is what your logic and brain tell them, they should do. Reason often keeps passion in check, but sometimes passion overrides reason for better or for worse. Depending on the person their passion or their reason could be stronger, that person's will has a big part to do with it. There are many aspects to reason and passion and people need both to not only have an interesting life but a successful one too.
Passion is an interesting term. What is passion, and why is it so powerful? What makes passion so captivating to the point that people will go to the point of doing something they would never have done otherwise? It is because of emotions. Emotions are something people all have, or at least, almost everybody has. It gives us purpose in this life and may lead us if one lets it. People become passionate about something when something happens that causes strong emotions. Sometimes the emotion can be good and can help us accomplish something that person wants, for example in Jane Eyre, Jane falls in love with Edward Rochester, her employer and with the snarky remarks and the flirting it ends up marrying him and living the quote unquote, happily ever after. On the other hand it can also get us into trouble, another example from Jane Eyre is when Jane is sent to a boarding school, because she is such a passionate and fiery individual in her younger years she got in trouble alot for miss behaving and ends up not having a lot of friends. In fact it says, “a passion of resentment fomented now within me”. She becomes very passionate at a young age of hating her Aunt Reed and school master Mr. Brocklehurst because of how they treat her. She is very passionate as a child and not much reason and that gets her into situations that were often hard. She does learn to control it though while she is in school through her one and only friend Helen.
Helen is a girl from Scotland and the opposite of Jane, she is very calm, patient, and very religious. She is the reason in Jane’s early life, and much of her comfort in the hard day at school. Helen is her shoulder to cry on and her only true friend. When a disease, tuberculosis, goes through the school it goes around killing a lot of the girls that Jane hates and because of Jane’s strong character and charisma she doesn’t catch the sickness, but as the disease is ending Helen catches the disease and dies. Her death was all for not though, because she left a lasting impact on Jane and calms some of the passion and gives her some more reason.
When Jane finally leaves the boarding school and advertises for being a private teacher she ends up going to a place called Thornfield where she teaches Adele; Mr. Rochester's ward. In this point in her life she starts very cold and where reason is in complete control but her passion soon awakens when she meets Mr. Rochester. Even though they are in different social classes she can’t help but fall in love with Mr. Rochester and begins to lose some of her reason. She receives a letter saying that her aunt is on her deathbed and decides to go visit her. She finds out that she has another uncle that is very rich and wants to give Jane his inheritance but her aunt wrote to him saying that she is dead. Jane decides to write to him and after her aunt passes she goes back to Thornfield and tries to keep her reason and not let passion rule over her. She says, “I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place”. Her reason had to keep her in reality because she didn’t want to be accidentally hurt if something happened when she gets back to Thornfield. She ends up almost marrying Mr. Rochester but he already has a wife. So she is then left with the choice of staying and being a sinner and living with Mr. Rochester or leaving Thornfield hall. Her passion and reason have a big battle here with all of her emotions but in the end reason comes out on top and she decides to leave Thornfield for good. For a while there she is homeless and a beggar, but then she finds another place to teach school in a remote town where she meets this man St. John asks Jane to marry him and go on a mission with him to Africa. She doesn’t really like him so she leaves him and decides to go back to Mr. Rochester. She finds out that Thornfield hall is burned down and that his wife died so she goes to his other house and after finding out that he is blind and lost a hand they get married and live “happily ever after”.
Reason and passion make life interesting, eventful, and successful too. Passion and reason balance each other out and that it can be very emotional. Love is a big thing in both reason and passion and can infunceit a lot. There are many instances where passion and reason can be for the better or for the worse depending on which one someone choose. The logic of reason can rule over passion, but also the persuasion of passion can take over reason. So in the end people need both reason and passion to be successful in life.
