"Sympathy" in Jane Eyre

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë dramatizes an eighteenth-century understanding of sympathy as Jane and Rochester struggle to unite. This paper considers two important results of empiricism that inform this struggle. The first is the abolitionists' use of the language of sympathy, which complicates our understanding of how Brontë uses race and class. The second is the moral-philosophical void left by empiricism and, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, left unresolved by Enlightenment moral philosophy. By the novel's conclusion, sympathy fails to erase the borders of race and class and to replace orthodox religious faith. Jane Eyre illustrates the Enlightenment's failure on the individual level, and Jane creates a wholly personal moral and religious system.