Helen Burns

• She lives in a time of brutality but has a spirit of endurance and forgiveness - Helen Burns
• ‘Helen Burns’

  • Helen of Troy: the most beautiful women on earth - shows how Helen burns is beautiful, not necessarily physically, but she has a beautiful pure soul
  • “Burns” - She leaves a permanent mark on Jane
• ‘She lives in calm, looking to the end’
• Helen is the first person to tell Jane that she is going to heaven not hell
• Helen Burns is a symbol or pure, feminine Christianity
• Helen Burns has a forgiveful nature, she has a philosophy of stoicism and endures life, waiting to meet God in heaven
• Jane admires Helen but cannot be like her - whilst Helen is waiting for death to be happy, Jane wants to find joy in life
• ‘It was Rasselas’ - Helen is reading a book about enduring the pain of life
• ‘Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what is your fate to be beared’
• ‘I can resign my immortal part to him without any misgiving’
• ‘God is my father, god is my friend: I love him; I believe he loves me’
• ‘not a tear rose to Burns’ eye’

  • Endurance and stoicism
• ‘The bible bids us return good for evil’
• ‘helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eye’
• ‘The fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day’