The undertow of Jane Eyre is the prising apart of, and escape from, close-set bars: intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social, the lot. Freedom to think, feel, speak and love.
See also ‘spike-guarded walls’ and a compelling quotation from the same book on ensnaring nets.
‘I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.’
Source: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London: Bounty Books, 2012 (1847)), p. 179
