Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, ed. Margaret Smith, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. This is the edition I have used. It has an excellent introduction and notes by Juliette Atkinson. The novel was first published in three volumes. Margaret Smith’s Oxford World’s Classics edition numbers the chapters according to their place in each volume. Volume I has chapters 1-15, Volume II has chapters 1-11, and Volume III chapters 1-12. I have numbered the chapters in the same way.
Gateshead Hall, Vol. I, chapters 1-4. Pages 1-3
Lowood Institution Volume I Chapters 5-10
Thornfield Hall Volume I Chapter 11-Volume III Chapter 1
The Journey to Morton and Life at Marsh End House III.2 – III.9
Introduction
Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, presents itself as the autobiography of Jane Eyre - though Jane tells the reader that it is not a “regular autobiography” (p.81). (The Reader will be directly addressed thirty seven times in Jane Eyre.)She begins her story with an account of a particular “drear November day” when she was ten years old and living at Gateshead Hall. She is an orphan. Her mother, Mary Reed, had married a Rev. Eyre, a poor clergyman. The Reed family, who were wealthy, disapproved of this marriage but Mary, despite losing the financial benefits of being a Reed, nonetheless, married the Rev Eyre. The couple were idealistic. The Rev Eyre’s parish was in a “large manufacturing town” and whilst he was visiting the poor he caught typhus. His wife then caught the infection, and both died within a month of each other. They had been married for a year. Baby Jane was adopted by her mother’s brother who is referred to as Uncle Reed. He is kind and wants to care for Jane but, after his death, Jane is cruelly treated by Uncle Reed’s wife, Mrs Reed, and by her children, Eliza, John and Georgiana. Mrs Reed’s household also includes servants called Abbot and Bessie Lee. At times, Bessie can be sympathetic and kindly; Abbot, having picked up Mrs Reed’s animosity towards Jane, treats Jane harshly.
Gateshead Hall
Volume I Chapters 1-4
1.1
After questioning her Aunt’s criticisms of her general attitude, Jane has been excluded from the rest of the family and the comforts of the warm drawing room – it is a cold November day. She retreats to an adjoining breakfast room and, taking a book from the bookcase, sits on the window seat, draws a red curtain across and begins to leaf through Bewick’s History of British Birds. In its illustrations of the haunts of arctic and sub-arctic sea-fowl, Jane finds parallels with the “storm-beat shrub” and “ceaseless rain” that she can see through the window. Jane emphasises Bewick’s depictions of “bleak shores”, “folorn regions”, “death-white realms”. She focuses on the illustrations of land and seascapes that have a mysterious, haunting, eerie quality: a rock standing alone in a sea of billow and spray; a broken boat on a desolate coast; a “cold and ghostly moon glancing at …a wreck just sinking”; a moonlit, solitary churchyard; becalmed ships which Jane sees as “marine phantoms”, a fiend “pinning down a thief’s pack”. Jane links these scenes to the tales that Bessie narrated on winter evenings. Tales of “love and adventure” taken from “old fairy tales and older ballads”.
Jane’s cousin John Reed enters, followed by his sisters Georgina and Eliza. He orders Jane to come out from behind the curtain. Seated in an armchair he orders Jane to stand before him and strikes her. He demands to see the book she has been reading, tells her that she has no right to read his family’s books and, once it is in his hands, hurls it at her. It hits her and knocks her head against the door which cuts her. Extreme anger replaces her fear of John. She calls him a tyrant. He attacks her but she fights back in such a frenzied way that he is overcome and bellows out for help. Bessie and her maid, Abbot, enter and part them. Jane is seen as the attacker, John as the victim. Jane hears either Bessie or Abbot, exclaim, “What a fury to fly at Master John” and “Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!” Mrs Reed then enters and orders Jane to be locked up in the red-room.
1.2
Bessie and Abbot haul the wildly struggling Jane upstairs to the ‘red-room’. This is the bedroom in which Mr Reed died nine years ago. The carpet and various soft furnishings of the room are all red. Jane continues her struggles before deciding to stop. Shocked at her violent outbreak, Bessie and Abbot scold her for disrespecting Mrs Reed. They tell Jane that she depends on Mrs. Reed's generosity. Without it, she would have to go to the poor house. Following Mrs Reed’s instructions, they lock Jane in the red-room.
As she comes back from checking that the door is indeed locked, Jane catches sight of her reflection in a “great looking-glass”. She refers to the mirror as a “visionary hollow” in which all looks “colder and darker” than in reality. Her own reflection becomes a “strange little figure”, like one of the “tiny phantoms, half fairy”, that appeared in Bessie’s evening stories. These tiny phantoms would come out of “lone, ferny dells in moors” and appear before “belated travellers”. Jane then broods on the injustice of Gateshead Hall, where she is always being insulted and punished while the Reed children enjoy every privilege. Just as the mirror image suggested two Janes, the pale, mistreated child before the mirror and the fairy-like being ‘in’ the mirror, so Jane reflects on how her sense of injustice has roused her into the tumultuous insurrection of a revolting slave before, going “cold as a stone”, she returns to her “habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt” and “folorn depression”. She knows that the kindly Mr. Reed would never have treated her so badly. Mr. Reed brought her to Gateshead, and it was his dying wish that his wife would raise Jane like one of her own children.
Thinking of how Mr Reed would correct these injustices, leads Jane to think about the dead and how, when wronged, they can arise to seek revenge. Suddenly, Jane is overwhelmed with a sense of Mr. Reed’s presence in the room. Convinced she sees his ghost, Jane screams in terror. The servants open the door, but Mrs Reed refuses to believe Jane or to let her out. Locked back into the red-room again, Jane faints.
1.3
Jane wakes up in the nursery, sympathetically cared for by Bessie. The local apothecary, Mr. Lloyd, has been sent for and he is by Jane’s bedside. He decides that Jane is not seriously ill but instructs Bessie to make sure that Jane is not disturbed during the night. He leaves, saying that he will call again tomorrow. Jane is upset by his departure. His sympathetic male presence was such that she “felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow.” With his departure, she feels “inexpressibile sadness”. This childhood need for a sheltering male presence, a need that is not fulfilled during her childhood, plays an important part in her psychological development.
Bessie asks another servant, Sarah, to sleep with her as she is worried that Jane might die. Bessie and Sarah sleep in the nearby housemaid’s apartment and as they are settling down to sleep, Jane picks up snatches of their conversation. One of them is telling a ghost story involving, loud raps on a chamber door, a light in a church-yard over a grave and someone dressed in white with a ”great black dog” The teller must be Bessie since we know she often told Jane stories concerning phantoms coming out of “lone ferny dells in moors” and appearing before belated travellers. We will later identify the “great black dog” as the supernatural Gytrash that makes an ‘appearance’ later in Jane’s story.
On the following day, Jane is up and dressed, though sitting by the fire wrapped in a shawl. Bessie looks after her, offering her a pastry and providing her with a book of Jane’s choice. Jane chooses Gulliver’s Travels, a favourite of Jane’s which she regards as a story of facts and, as such, more interesting than fairy tales. Jane had decided that, after looking for elves and not finding them, that they had all “gone out of England to some savage country”. This supposed discovery of the departure of ‘the little people’ is ironic since Jane has already seen her image in the red room’s mirror as akin to the “tiny phantoms, half fairy” of Bessie’s tales. Furthermore, as we will later discover, Mr Rochester sees Jane as being of the fairy kind. As Bessie works she sings a sad ballad which includes in its refrain a line about a “poor orphan child”. These references to fairies, to the Gytrash, to a “poor orphan child” will in different ways recur in a way similar to ‘leitmotifs’, recurring melodic phrases in music, as Jane’s story develops.
When Mr Lloyd returns as he promised, his sympathetic questioning of Jane shows that he is concerning himself with her overall welfare, not just the physical crisis that led to him being called out. Bessie hovers about as Jane is questioned. She realises that Jane’s answers could be critical of Mrs Reed and she interposes every so often in ways that veil the reality of Jane’s treatment. However, when a bell calls on Bessie to go to the dining room, Mr Lloyd is able to hear more about Jane’s unhappiness. Her answers lead him to think that a change from Gateshead Hall would be good for Jane. He asks her if she would like to go to school. Jane eventually decides that she would like to go to school. Given the arrangements Mrs Reed later makes for Jane to go to school, Jane concludes that, as Mr Lloyd left after his consultation, he spoke to Mrs Reed and advised that going to school would benefit Jane.
Some days later, Jane overhears Bessie telling Abbott the story of Jane's family - see the details in the above Introduction. This is the first time that she has heard these details about her parents.
1.4
For over two months – November to mid-January – Jane anxiously waits for her schooling to start. During this time, which includes the Christmas festivities, she suffers further exclusions from the Reed family circle. Jane speaks warmly of Bessie Lee despite her “hasty temper” and “indifferent ideas of principle and justice”. On the 15th January, a Mr Brocklehurst arrives at Gateshead, having been sent for by Mrs Reed. He is the treasurer and manager of Lowood school and has come to arrange for Jane to become a pupil. Jane is brought into the breakfast room and is made to stand before Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst. Having been warned by Mrs Reed that Jane is not a good child, Mr Brocklehurst warns her that naughty children go to Hell. Mrs Reed says that Jane’s particular fault is a tendency to deceit. This prompts Mr Brocklehurst to further severe warnings about the “lake burning with fire and brimstone” that awaits liars and he assures Mrs Reed that Miss Temple and the teachers will be told that Jane, as a deceitful child, needs to be carefully watched. He also describes how the strict regime at Lowood is designed to mortify pride and instil humility.
After Mr Brocklehurst leaves, Jane is so hurt by Mrs Reed’s false accusation that she can't stop herself from angrily exclaiming that her aunt makes her sick and is a cruel person. Georgina is the liar, not Jane, and the one person she hates more than Mrs Reed is her son, John. As Jane launches into her tirade of condemnation, she feels herself “Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement”. Mrs Reed is frightened, unable to retaliate. Jane has a sense of freedom, of triumph. Mrs Reed tries to be conciliatory. She says that Jane must “allow” that she is “passionate”. She calls her “a dear” and bids her to return to the nursery and lie down for a while. However, it is Mrs Reed who leaves the room muttering about sending Jane to school “soon”. Afterwards, Jane feels a thrilling mix of victory and fear at her uncontrolled passions.
The Reeds continue to shun Jane during her remaining time at Gateshead. Yet Jane manages to develop a friendship with Bessie. Bessie notices that Jane has a new way of talking, one that can deliver sharp, frank replies. Bessie treats Jane to stories and tells Jane she is fonder of her than “of all the others”.
Lowood Institution
Volume I Chapters 5-10
1.5
Four days later, at 6:00 am on a cold January morning (the 19th), Jane leaves Gateshead. Lowood is fifty miles away and Jane arrives there in the evening. She is tired and hungry and trying to come to terms with her new environment. She is impressed by a tall dignified lady (Miss Temple, the school superintendent) who greets her and talks to her in a sympathetic manner. Lowood Institution is a charity school for orphan girls, ranging in age, and all wearing drab, rough uniforms.
On her first day, Jane witnesses the strictly regimented routine. Teachers order the girls around in formation. Breakfast consists of inedible burnt porridge. The pupils find it disgusting and even the teachers recognise how bad it is. Later in the day, Miss Temple organises a compensatory meal of bread and cheese. Miss Temple also teaches geography and music.
After lunch the pupils must go out into the garden. There Jane begins a conversation with a solitary girl who is reading a book called ‘Rasselas’. Jane thinks she is “thirteen or upwards”. This girl, in response to Jane’s questions, informs her of some of the basic facts about the school and the teachers. She speaks admiringly of Miss Temple. She says that she is the best. She is above the others and “knows far more than they do.” The other teachers are Miss Smith, Miss Scatcherd (history and grammar) and Madame Pierrot (French). Jane is warned that Miss Scatcherd is “hasty” and that she should “take care not to offend her”.
That afternoon, Jane notices that the girl she was talking to is dismissed from Miss Scatcherd’s class and, as a punishment, made to stand in the middle of the large school room. Jane is struck by how composed the girl is despite being singled out in this way. Jane thinks that the girl is deep in some form of inner contemplation which takes her away from her immediate situation. The next day, Jane will discover that this girl is Helen Burns.
1.6
On Jane’s second day at the school, she wakes up shivering. The pupils are unable to wash as the water in the pitchers is frozen. Breakfast consists of a small serving of porridge. In classes, Jane finds them long and difficult. She is not used to moving from task to task. Whilst she is sewing she has a chance to listen to proceedings in Miss Scatcherd’s history class. The subject is Charles I and Jane notices Helen Burns making intelligent and well-informed replies to Miss Scatcherd. However, she receives no praise and Miss Scatcherd frequently draws attention in a severely critical way to trivial aspects of Helen’s appearance and bearing. These criticisms finally lead to Miss Scatcherd using corporal punishment in a sadistic way. Helen seems to accept this treatment with calm passivity. Jane is amazed that Helen doesn't flinch or cry.
Later, Jane tells Helen how she should furiously resist such unjust treatment. This, as we now recognise, is the passionate Jane speaking. Helen explains to Jane her Christian philosophy of turning the other cheek, of patient endurance and of returning good for evil. She is also very self-critical and thinks that Miss Scatcherd is right to correct her. She draws consolation from her belief in eternal life, after her death. Helen believes in ’universal salvation’, that is, a belief that God will draw all souls into Heaven. This is in marked contrast to Mr Brocklehurst and, as we will see later, to St. John Rivers, two clergymen who put a lost of emphasis on the punishments of Hell.
1.7
Conditions at Lowood remain harsh particularly through the winter months with little food and inadequate clothing. Every Sunday the pupils are marched the two miles to Brocklebridge church where they must remain for both the morning and the afternoon service. Sunday evening brings what Jane calls a “hebdomadal treat” (hebdomadal means weekly) which consists of a whole rather than a half-slice of bread with the addition of a “scrape of butter”. The rest of the evening, however, is taken up with learning by heart the Catechism, reading the New Testament and listening to a “long sermon".
One day, three weeks into Jane’s first term Mr Brocklehurst visits Lowood with his rich, well-dressed wife and two daughters. He sits beside Miss Temple and makes various criticisms of the the way the school is being run. He thinks that the pupils are being treated softly. They need to be made to feel physical privations as a way of training their souls. On seeing a girl's curly red hair, he demands that all the girls should have their hair far more severely cut – he objects to wearing hair in plaits.
Jane is terrified that Mr Brocklehurst will remember his promise to Mrs Reed to tell all the teachers that Jane is a liar. Jane is so nervous that she accidentally drops her slate which draws Mr Brocklehurst’s attention to her. Mr. Brocklehurst, recognising her as the new girl he had met at Gateshead Hall, makes her stand on a high stool in front of everyone and, having praised Jane’s “pious and charitable” benefactress (Mrs Reed), says that Jane is an agent of the Evil One (the devil), denounces her as a liar, and, just before leaving, tells all the students and teachers to avoid her.
Jane feels intense shame at being exposed in this way. However, Helen Burns contrives a need to speak to Miss Smith and so leaves her place and walks past Jane. As she does so, she smiles at Jane and Jane draws strength from this expression of sympathy. She also reflects on the short-sighted pettiness of Miss Scatcherd who, an hour before Helen’s kindness to Jane, had made Helen wear ‘the untidy badge’ and condemned her to a dinner of bread and water.
1.8
After school is dismissed that evening, thinking that she is hated by everyone, Jane collapses into tears. Helen Burns reassures Jane that she is pitied, not hated, by her peers. Helen also promises that even if the whole world despised her, Jane could still find friendship and protecting love in her Christian faith.
Miss Temple, seeing Jane in distress and Helen comforting her, brings the two girls to her office and treats them to tea and cake. Jane tells Miss Temple that she is not a liar, and relates her life story, trying hard to be moderate and soften her account though she finds that she can’t do so when narrating the red room incident. Jane mentions the kindly Mr Lloyd. Miss Temple says she knows something of him and will write to him to confirm Jane’s story. Ms. Temple and Helen talk of learned subjects, and Jane watches them in awe. To Jane, they seem radiant with intelligence.
When the girls retire to the bedroom they find Miss Scatcherd examining the girls’ chests of drawers. Finding Helen’s untidy, she tells her off and says she will be punished tomorrow. The next day, Miss Scatcherd places a card around Helen’s forehead with the word ‘Slattern’ written on it in large letters. She had to wear this all day. Helen bore it patiently but, at the end of the day, Miss Scatcherd being off duty, Jane runs to Helen and tears off the Slattern card and throws it into the fire (the passionate Jane again!). Helen’s resignation had intensified the “fury” that had been burning away inside Jane all day.
Mr. Lloyd soon replies to Miss Temple’s letter. His reply confirms Jane’s account. Miss Temple announces in front of the whole school that Jane is innocent. Relieved of what was, for her, a “grievous load”, Jane returns to her studies with fresh enthusiasm. She is promoted to a higher class and begins lessons in French and drawing. She now feels that she would not exchange the privations of Lowood for the “daily luxuries” of Gateshead Hall.
1.9
Spring brings better weather and Jane takes great pleasure in the spring flowers. As a result of a new liberty to explore beyond the walls of Lowood, she discovers and delights in the surrounding landscape of “noble summits”, a valley (“a great hill-hollow”) and a “bright beck”. She contrasts the landscape in spring with her experience of it during winter. She writes of an ”iron sky”, of “mists chill as death” and of the power of the winter beck which was a “torrent, turbid and curbless” which “tore asunder the wood” and “sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet”. This roused, vigorous language with its emphasis on the powers in nature, on its wildness, is in marked contrast to the relatively tame, conventional language (“noble” and “pretty”) with which she describes the attractive sights of spring. The wintry beck under an iron sky has affinities with the language of the ”multiplied rigors of extreme cold” that Jane uses in the descriptions of the landscapes in Bewick’s History of British Birds.
Jane goes on to explain that her liberty to enjoy the country beyond the walls of Lowood was the result of the typhus epidemic that began to affect the school. The teachers and staff were too preoccupied with the epidemic to maintain the strict regime and the healthy girls could enjoy more freedom. Further benefits followed. Mr Brocklehurst, fearing the infection, kept away from the school and a change in the kitchen staff led to a less meagre diet. However, at one time, over half of the girls were seriously ill. A significant number of them died.
Apart from enjoying nature Jane also developed a friendship with Mary Ann Wilson. Jane appreciates this friendship whilst realising that Mary, unlike Helen Burns, is a relatively ordinary girl and that their friendship has its limits. Jane is unable to enjoy Helen’s company because she is ill. Helen’s illness is consumption (tuberculosis) and so she is kept apart from the typhus patients. One evening Jane questions a nurse and discovers that Helen is close to death. She also discovers that Helen is in Miss Temple’s room. She is told that she can not go to see her. A little before midnight, whilst the rest of the girls are sleeping, Jane gets up and silently makes her way to Miss Temple’s room. Helen is there in bed, conscious but obviously close to death. There is a nurse in the room, but she is sleeping and Jane joins Helen in bed. Helen expresses her faith that she is on her way to join God, and she faces death very calmly. Jane finds it hard to share Helen’s faith: she questions the existence of God (“Where is God? What is God?”) but Helen reassures her of the “region of happiness” that awaits all souls. The girls snuggle up together and kiss each other before falling asleep.
Next morning, when Jane wakes up she finds that she is being carried down to the girls dormitory by the nurse. A day or two after she discovers that Miss Temple had returned to her room at dawn – she had been looking after the typhus patients – and had found Jane sleeping in the bed with Helen, though Helen was now dead.
Jane ends this chapter by saying that Helen’s grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard and that there is now, to mark the spot, a gravestone inscribed with Helen’s name and the Latin word, Resurgam, which means ‘I shall rise again’.
1.10
Jane begins this chapter with a disclaimer: her work is not a “regular autobiography”. She will leave out many details and only recall and record matters which possess, as she understates it, “some degree of interest”.
The typhus epidemic and deaths draw public attention to the school. Inquiries revealed its many inadequacies. Poor food, sparse clothing and very poor kitchen hygiene created the conditions for typhus to spread. Influential local people brought about a change in the school’s regulations. Mr Brocklehurst was “mortified” but, given his position in the local social hierarchy, remained as treasurer. School policies were to be determined by a humane committee – or as Jane puts it in her formal style, by “gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds”. The change even led to the building of new school premises.
True to her stated intentions as autobiographer, she outlines in brief summary the next eight years of life at Lowood. She praises the new school regime under which she flourished for six years before becoming a teacher for two years. However, everything changes when Miss Temple leaves to be married and to live in a “distant county”. For Jane, Miss Temple was an essential part of Lowood. Under Miss Temple’s influence she had “More harmonious thoughts” and “better regulated feelings”. The passionate Jane seen at Gateshead and in her resistance to Helen Burn’s Christian passivity, has been disciplined and subdued. With Miss Temple’s departure, the “reason for tranquillity was no more”. “Rules and systems” begin to give way to a “varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements” that await those with the courage “to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils”. Jane illustrates this aspiration in terms of a landscape. One afternoon, looking out of her window, her “eye” passed over the immediate environment to focus on the remote “blue peaks”. Lowood and its surroundings now seemed “prison ground”. She longs to follow the road that travels through and beyond the distant peaks into the world of experience with its perils.
However, Jane decides that such big aspirations must give way to more practical routes. She settles upon the necessity of a “new servitude” and places an advert in a newspaper offering her services as a governess. A week later, she receives a reply from a Mrs Fairfax of Thornfield near Millcote. A post teaching a little girl under ten years of age needs to be filled. The salary is thirty pounds per annum. Jane takes it that her employer is Mrs Fairfax and the name makes Jane think of a respectable elderly lady whose household will be safe and well regulated. She accepts the post and goes through the practical arrangements involving in handing in her notice and forwarding to Mrs Fairfax a “testimonial of character and conduct”. A part of this process involves informing Mrs Reed, by letter, of Jane’s intention to leave Lowood.
All is prepared for Jane to leave when on the very day before her departure Bessie, the maid from Gateshead, calls to see Jane. Bessie is now married to Robert Leaven, the Gateshead coachman, and she has a three year old son. Jane is delighted to see her. From the letter informing Mrs Reed of Jane’s resignation from her teaching post, Bessie has discovered that Jane is leaving Lowood. Thinking that Jane might move to somewhere out of reach, Bessie decided to visit her. Jane comments on Bessie’s Looks: she is “very good looking”. This comment on looks is not an isolated example. It can be aligned with the comments on the handsome/good looking list of characters on the one hand and the plain (“plain Jane”), ugly characters on the other. On the whole, the good looking lack the qualities of character possessed by the plain and ugly though, as we will see, the exceptionally handsome St John Rivers is something of an exception. Bessie comments on Jane’s genteel, lady-like appearance though it is clear that she thinks the appearance of the grown-up Jane is no improvement on the child that, as Bessie frankly says, lacked beauty. However, she wants to see if Jane has acquired ‘accomplishments. She discovers that Jane can play the piano, is an accomplished artist and can read and speak French. Bessie is impressed and says that Jane’s abilities far exceeds those of the Reed girls.
Bessie brings Jane up to date on the Reed children John was rejected from college and now lives a dissipated life spending a great deal of the Reed family money. Miss Georgina was widely admired when she went up to London. There was the possibility of marriage to a young lord. His family did not agree to the match but the couple planned to elope. Eliza found out and informed on Georgina and the marriage plan was foiled. The sisters now lead a cat and dog life together. Bessie also imparts a piece of information about a relative of Jane’s. Nearly seven years ago a gentleman, Bessie believes he was Jane’s father’s brother, called at Gateshead to see Jane. He was told that she was away at school “fifty miles off” and, since he could not stay any longer in England, he could not go to the school. This uncle was about to go on a voyage to Madeira where he was involved in the wine trade.
The next morning, Jane and Bessie meet up briefly before going their separate ways by coach: Bessie to Gateshead, Jane to Millcote.
Thornfield Hall
Volume I Chapter 11-Volume III Chapter 1
1.11
After a sixteen hour journey (the text should read four o’clock A.M. not P.M.) on a cold October day Jane arrives at the George Inn at Millcote (a far bigger place than Lowton, the nearest settlement to Lowood). After a disconcerting wait for someone from Thornfield Hall to pick her up, a man arrives to take her there. On arrival at Thornfield she is taken into a snug, small room with a cheerful fire and there she meets Mrs Fairfax, who is knitting. Jane finds her reassuringly ordinary with no airs and graces. She looks forward to having Jane as a companion. The other members of the household are John, the coachman and Leah his wife. Adele Varrens, the girl Jane is to teach, came to Thornfield, with her nurse, a month ago.
Mrs Fairfax leads Jane to her bedroom. As Jane describes the stairs and the long gallery of the first floor, the Hall takes on a distinctly Gothic character. A “chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery”. However, after the “eerie impression made by the wide hall”, Jane is pleased to find that her bedroom has a “livelier aspect”.
Waking the next day. Jane is pleased with the furnishings of her carpeted room. She takes care to dress neatly and simply in a “Quaker-like fashion” and feels that her careful, neat manner of dress will compensate for her “want of beauty”. During the course of the morning, she discovers a number of things. Thornfield Hall is a building of three stories, “not vast but considerable”. Battlements around the top gave it a “picturesque look.” There is a nearby village called Hay. Mrs Fairfax is not, as Jane thought, the owner of Thornfield, she is the housekeeper, the manager. The owner is a Mr Rochester who is often absent. Jane’s pupil is Mr Rochester’s ward. She is a girl of seven or eight years who was brought up in France and speaks French. She is looked after by her French nurse. She believes that her her mother is dead. Jane takes her into the library for her first morning of lessons. Jane summed her up as “sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply”.
That afternoon, Mrs Fairfax gives Jane a tour of the Hall. Jane is impressed by the “very pretty drawing room” with rich furnishings and ornaments. The third story (Brontë uses the ‘story’ spelling rather than ‘storey’) contains furniture that once belonged on the lower floors but had been moved into the third floor as fashion changed and it had been displaced by newer styles. Jane sees the third story as a “home of the past: a shrine of memory”. The Gothic atmosphere already noted surfaces again with descriptions of the third story and Jane’s reactions. Jane is disturbed by the thought of spending the night in the third story with, for example, its “hangings” with their “effigies of strange flowers and stranger birds” which would have looked especially strange “by the pallid gleam of moonlight”. Jane is taken on to the Hall’s flat roof from which Jane surveys the Hall’s grounds, the church near the Hall’s gates and the hills beyond. Access to the roof is via a narrow staircase from the third floor to the attics and then a ladder to a trapdoor opening on to the roof. As Jane descends the staircase from the attics to third floor, she lingers at the foot of the stairs. She sees that the stairs mark a point that divides the front from the back rooms of the third story. She looks along the “narrow, low and dim” passage leading to the back rooms. She adds to the Gothic atmospherics when she notes its “two rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle”. The Gothic ‘climax’ comes when Jane hears distinct “mirthless laughter”. At first the laughter is very low but becomes a “clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber, though it originated but in one”. Jane is sure which room it came from. Jane questions Mrs Fairfax about the laughter and is told that a servant called Grace is responsible. Jane adds to her description of the laughter with “the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard”. Had it not been daytime when “neither scene nor season favoured fear”, then the “curious cacchination” would have made her “superstitiously afraid”. Mrs Fairfax having called out, “Grace!”, Grace, the servant, duly emerges from one of the rooms with black doors. Jane sees a woman between thirty and forty with a “set square-made figure” and a “hard, plain face”. Jane feels that her workaday ordinariness is at odds with anything “romantic” or “ghostly”. Mrs Faifax reprimands her with ”Too much noise, Grace” and adds, “Remember directions”. Grace curtsies silently and goes back into the room.
Mrs Fairfax describes Grace as an assistant to Leah, the housemaid, before changing the subject to Jane’s first day with Adele.
1.12
Jane eases into the habits of life at Thornfield. Mrs Fairfax is kindly and placid. Jane judges her to be of “competent education and average intelligence”. Adele’s limitations are emphasised: she had “no great talents” … no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood”. However, under Jane’s tuition she has made reasonable progress. Both teacher and pupil are “content in each other’s society”. As has been obvious in a n0umber of ways, Jane is a talented person (think of her art) whose “peculiar development of feeling and taste” is exceptional. Neither Mrs Fairfax nor Adele can serve as kindred spirits. The other members of the household, John the coachman and his wife Leah, the housemaid together with Sophie the French nurse, are “decent people” but also offer little in the way of stimulating company. As a result, Jane is discontented and restless. She gains a degree of solace by walking along the corridor of the third story and allowing her imagination to take on a visionary quality. In particular she opens her “inward ear … to a tale that my imagination created and narrated continuously, quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling that I desired and had not in my actual existence.” She links her confined condition to the millions around the world whose lives are far more restricted than hers. She particularly singles out the condition of women who must stagnate if offered no opportunities beyond a servile domesticity.
As she walks up and down the third story’s corridor, Jane frequently hears the strange laughter which she has been led to believe comes from Grace Poole. Jane says when she first heard this laugh that it had “thrilled” her. She also refers to her “eccentric murmurs” that were “stranger than her laugh”. Yet whenever Jane sees Grace Poole taking basin, plate or tray down to the kitchen – and returning with a “pot of porter” – Jane is struck by her “hard-featured, staid” appearance whose uninteresting ordinariness seems so at odds with her strange laughter.
For Jane, the months of October to December pass in this humdrum fashion. However, “One afternoon in January”, is going to change everything. After Mrs Fairfax has written a letter, Jane offers to take it to be posted at Hay. On the way there, she stops to sit on a stile in a lane to enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of the cold but calm winter afternoon. She hears the sound of a horse approaching and the isolated spot makes her think of a North of England spirit called a Gytrash that could take the form of a horse, mule or large dog. Such spirits haunted solitary ways and a lone traveller could encounter a Gytrash. In fact, the “Gytrash” turns out to be a very big dog (a Newfoundland as we later learn) followed by a man on a big horse. Soon after he passes by Jane, his horse slips on the icy path and horse and rider fall. This, of course, is Mr Rochester. He is slightly injured and Jane helps him back on to his horse but before she does so, they have a brief conversation. He does not reveal that he is Mr Rochester and, with some of his questions, he even speaks as if he is not Mr Rochester before speaking as someone with some familiarity with Thornfield and the presence there of a new governess.
Of particular interest is Jane’s description of him before she offers to help him. She brings out his stocky build, his stern-featured dark face. She thinks he might be thirty-five. She feels “no fear of him and but little shyness”. She says that had he been “a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman” she would never have dared to speak and offer help. If he had been handsome, elegant and gallant and she would have known “instinctively” that such a person would not have any sympathy with anything in Jane nor would she have any sympathy with these qualities in a man. Indeed, she would shun such a person “as one would fire, lightning or anything else that is bright but antipathetic”. The positive side to this is that she does feel an instinctive sympathy with this man and, feeling no fear and little shyness, she is prepared to offer help. She helps him to his horse – he leans upon her shoulder as he limps to his horse – and he rides off. Although, at this point, Jane does not see it in this way, we can see the seeds of her love for him in this absence of fear, in her “sympathy” for this man.
Having posted the letter, she returns to Thornfield in the dark. Rather than go inside and resume the monotony of her life, she lingers outside and stands in appreciative awe as she looks up at the night sky. As so often occurs, Jane looks out from the confinement of her life and sees in a landscape, or in this case a night sky, the vastness of life and her deeper self is awakened. Moon and stars and the “fathomless depth” of the night sky make her heart tremble, her veins glow. When she does go inside, she finds that Mr Rochester, has arrived and, his horse having fallen on ice in Hay-Lane, he is injured and is awaiting a visit from Mr Carter, a surgeon.
1.13
The next evening, Jane and Adele join Rochester for tea. Jane describes him in some detail. She brings out his rugged, robust features using terms that could be very unflattering: his full nostrils suggest “choler” (anger); mouth, chin and jaw “were very grim”. His “broad-chested… thin flanked” physique could be seen as athletic but in his overall stocky squareness he is “neither tall nor graceful”. Yet we know from Jane’s previous antipathy towards conventionally handsome young men, that Rochester’s craggy appearance could be appealing. But what signs are there that Rochester feels attracted towards Jane?
Rochester seems distant and moody, and speaks in commands, sometimes impolitely. They talk of Adèle's progress and Jane's personal history. Rochester says that when he saw Jane in Hay Lane he thought of fairy tales and wondered if Jane had bewitched his horse. He asks who Jane’s parents are and when he discovers that she has none he takes it as a further sign that she is of the fairy people and was waiting at the stile to meet her “people”, the “men in green”. Jane denies this and adds, with some mock seriousness, that the men in green “all forsook England a hundred years ago” (here we recall her childhood quest for elves and not finding them). On further questioning on her background, she reveals the reality of her life at Lowood school. Rochester knows something of the school and of Mr. Brocklehurst. Rochester can now give Jane a social identity in addition to her elfin, fairy identity. Despite his abrupt manner, Rochester seems to find Jane intriguing. He questions her further. He wants to know if she plays the piano – she can, but after he tells her to play and she does, he judges her to be a limited pianist. He then questions her on her art. She produces her portfolio and shows him three watercolours. These extraordinary paintings seem to tell a story and/or depict a psychological state in a symbolic language. The first we could call the shipwreck and the drowned corpse (“corse”), the second, the “vision of the Evening Star” and the third depicts an arctic landscape with a “colossal head inclined towards” an iceberg. All three share an ominous, haunting quality. Jane’s keywords used to describe them include, “swollen sea”, “half-submerged mast”, “drowned corse”; “eyes dark and wild”, “cloud torn by storm”, “eye hollow and fixed”. Rochester’s response to them is to ask her, “Were you happy when you painted these pictures?” Unlike Rochester, we can recognise in them a likeness to Jane’s descriptions, in chapter 1, of the bleak, northern and Arctic landscapes that she saw in the engravings of Bewick’s History of British Birds. Details such as a “broken boat stranded on a desolate coast,” “the cold ghastly moon”, and the “wreck just sinking” are very like the details in the three paintings.
Rochester goes on to give a descriptive summary of the paintings, one that shows insight and a sophisticated appreciation of art. Jane says that there was a contrast between her idea and her handiwork; she feels that she did not fully realise her idea. Rochester agrees. He says that she “secured the shadow of your thought; but no more”. He describes the work as “peculiar”, “for a school girl”. He says they are “elfish”. When he says that the eyes of the Evening Star “must have been seen in a dream” he shows an appreciation of the psychic depths from which the eyes and the other images must have emerged. He is astonished by her ability to paint wind. He sees the “dim peak of the hill” in the Evening Star painting as a representation of Mt Latmos from Greek mythology. When he confidently states “that is Latmos” he seems to be astonished by her range of reference. Notwithstanding this appreciation, he ends his survey of her work with an abruptly exclamatory order, “There, – put the drawings away!” He then dismisses Jane and responds to her curtsey with a “frigid bow”. Later, Jane discusses Mr Rochester with Mrs Fairfax and says she found him “changeful and abrupt”. Mrs Fairfax excuses him since he has “painful thoughts” and she sketches out his family history involving unfair treatment from his elder brother. Mrs Fairfax attributes Rochester’s brief visits to Thornfield to this family history. Jane feels that there is more at stake than sibling rivalry.
From the vantage point of later developments, we can look back at this meeting with greater insight. His appreciation of the paintings shows a form of sympathy with Jane’s spirit and the very abruptness of his manner can be seen as a cover for the deep impact this young girl with her extraordinary abilities has had upon him.
1.14
One night, after dinner, Rochester calls for Jane and Adèle to join him. He gives Adèle the present she has been keenly anticipating. Mrs Fairfax is also called in to keep Adèle happy as she unwraps the present. In his initial conversation with Jane he is disdainful of children: he dislikes their “prattle” and would find it “intolerable” to pass an evening with “a brat”. Nor does he particularly like “simple-minded old ladies” like Mrs Fairfax. In a peremptory fashion, he tells Jane where she must sit. Once seated close to him – as ordered – she describes him. As with previous descriptions, she emphasises his ‘massive’ ruggedness, his “granite-hewn features”. He is far from being conventionally attractive but Jane seems to be drawn to his craggy power. But she now also sees in his “great dark eyes” a depth close to softness. Notwithstanding the aforementioned irascible and imperious behaviours, Rochester, when engaged in conversation with Jane, is in a relatively genial and expansive mood– she wonders how much wine he has drunk. The dining-room is brightly lit and the “large fire” is “all red and clear” (note that recurring symbolic word, ‘red’). Rochester asks Jane if she thinks he's handsome. Her reply, “No, sir”, “slips from her tongue” before she can come up with something vague and polite. Rochester is struck by a contrast between Jane’s gentle ‘little nun’ (“nonnette”) appearance and her brusque, bold reply. Jane apologises for being “too plain” but Rochester keeps up the subject of Jane’s response to his features. This leads to him revealing a little more about himself. He says that in his youth he was once a “feeling fellow enough” but that experience has knocked him about and hardened him. As the conversation continues, Jane makes further bold replies which Rochester praises for their frank sincerity. He also reveals a little more of himself when he refers to “plenty of faults of my own”, to a “past existence, a series of deeds” and to having been “thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one and twenty”. Otherwise, he claims, he might have been as “good as you” rather than a “trite commonplace sinner”. He sees Jane as someone whose capacity for “innate sympathy” encourages her acquaintances to confide in her. Rochester having confessed in a rather nonspecific way to pursuing an immoral life, they discuss remorse, repentance and reformation. Rochester says he is too cursed to reform and so intends to seek whatever “sweet fresh pleasure” he can. As this line of conversation continues, Jane speaks with a moral conviction that pursuing pleasure will not help Rochester. Rochester so refers to his condition in such a veiled way that Jane can not fathom what he means but she insists upon the healing potential of a resolute reformation.
After Jane says she must put Adèle to bed, Rochester turns his and Jane’s attention to Adèle who has just slipped out of the room with a frock that was in her box of presents. When Adèle returns she is wearing the new silk frock and she shows it off with a little dance around the room. Rochester says that Adèle reminds him of her French actress mother, Celine Varens, a woman who “charmed my English gold out of my British breeches pocket”. To see Adèle giving her little performance was painful as it reminded him of Adèle’s mother but he looks after Adèle, she is his “ward”, on what he calls the Roman Catholic principle of “expiating numerous sins … by one good work”. Rochester promises “to explain all this one day”.
At this point, what more can be said about the developing Jane and Rochester relationship? Although the purpose of inviting Jane into the dining-room was to encourage her to say more about herself, it is Rochester who, because of Jane’s “natural sympathy”, reveals, albeit in a rather oblique way, something of his own ‘dark’ past. Clearly he does find something very singular and special in Jane whilst she is drawn to her enigmatic master with his roughhewn features, his “great dark eyes” and his troubled past.
1.15
One afternoon, Rochester takes Jane aside and explains his history with Adèle. Years ago in Paris, Rochester fell for Celine Varens, a French opera dancer. She became his mistress, and he provided her with hotel accommodation, a maid-servant, gifts and money. One evening, having called on Celine and discovered that she is out, he waits on her apartment balcony for her return. Céline returns with a young officer. Rochester, still on the balcony, overhears their conversation and it is clear that she is intimate with the officer. In his account. Rochester says he felt intense jealousy, a feeling that vanished when he realised that his rival was an acquaintance whom he regarded as a trivial, shallow person. Yet he acknowledges that his initial feeling was one of intense jealousy, a feeling that Jane does not know since, as he says, she “has never felt love”. He develops the idea of Jane having, as yet, no experience of life’s turbulence. He uses marine imagery of sea rocks and breakers and foam and being “dashed to atoms on crag-points” to express such stormy experiences. Ironically, Jane has, in a sense, ‘known’ such turbulence since she has used stormy marine imagery in her imaginative response to Bewick and in her three watercolours. He seems to have forgotten the paintings, or is he unconsciously recalling and using their images?
Before continuing with the account of his affair, Rochester suddenly seems in the grip of some extreme “hated” thoughts connected with Thornfield. Jane feels that he is struggling against these thoughts and that he is countering them with “something hard and cynical; self-willed and resolute”. Unable to grasp fully the source and significance of these thoughts, Jane calls on him to return to the Varens affair.
He goes on to complete the story. Still on the balcony, he overhears their conversation and it is clear that she is intimate with the officer and she makes various mocking references to Rochester. Rochester confronts them, ends the relationship and challenges the officer to a duel. Next morning, the duel takes place. Rochester wounds the rival and feels that the whole affair is over. However, six months before the end of the affair, Celine had given birth to Adèle and affirmed that Rochester was the father. He acknowledges that this is possible but, finding no physical resemblance between himself and Adele, he is convinced that he is not her father. Some years later, Celine abandoned Adèle. Rochester rescued her from poverty and brought her to England.
Later, in her bedroom, Jane reflects on all that she has heard. She considers the “strange paroxysm of emotion” that had seized him and prompted painful thoughts concerning Thornfield Hall. Though, finding them inexplicable, she moves on to the way their relationship has developed. For “some weeks” he had been far more cordial towards Jane and, as he himself acknowledged in the midst of his account of the Varens affair, taking Jane into his confidence over his love affair with a Parisian opera dancer, marks an extraordinary development in their relationship. During this period of some weeks, culminating in the Varens confession, Jane has found herself increasingly drawn to him. She sees his faults but believes there are “excellent materials in him”. Jane has found her bodily health has improved. She has “gathered flesh and strength”. She does not use the word ‘love’ but she is showing clear symptoms of being in love!
In the early hours of the morning after that night, Jane is awakened by faint sounds of someone moving in the gallery outside her room and then by a “demoniac laugh”, which she also calls “goblin laughter”. Jane goes into the corridor to investigate, sees smoke coming from Mr Rochester’s room, She enters and finds his bed curtains alight which she then extinguishes with the water-filled “bason and ewer”. In what follows, the awakened Rochester goes down the gallery as quietly as possible, through the door to the third floor and returns, having, it seems, done something to resolve the situation. After Jane has attributed the laughter to Grace Poole, Rochester confirms that this is so. He tells Jane to say nothing of this incident. He will offer an explanation for the bedroom fire. He tells her to return to her room. As she is about to do so, he expresses surprise at her leaving in “that brief, dry fashion”. He holds out his hand, Jane takes it in hers and then, with added warmth, he takes her hand in both of his. He thanks her for saving his life and gazes in her eyes. Jane writes that “words almost visible trembled on his lips, but his voice was checked”. These words could have been an explicit declaration of love though, notwithstanding that “checked”, what he goes on to say is tantamount to a declaration of love, especially when coupled with the “strange energy in his voice”, the “strange fire in his look”. He says that from the moment he “beheld her”, he knew she would “do me good in some way”. Her expression struck delight into “my very inmost heart”. He acknowledges “natural sympathies” between them. He invokes the idea of “good genii” and the grains of truth that can be found in “wild fable” (here we may recall Rochester’s characterisation of Jane as an elf). In Chapter 17 Jane will look back on these moments and write, he “surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow…How near had I approached him at that moment”. Yet, in that moment, despite having recently become his confidant, despite feeling that the “blanks in existence were filled up”. Jane does not respond in kind. After the extraordinary fire, the demoniacal laughter, the intensity of his manner, the high-flown nature of his language (“my very inmost heart”, “My cherished preserver”), “That moment”, standing in a puddle of cold water in his bedroom, is not the moment for her to drop her reserve and declare her love.
When Jane returns to her bed after these moments of warm accord between them, her feelings are expressed in further marine imagery. She feels herself to be “tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy”. She sees “beyond … wild waters a shore sweet as the hills of Beulah” (a Biblical name for Israel) but, as she is blown towards the shore, a contrary wind blows her back. She then sees this duality of sailing towards and being beaten back in terms of an opposition between “sense and delirium”, and “judgment and passion”.
11.1
In the morning, Jane discovers that the servants believe that the previous night's fire started when Rochester accidentally fell asleep with a lit candle next to his bed, and that he woke just in time to extinguish the flames. Jane is astonished when Grace Poole confirms the story. When Jane asks about the laughter, Grace assures Jane that she must have imagined it, but that she should probably keep her bedroom door locked anyway. Jane is astonished that this woman who attempted to murder Rochester can speak so calmly and matter-of-factly about the incident and in response to Jane’s firm assertion that she did hear laughter.
Later, as she thinks over Grace Poole’s responses, she is extremely puzzled that Rochester has taken no action against Grace. She wonders if she has some hold over him. Perhaps some romantic involvement in the past. Perhaps Grace possesses, or possessed, “originality and strength of character” to compensate for her “hard-favoured” looks. Rochester, she reasons, presumably with her own case in mind, can be drawn to the “eccentric”. Yet, she continues, what could link Rochester with Grace with her “square, flat figure”, her “uncomely, dry, even coarse face”? “Impossible!” Jane concludes, but then she thinks of how he spoke and looked at her last night and she is far from being beautiful.
That evening she discovers, from Mrs. Fairfax, that Rochester has ridden off to join a group of the county set at “the Leas, Mr. Eshton’s place”. This ‘set’ includes a Lord, a Sir and a Colonel. The group also includes two young women, Blanche and Mary Ingram. Mrs Fairfax praises Blanche for her exceptional beauty and her musical accomplishments. In response to her enquiry, Mrs Fairfax provides Jane with a description of Blanche. On one particular social occasion, she and Mr Rochester made music together. Jane wonders if Rochester would think of Blanche as a possible bride. She asks Mrs Fairfax if any wealthy gentleman, “Mr. Rochester, for instance”, has taken a “fancy” to Blanche. Mrs Fairfax thinks the age difference between them rules this out. Jane, of course, does not see the age gap as a problem.
Left alone, Jane severely criticises herself for entertaining romantic thoughts about Rochester. Now the voice of reason tells her that she, the mere governess, could not possibly be a match for Rochester. She passes the following sentence on herself: she will draw a likeness of herself as accurately as possible and she will also, on the strength of Mrs Fairfax’s description, draw the beautiful Blanche. To place them side by side will show her how foolish she has been in thinking of a love match between herself and the master of Thornfield Hall, Edward Fairfax Rochester.
From the elation she felt after her feeling so close to Rochester after the fire incident, this chapter sees her brought low. She cannot fathom the role of Grace Poole nor Rochester’s reaction to her and, furthermore, her romantic expectations have been dashed by Rochester’s inexplicable absence and, above all, by her ‘realisation’ that she cannot possibly become engaged to Rochester. To avoid an emotional breakdown, Jane decides to use “sense” and “judgment” to quell passion. To put this into practice she will use her art – in the form of the two portraits – one of her plain self and the other of the beautiful Blanche – to discipline her feelings.
Two further points should be made. At the end of Chapter 15, Jane expressed her feelings through images of a stormy sea, a sea that mixed “billows of trouble” with “surges of joy”. A safe, sweet shore came close, but she was then blown back to sea. She saw these contrary pulls in term of “sense” and “judgment” versus “delirium” and “passion”. Chapter 16 has certainly brought “billows of trouble” with the Grace Poole dilemma, the precipitate departure of Rochester and the conviction that she could not possibly be his bride. Thus, the events of this chapter can be seen as having been foretold in the storm images at the conclusion of Chapter 15.
The second point concerns the problem of Rochester’s apparently extraordinary decision to join what appears to be a festive social occasion, a decision taken hours after ‘Grace Poole’ attempted to kill him. Naturally, Jane finds this extremely puzzling. However, we as readers with the benefit of hindsight (having read the book at least once before!), can see this as a strategic move by Rochester. He has two difficulties. After he had more or less declared his love for her following the bedroom fire, she preserved her relatively cool manner as kindly friend. In response to his rather extravagant language, she maintains a cool formality with her repeated, “Good night, sir” and her matter of fact, “I am glad I happened to be awake”. He does not know if she loves him. Furthermore, he knows that Jane with her keen mind is bound to continue to probe into the Grace Poole affair. He can see no way that he could tell her about his lunatic wife, Bertha. To tell her, would surely be to lose her. His plan is to shift Jane’s attention away from Grace Poole and the fire and to introduce Blanche Ingram as a rival. In this way he can try to provoke jealousy and so fathom Jane’s feelings towards him; it is also intended to turn her attention away from the ‘Grace Poole incident’. As we have seen in this chapter 16, this has already had some success. Jane’s thoughts are now taken up with her conviction that she was deluded to think of herself as a fitting mate for Rochester. Her focus is now on the discipline of the contrasting portraits.
11.2
The following days bring no news of Rochester and, during this time, Jane schools herself, using her wits and her “principles’, to recover from her “temporary blunder” in thinking of Mr Rochester as anything other than her employer. Almost three weeks after his sudden absence, Mrs Fairfax receives a letter from Mr Rochester advising her to make all necessary preparations at Thornfield Hall for the arrival of Mr. Rochester and the party from the Leas. Three days later sees the arrival of the party, including Blanche Ingram.
Much of the chapter is taken up with Jane’s description of the “fine people” with their “high-born elegance”, particularly the ladies with their “sweeping amplitude of array”. She had been invited, or rather ordered by Rochester, to be (with Adèle) in the drawing-room after dinner. The party consists of Mrs Eshton and her daughters, Amy and Louisa; Lady Lynn; Mrs Colonel Dent; Dowager Lady Ingram (“she had a hard fierce eye”) and her daughters, Blanche and Mary. The gentlemen are Colonel Dent, “a fine soldierly man”; Mr Eshton, the magistrate; Sir George Lynn, Lady Lynn’s husband; Sir George’s sons, Henry and Frederick Lynn, “dashing sparks”; and Lord Theodore Ingram, tall, and handsome but with an “apathetic and listless look”. Blanche is both beautiful and “accomplished”, that is, she plays the piano with virtuosity, and she speaks French fluently. However, she is extremely high-and-mighty. Recalling the various governesses she experienced, she proudly and arrogantly reveals the ways in which she tormented them.
Jane sits on a window-seat, at a remove from Rochester and his guests. Her eyes are drawn to Rochester’s face. She acknowledges that it is not beautiful but it is “more than beautiful”. It is “full of an interest” and it has “quite mastered me”; it has taken her feelings from her own power and “fettered them in his”. She had “not intended to love him”; he had ‘made’ her to love him. As she watches she compares Rochester with the other men. For Jane, they lack his “look of native pith and genuine power”. She feels that he is “not of their kind”; she believes “he is of mine”. She now feels that it would be a “Blasphemy against nature” if she were to think of him as no more than her employer. Yet she must also accept that “he cannot care much for me”.
From her detached position, she watches Rochester respond in a rather animated, flirtatious way with Blanche when she invites him to sing whilst she accompanies him. In a vein of playful repartee, she refers to him as “Signior Eduardo” and he to her as “Donna Bianca”. Rochester then makes a reference to Mary Queen of Scots and her adulterous affair with David Rizzio. As he prepares to obey ‘Donna Bianca’s’ command to sing, he says, “Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary?” Blanche dismisses the idea of playing for a David Rizzio as she thinks he must have been an “insipid sort of fellow”. She prefers the man who became Mary’s second husband, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, as he must have had “the spice of the devil in him”. Blanche develops her idea of an attractive man further when she says that Hepburn was “the sort of wild, fierce, bandit hero whom I could have consented to gift with my hand”. She goes on to make a series of disparaging references to the young men of the present day. They are “puny things” absorbed in care for their “pretty faces”. For her, beauty is a female quality; men only need “strength and valour”. Jane thinks she is trying to impress by sounding “dashing and daring”. However, we can see a certain overlap between Blanche’s romanticised notion of heroic rugged men and Jane’s admiration of Rochester for his “look of native pith and genuine power”. Conventional good looks appeal to neither of them. Of course, this is necessary for the rivalry: if Blanche favoured conventionally handsome men , Jane would have little reason for linking Blanche with Rochester. We should also note that, notwithstanding this affinity, Blanche limits her ideal to a man who hunts, shoots and fights. For Jane, as she observes when she sees Rochester talking to Louisa and Amy Eshton, Rochester has far deeper qualities. His stern features soften; his eye grows “brilliant and gentle, its ray both searching and sweet”.
As the duet is about to begin, Rochester takes the verbal dalliance with Blanche to a higher degree. He says Blanche has it in her power to “inflict a chastisement beyond mortal endurance” One of her frowns “would be a sufficient substitute for capital punishment”. Perhaps the hyperbolic character of this suggests that he is not so much flirting with her but subjecting her female ‘powers’ to a degree of subtle irony – which she seems to be unaware of. Jane, too, is unaware of this and, as they begin to make music, Jane leaves the room. However, Rochester follows her and they have a brief conversation in which he expresses some concern for her as she looks paler than she was and seems “a little depressed”. Jane denies this, he affirms it and insists that she appears in “the drawing room every evening” whilst the visitors are staying. He ends with, “Good night, my ……”. Notwithstanding the behaviour with Blanche in the drawing room, we recall the earlier “checked word” from chapter 15 when we could also have inserted “love”.
How are we to understand Rochester’s behaviour? Given his concern for her, his unspoken word of affection, his earlier talk of Jane striking “delight to my inmost heart”, why the abrupt departure for the Leas, why bring them all to Thornfield, why play the dashing gallant in his repartee with Blanche? As we shall see, this becomes an increasing problem in subsequent chapters when he leads Jane to believe that he really intends to marry Blanche. The answers have already been proposed but they can be developed further. The departure to the Leas (a necessary first step in bringing them to Thornfield) was to sidestep further questioning from Jane on the fire incident. Introducing Blanche to Thornfield acts as a further diversionary tactic. More significantly, it is designed to provoke jealousy and so attempt to gauge Jane’s feelings towards him. To explore Rochester’s thinking further, we need to look again at the passage in Chapter 15 when, in the middle of his account of the Valens affair, it seems that “some hated thought” had him in its grip.
These thoughts are provoked whilst in conversation with Jane as they stroll around the grounds and he stares at Thornfield Hall. He then describes the sudden apparition-like appearance of a hag who lifts her finger and writes in the air, “in lurid hieroglyphics, all along the house-front”, a challenge to take pleasure in Thornfield Hall. The suggestion being that the Hall is, for him, cursed and can bring no pleasure. His response is to insist that he will like it and that he will “break obstacles to happiness, to goodness”. In the previous chapter, after confessing to the failings of his past, he says that he is “hampered, burdened, cursed” and that since “happiness is irrevocably denied me. I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may”. The “obstacles’ that he refers to in his response to the figurative hag are his own failings and he intends “to be a better man than I have been”. However, the earlier comment on being denied happiness and taking an hedonistic rather than a moral response, suggests a willingness to overcome obstacles whether they be in himself or in his circumstances. Being willing to sustain and mislead Jane over his intentions concerning Blanche, becomes an increasingly problematic issue in subsequent chapters. As he continues to sustain the Blanche-as-bride fiction, we may well be reminded of his “cost what it may” unethical principle . It will certainly come to mind when he arranges his bigamous marriage to Jane.
11. 3&4
If we see Rochester’s introduction of guests to Thornfield as a way of ‘rebooting’ the atmosphere, it has worked. Jane reflects on how merry the Hall has become and that “all gloomy associations” are forgotten. One evening the party play a game of charades. Once again Jane tells the “reader” that she can’t “unlove” Rochester although she is convinced that he would soon marry Blanche. She feels “despair” but she emphasises that she does not feel jealousy. For Jane, “Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy”. She then itemises all of Blanche’s shortcomings which far outweigh her “attainments”. During the course of the charades game, Jane notices how closely Rochester is watching Blanche. He is said to ‘exercise’ a “ceaseless surveillance” over her and Jane is sure that he is noticing all of her “defects”. Whist noticing Rochester’s critical surveillance, Jane remains convinced that he intends to marry “for family, perhaps political reasons; because her rank and connexions suited him”. She is surprised that he would marry for such reasons but reflects that he too is subject to “ideas and principles” instilled in his class from childhood. She is also sure that such a marriage would not bring happiness to Rochester.
One day, Rochester has to go to Millcote on business and whilst he is away a stranger, a Mr. Mason, arrives who says he is an old friend of Rochester and would like to stay until Rochester returns. This is agreed, and whilst Mason is in conversation with some of the guests, Jane picks up that he has come from the West Indies. A little later, Rochester does return but in the guise of an old gypsy woman who wants to tell the fortunes of the young ladies. The fortune teller ensconces ‘herself’ in the library whilst the guests are in the drawing room. The fortune teller is to be consulted on a one-to-one basis. Blanche is the first to go into the library. When she returns, she gives a brief sceptical account of what occurred but says no more. Jane, however, watches her closely for half an hour and notices that, whilst supposedly reading a book, Blanche never turned a page and her face was “sourly expressive of disappointment.”. When Jane goes in to the ‘gypsy’ she is given an uncannily perceptive account of her state of mind and feelings. She is told that although the happiness that she desires is very close she needs to make a move to secure it. To read further into Jane’s destiny the ‘gypsy’ reads her face rather than her palm. As the ‘gypsy’ does so, ‘she’ begins by outlining the situation in the drawing room with the guests and questions Jane on her reactions to what has been taking place. In particular, her reactions to seeing a beautiful, rich young lady smiling in the eyes of a gentleman that Jane, “perhaps”, thinks well of. Of course, we (as re-readers) know that this is Rochester probing Jane for her reactions to the way he has singled out Blanche for particular attention. Jane will not be drawn on her reactions. Her role, she insists, before the ‘gypsy’, is to inquire, not to confess. She asks if Rochester is to be married and she is told, “Yes, and to the beautiful Miss Ingram”. The ‘gypsy’ foretells that their marriage will be happy. ‘She’ poses the rhetorical questions: Who would not be happy married to such a beautiful woman? And what woman would not love such a rich husband? Though ‘she’ adds that when Blanche consulted her, ‘she’ told her something about Rochester’s estate that left her disappointed.
Jane then presses ‘her’ for an account of her own destiny. What she is given is an accurate character analysis based on a reading of her face. The forehead is said to declare that “Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms”. In the end she will always follow “that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience”. The ‘gypsy’ expands on the reason versus feeling dilemma with increasing rhetorical power and eloquence and it becomes increasingly clear that this does not sound like a gypsy fortune teller. Indeed, as ‘she’ elaborates the theme, the voice modulates into that of Rochester and, when Jane notices a ring on his finger which she recognises it as Rochester’s, the game is over. Rochester steps out of his disguise and Jane reproves him for practising deception. She tells the reader that she had suspected that the ‘woman’ was not a gypsy but she wondered if Grace Poole, still very much a mystery to Jane, was playing the part.
Rochester wants Jane to tell him what the ladies had said about the ‘gypsy’. Jane avoids this as it is getting late, and she has to tell Rochester about the arrival of a Mr. Mason from the West Indies. Rochester is extremely shocked and appeals to Jane for help. She must go into the dining-room and fetch Rochester a glass of wine. This done, she must then return to the dining room, where the guests have been eating, and discreetly tell Mason to go into the library alone. Jane goes to bed and a little later she hears the guests retiring and hears Rochester, now with a calm, cheerful voice, guiding Mason to his room.
11.5
That night, a scream rips through the midnight silence at Thornfield. All the guests run into the hallway, but Rochester calms everyone by saying that the noise came from a servant having a nightmare. Having calmed the guests and persuaded them to return to their beds, all falls silent. Jane, convinced that the scream was not that of a disturbed sleeper, dresses herself and awaits developments. After a little more than an hour, Rochester calls on her, asks for help and leads her up to the attic. He takes her into a room, a room whose door had been hidden behind a tapestry, where she finds that Mason is bleeding from wounds in his shoulder and arm. There is an inner room to this room and from there Jane hears what she believes is “Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! Jane proves herself to be an invaluable help. She must tend to Mason whilst Rochester goes to fetch Carter, the surgeon. Rochester warms Mason that he must say nothing whilst he fetches Carter. He tells both Jane and Mason that there should be no conversation between them. Once the surgeon arrives, Mason’s wounds - a knife wound on his shoulder, a bite wound on his arm – are tended and he is then driven off to recover at Carter’s home.
Once Mason has been helped into the waiting post-chaise and driven away, Rochester leads Jane into the garden – it is now just after dawn. He sits down in an arbour and invites Jane to sit beside him – she does so, but somewhat reluctantly – he is, after all, the man she has, by virtue of being of a lower class, lost to a woman of his own “caste” – a term Jane uses at the beginning of II 2. Although deeply in love with him, she is convinced that he is not for her. She is determined to keep their relationship formal. He then presents her with the “case’ of an unnamed person. He describes this man’s life from his wild boyhood to his adult years. As a young man he commits a terrible error, and his life seems to be forever blighted. He turns to a life of sensual pleasure as a form of escapism. Yet he remains miserable. He then meets a “stranger” and she transforms him in so far as she makes him feel that his life could be rich and fulfilling. Yet there is an obstacle which is said to be an “obstacle of custom”, a “conventional impediment”. The question that he puts to Jane is, would this person be justified in “overleaping” the obstacle”, in daring the world’s opinion in order to attach himself “for ever” to this gentle, gracious stranger?
Jane does not answer this ‘should he defy custom’ question but challenges the idea that this person needs the stranger to bring about a reformation. Jane’s stern idea is that the man in question should not rely on a fellow creature to amend his ways. He should look higher than his equals. In other words, he should turn to God. Rochester protests that the stranger is God’s instrument. He also drops what he calls ‘the parable’ and says that he was describing himself. He adds, “I believe I have found the instrument of my cure, in –––“ but leaves the sentence incomplete. Jane must realise that Rochester’s “stranger” does not suit Blanche Ingram particularly well. It suits her better, but she is convinced that he is going to marry Blanche. Rochester, for his part, is uncertain of Jane. She can be stern and formidably uncompromising. She serves him faithfully, but she maintains a formal reserve: she addresses him as, “Sir” and ‘Mr. Rochester’. He must wonder if she wants a romantic relationship. How risky would it be for him to declare his love? He seems to think it safer to leave that “I have found my cure in –––” sentence incomplete.
Having met Jane’s stern response to the dilemma posed by the parable of his life and feeling unable to declare his love, he falls back on the jealousy-provoking plan to marry Blanche Ingram. He asks, “don’t you think that if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance”. As he said this, Jane notes that his voice becomes “harsh and sarcastic”. He does not wait for an answer as he gets up “instantly’ and walks away before returning. He even asks her if, as his most useful servant, she would watch with him on the night before he is married. He seems to be trying to provoke an emotional reaction. He presses on saying that he can talk to Jane about “his lovely one” since Jane has seen her and knows her. He asks Jane, “She’s a rare one, is she not?” Jane, not wanting to question what she believes to be his choice, says “Yes, sir”. Unable to declare his love, uncertain of Jane, falling back on using Blanche to provoke jealousy, he is in a state of inner turmoil. His praise of Blanche rises to a crescendo as (with some sarcasm?) his praise reduces her to a strong voluptuous body: “A strapper – a real strapper, Jane big, brown and buxom”. With this, he spots two of his guests, Dent and Lynn, up and about and tells Jane to go in unseen by the guests. They go their separate ways and, as Jane goes in, she hears Rochester explaining, in cheerful tones, Mason’s early departure.
11.6
This chapter begins with Jane’s thoughts on what she calls “presentiments” and “sympathies” and “signs”. A presentiment is a mental impression – anything from a vague feeling to a dream or some form of sign – that a particular future event will occur. Presentiments often anticipate or predict, usually in a veiled, symbolic way, some form of misfortune or death. The feeling connected with such presentiments is known as a foreboding. By ‘sympathies’, Jane means a form of telepathic communication whereby far-distant and even long-absent and estranged relatives can, in some way, communicate with each other. Jane suggests that this happens because the relatives share ancestors, though she adds that such “workings baffle mortal comprehension”. She also speculates that “Nature” may send these portentous signs out of “sympathies” with man. She refers to Bessie Leaven (at this point, Jane refers to Bessie by her married name), the maid at Gateshead Hall whom she overheard telling the other maid, Martha Abbot, about a dream she had which involved a little child. For Bessie dreams about little children are ”a sure sign of trouble”. The day after Bessie had the dream she was sent for from her family home as her little sister had died. Jane then describes her recent experiences of recurring dreams involving a child. She was awakened from one such dream by Mason’s cries and on the afternoon of the following day, Robert Leaven, the coachman from Gateshead Hall, arrives at the Thornfield with news that Mrs Reed is mortally ill and that she has asked for Jane to be sent for. Robert also brings Jane up to date with life at Gateshead Hall. As we know from Vol I, Chapter 10, he has married Bessie and they now have three children and all are well. John Reed, however, died recently – “they say he killed himself” – after living a wild life, wasting much of the Reed wealth on gambling.
On arrival at Gateshead, Jane is warmly welcomed by Bessie. The Reed sisters, meanwhile, have grown into two very different types. Eliza is stern and highly religious, while Georgiana longs to return to the fashionable London world where she has been a recent success and attracted many male admirers. Neither sister shows much in the way of compassion or practical care for their dying mother who has suffered a stroke.
On Jane’s first visit into the sick room, Mrs Reed tells Jane that she wants her to stay until such time as she is ready to “talk over some things”. As the visit continues, Mrs Reed becomes increasingly excited. She refers to Jane in the third person as if she is not there. She is still stung by the vehemence of Jane’s denunciation of her in Vol. I, Chapter 4 (“I will never call you aunt again … I will never come to see you when I am grown up … the very thought of you makes me sick”). It is clear from what she says that her dislike of Jane, the orphaned child, is rooted in her dislike of Jane’s mother, Mr Reed’s sister. She becomes increasingly agitated as she recalls the decline and death of her son, John. Unable to comfort her, Jane leaves her at this point.
Ten days later, Jane goes into the sick room to see how Mrs Reed is. Mrs Reed directs Jane to take out a letter from a dressing-case. The letter, dated three years ago, comes from John Eyre, Jane’s uncle, an uncle she knew nothing of. He is a wealthy wine merchant in Madeira. He, being unmarried and childless, wants to contact her and bring her to Madeira to be adopted by him and to be the heir to his estate. Mrs Reed told Jane nothing about the letter but, in her reply, told John Eyre that Jane had died from typhus at Lowood. The thought of Jane gaining an inheritance was so galling that she told this lie. Dying, she is conscience stricken and wants to rid her mind of the tormenting thought. Jane tries to reassure her that she is forgiven and expresses an earnest wish to be reconciled with Mrs Reed. Mrs Reed rebuffs Jane and dies that night.
11.7
Jane stays at Gateshead for a month to settle the affairs of the Mrs. Reed's estate. Georgina soon goes to London and eventually “made an advantageous match with a wealthy, worn-out man of fashion”. Eliza decides to enter a French convent where she eventually becomes Mother Superior.
While at Gateshead, Jane gets a letter from Mrs Fairfax that says that Rochester has gone to London to buy a carriage, presumably in preparation for his marriage to Blanche. Jane returns to Thornfield feeling that her days there are numbered. After a long two-day journey, Jane decides to walk the last few miles from Millcote to Thornfield Hall. On the way she encounters Rochester sitting on a stile. This mirrors the original encounter between the two when it was Jane that was sitting on the stile. Rochester wants to know why she has been away for so long. Jane explains that Mrs Reed died, and Jane stayed to help with the funeral arrangements. Rochester chooses to see this as Jane returning from the land of the dead. He pursues this idea of a supernatural provenance and attributes “second sight” to Jane and plays in various ways with Jane being of the faery kind. He refers to his new carriage and tells Jane to look at it and decide if it will suit Mrs Rochester.
After he moves himself from the stile and bids Jane to pass, she, on impulse, says to him that she is glad to be back with him and that “wherever you are is my home”. Having made this impassioned statement, she walks on Thornfield as quickly as she can. Once back at Thornfield, a fortnight of “dubious calm” follows. Jane, assuming that arrangements for the marriage with Blanche should be taking place, is puzzled by Rochester’s non-committal replies to the question of when he will bring his bride home and by the fact that he never rides over to Blanche’s home at Ingram Park. She also finds that Rochester calls her to his presence more frequently than ever before.
11.8
It is now two weeks after Jane’s return to Thornfield. It is Midsummer and Jane gives a lyrical description of the season. On Midsummer-Eve Rochester finds Jane in the orchard. They discuss Jane’s departure from Thornfield – Rochester confirms that it is necessary. Rochester says he is going to be married “very soon”. He refers to the marriage in a rather ironic, unromantic way when he talks of putting his “old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose” and continues the ‘strapping, buxom lass’ characterisation of Blanche when he refers to her as “an extensive armful”. He says he has found another situation for Jane as a governess to the daughters of “Mrs Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternut Lodge, Connaught” – a name that Jane, in a less emotionally vulnerable state, would surely see as farcically comical in its mix of “Gall” and “Bitter”, and would wonder what ironical game Rochester is playing. Jane, upset, says that Ireland is too far away. It would mean a separation from Thornfield and – as she finally and tearfully says – “from you, sir”. Encouraged by this, though still speaking as if they are to be separated, Rochester explains how attached he feels to Jane – a “string” under his ribs is “knotted” to a similar string under Jane’s ribs. If that “cord of communion” were to be snapped then he would suffer a form of internal bleeding. Rochester then claims that Jane would forget him. This leads to Jane sobbing convulsively and, being no longer able to hold in all the “vehemence of emotion”, she expresses the “grief and love within”. She says how much she loves Thornfield and that she ‘reverences’ and ‘delights’ in Rochester. Yet she insists, she must go because Rochester is shortly to have a bride. She becomes increasingly impassioned, whilst he continues to let her believe he intends to marry Blanche. Having drawn from her such passionate expressions of attachment to him and Thornfield, he then proposes to her. She thinks he is in some way teasing her. This leads to him (finally!) making it clear that he has no intention of marrying Blanche. Jane then accepts his offer of marriage. Rochester expresses his satisfaction at having won Jane, though in doing so, he makes some cryptic remarks about his “Maker” sanctioning what he is going to do even if “man’s opinion” does not approve.
A thunderstorm breaks out and driving rain sends the loving couple back into the house. When back in the house, Mrs Fairfax is amazed to see Rochester repeatedly kissing Jane. Jane, full of joy, goes to bed, leaving until tomorrow explanations to Mrs Fairfax. The storm continues. In the morning, Adele runs into Jane’s bedroom to tell her that the “great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard” had been struck by lightning and “half of it split away”. Rochester and Jane had been sitting on a bench next to that same tree whilst they discussed Jane’s future and Rochester made his marriage proposal.
11.9
The next day, after rising and dressing, Jane looks at herself in the mirror. She sees a face “no longer plain”, but one with “life in its colour”. Mutual love has transformed her. She uses an elevated poetic diction (”beheld”, “fount of fruition”, “lustrous ripple”) and alliteration to describe the effect which she sees in her eyes: “they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from its lustrous ripple”. (Having mentioned this stylistic feature, I recommend Margaret Smith’s excellent brief account of various features of Jane’s style – see pages xii – xiii in her Introduction to her OUP World’s Classics edition of Jane Eyre.) When she sees Rochester, he compliments her as a “sunny-faced girl” with “dimpled cheek” and “rosy lips”. He wonders where “my pale, little elf” has gone. He informs her that the wedding is to be in four weeks. He goes on to say that he has sent for family jewels to adorn his bride. This begins his attempt to dress Jane in rich attire. She insists that treating her as a “beauty” means turning her into Rochester’s fantasy. She insists that she is “your plain, Quakerish governess”. If she allowed Rochester his way on her dress and adornments she would not be “Jane Eyre” but “an ape in a harlequin’s jacket, – a jay in borrowed plumes”. He continues to elevate her when he refers to her as an angel. Jane tries to bring him down to earth with “I am not an angel” and, drawn into a rather cynical realism by his fantasies, she predicts that he will be a typical man whose love will “effervesce for six months, or less.” Somewhat sobered by Jane’s responses, he then enters a deeper level of feeling when he distinguishes between past mistresses who pleased “only by their faces” and Jane with her “clear eye”, “eloquent tongue” and “soul made of fire`”. He goes on to play upon ideas of submissiveness and conquest. He says that Jane seems to submit and be pliant, but such pliancy is influencing and conquering him. And this process is a “a witchery beyond any triumph I can win”.
Their conversation leads Jane to ask him why he led her to believe that he was going to marry Blanche Ingram. He says he did this to make Jane as “madly in love” with him as he was with her. He used jealousy as his “best ally” to achieve this. Jane sees this as unprincipled as it uses Blanche without consideration of her feelings. Rochester defends himself on the grounds that Blanche never had any genuine feelings of love for him. This was demonstrated when her interest cooled off as soon as he led her to believe that he was far less wealthy than he is. Jane is not too impressed. She tells him that he has a “designing mind” and that his “principles” are “on some points”, “eccentric”.
Jane insists that Rochester should explain to Mrs Fairfax that they are now engaged. After he has done this, Jane sees Mrs Fairfax in her parlour. Mrs Fairfax warns Jane about men and marriages between unequal parties. Jane is irritated with Mrs. Fairfax's conventional assumptions. There follows the journey taken by Rochester, Jane and Adele to Millcote to choose dresses for Jane. On the way Rochester sets out to amuse Adele with a fantasy of Jane as a fairy from Elf-land with Rochester travelling with her to live on the moon.
At Millcote, Jane, hates the business of choosing lavish dresses; however, she manages to reduce the number of dresses from Rochester’s proposed six to two. Annoyed at the attempt to dress her like a doll, Jane plans to write to her Uncle John Eyre and make some claim on the financial support for Jane that he proposed in his letter. If she had a degree of financial independence, she feels it would balance their relationship. She also makes it plain to him that in the weeks before the marriage she intends to continue the established governess pattern of her life. She will not be joining Rochester for dinner and Adele will be taught as usual.
That evening, she joins him after dinner and he plays the piano and sings a love song. The persona in the song is a man and he sings of love as a force of nature that pours a “tide of being” through his veins. However, there arise many menacing obstacles to their love, yet with his beloved’s “little hand” in his, she has vowed to be entwined with him in “wedlock’s sacred band”. The song ends with “My love has sworn, with sealing kiss,/With me to live – to die”. Jane, determined not to be swooned away in this glow of sentiment, pours cold water on this willingness to die with the beloved. In a similar mood she uses “the needle of repartee” to keep him from a “bathos of sentiment” and prevent her from “lamb-like submission”. The month of courtship continues in this way, with Jane maintaining a degree of controlling formality in their relationship. Yet at the end of the chapter, she confesses that she would rather have “pleased him than teased him”. He was becoming her whole world, and she fears that he “stood between me and every thought of religion.” She could not see God “for his creature: of whom I had made an idol”.
11.10
The chapter begins with Jane describing her thoughts on the evening before her wedding day. Rochester had been called away on business the day before and has not yet returned. All is packed and ready, though Jane struggles to think of herself as Mrs Jane Rochester. She refers to her white bridal garments in her bedroom closet as “strange wraith-like apparel” which, at the evening hour, gave out “a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment”. She is disturbed by something that took place the previous night, though, and here she addresses the reader directly (“Stay till he comes reader”), she is postponing an account of what happened until she tells Rochester about it on his return. Feeling restless, she goes out into the garden. All day there had been a strong wind. Once in the orchard, Jane feels ` “wild pleasure” as she runs before the wind and ‘delivers’ her troubles to “the measureless air-torrent thundering through space”. She delights in nature’s wildness, in its vastness (“measureless”) and its overwhelming power (“thundering”). This sense of a correspondence, a communication, between nature and Jane’s mind or spirit is something we have seen before. As she passes the “wreck of the chestnut tree”, she considers the way the two halves of the tree, remain united by their roots. She talks to the ruined tree, treating its two halves as a comradely pair that draw comfort from each other though ruined. Through the space between the fissured halves, she sees the moon and its disk is “blood-red”. The wind round Thornfield dies down but “far away over wood and water, [the wind] poured a wild, melancholy wail”. The “blood-red” moon and the wind’s wail seem ill-omened and, as such, belong with the many signs and portents and premonitions that are a marked feature of Jane Eyre.
She returns to the house but her anxiety about Rochester’s whereabouts means that she can’t sit and wait. She goes out again and, after walking for a quarter of a mile, she hears the tramp of hoofs and then sees him on Mesrour (a name from the Arabian Nights) with Pilot the dog following. There is a romantic union: joy makes Jane agile as she springs up, aided by Rochester, and mounts Mesrour. There is a “hearty kissing”, and they gallop off to Thornfield. However, notwithstanding the warm mutuality of their meeting, the dynamic of love between them follows the established pattern, a pattern that sees Jane cooling his ardour. Jane sees his “exaltation” in gathering up his beloved on to Mesrour. In his words, she is a “stray lamb” seeking her “shepherd”; through these images he boasts of his role as protective guardian. She tells him not to boast and, once at Thornfield, brusquely orders him with “now, let me down”.
Once settled in the library, at around midnight, Jane tells him and, as promised, the reader, of what took place the previous night. Jane had found it difficult to sleep. A gale-force wind blew “wild and high” with a “sullen moaning sound” (so providing some suitably eerie Gothic atmospherics!). Once she drops off to sleep, she has a dream involving a little child in a pitiful state. Here we recall what Bessie had told Jane whilst at Gateshead, "to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to oneself or one's kin". We also recall, from the opening of volume II’s chapter 6, Jane’s thoughts on “presentiments” and her account of her own recurring dream featuring an infant. The current dream is followed by an even more ominous dream. She dreams that Thornfield is a ruin, no more than a wall, a haunt of bats and owls. Again, she is holding the child and she hears a horse galloping away and she believes this is Rochester leaving for a distant country. The child is terrified, the wind blows ever stronger, she climbs up the wall, the child rolls away from her and she falls and then awakens.
She then goes on to describe a female intruder to her bedroom. Carrying a lit candle, the intruder takes Jane’s bridal veil from the closet and puts it on her head. This is a woman she has not seen before. She is sure that it is not Grace Poole. She is tall with long, thick, dark hair. She has a fearful face. It is “discoloured” and “savage”. Jane can’t forget “the roll of her red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments”. She notes further ‘fearful’ features such as swollen lips and bloodshot eyes. She tells Rochester that it reminded her of the Vampyre. The intruder took off the veil, tore it in two, threw it to the floor and trampled upon it. Before leaving the bedroom, she bent over Jane, inspected her face by candlelight, then extinguished the candle and left. Jane fainted.
What is Rochester to do? He suggests that what she saw was a figment of her imagination, the product of an “over stimulated brain”. Jane counters this by telling Rochester that she found the torn veil on the bedroom floor. This makes him shudder when he thinks what could have happened to Jane. However, he tries another ploy by insisting it must have been Grace Poole whilst the changes in appearances were the work of Jane’s feverish imagination. He adds that he will explain the Grace Poole story a “year and a day” after they are married. Jane is not entirely convinced but decides to seem satisfied with his explanation. Rochester insists that she should sleep with Adele in the nursery, locking the door behind her. Following instructions, Jane spends a sleepless night cradling Adele in the nursery behind a locked door. She cries when leaving Adèle in the morning.
An interesting love dialogue occurs just after Jane’s account of her dream and before the account of the intruder. Rochester asks her to say that she loves him. She says, “I do with my whole heart”. Rochester says that her words were said with such “earnest, religious energy” that they “penetrated my breast painfully”. This acute physical reaction, love as a wounding, has some affinity with Rochester’s previously expressed sense of a string under his left rib tied to a similar string situated in, what he calls, the “corresponding quarter” in Jane’s body. Should that string be snapped then he would suffer an inward bleeding. an inward wound.
11.11
On the morning of the wedding, as Rochester hurries Jane to the church, Jane notices two strangers in the churchyard. The strangers also attend the ceremony. When the clergyman, Mr. Wood, asks if anyone knows of any “impediment’ that prevents the couple being “joined together in matrimony”, one of the strangers stands up and announces that there is an "impediment" to the marriage. Rochester insists that the ceremony proceed, but the clergyman refuses as he is obliged to hear of this “impediment”. The stranger identifies himself as Mr. Briggs, a London lawyer, and he reveals that Rochester is already married. He proves this by reading a statement written and signed by Richard Mason. In it, Mason states that his sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, married Edward Fairfax Rochester fifteen years ago in Jamaica. He also gives the name of the church in Spanish Town, Jamaica that holds a record of the marriage. The other stranger then timidly comes forward to confirm the story and this turns out to be Richard Mason, the recent wounded visitor to Thornfield. He also confirms that Bertha is still living, as he saw her three months ago when he visited Thornfield he adds this evidence as Rochester had said that there is no proof that Bertha is still living.
Rochester is furious. He concedes that the story is true, but stresses that neither Jane nor anyone else knew of Bertha. His wife is insane, he says, and is kept locked away on the third floor of Thornfield. Rochester was not told of the hereditary madness that runs through Bertha’s family. Her mother was a Creole who came from three generations who became mad. No doubt to exonerate himself, at least to some degree, by revealing the reality of his mad wife and the failure of his marriage, he brings everyone back to Thornfield and they go up to the third floor into the room where Mason was attacked by Bertha. Behind a secret door stands Grace Poole and a dishevelled "lunatic" pacing like an angry caged animal in the shadows. Bertha attacks Rochester and he wrestles her into a chair. Once she is tied to the chair, Rochester has a final word with Grace Poole as he dismisses the rest and they all leave.
Mr Biggs, the solicitor, then reveals to Jane how Richard Mason had learned about her wedding plans with Rochester. (By an extraordinary coincidence), Mason is a business acquaintance of Jane's uncle, John Eyre and was staying with him (to recover his health) at Madeira when John Eyre received Jane's letter (see II.9), which referred to a forthcoming marriage between herself and a Mr Rochester. John Eyre knew that Mason knew someone called Rochester and having told Mason of the planned marriage, Mason told John Eyre that Rochester was already married. John Eyre, being too sick to undergo the journey himself (he is terminally ill), sent Mason to save his niece from the bigamous marriage. He also called upon his London solicitor, Mr Briggs, to accompany Richard Mason.
Jane locks herself into her room. Feeling that all her hopes have been destroyed. As often occurs, Jane sees her plight in terms of a landscape with associated weather and atmospheric conditions. The high summer of her life as an expectant bride has given way to a wintry snow filled landscape. Rochester was “not what she thought him”. She does not “ascribe vice to him” nor accuse him of betrayal but “stainless truth was gone from his idea”. Jane sees with great clarity that she must go. She feels that he could not have had “real affection” for her, only “fitful passion”. She thinks that “he would want me no more”. Again representing her condition in terms of a landscape, she feels that she is lying in the dried-up bed of a great river whilst a flood in remote mountains is about to about to come down in torrents. She says that only one “idea” “still throbbed life-like within me – a remembrance of God”. That “remembrance” recalls the end of II.9 where Jane confesses that Rochester “stood between me and every thought of religion”. At that point she could not “see God for his creature”. She had “made an idol”. Now, however, having suffered a psychological trauma, she can recall God. The form of remembrance that comes to her mind is a verse from a Biblical psalm (Psalm 22) that cries out to God for help (“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help”). However, though the words wander into her mind, she fails to express them. As a result, she feels overwhelmed by the oncoming torrent. She turns to another Psalm (Psalm 69) to express this despair: “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire; the floods overwhelmed me.”
111.1
After spending most of the day in her bedroom in a stunned condition, Jane asks herself what she must do and her “mind” promptly tells that she must leave Thornfield “at once”. There follows an inner struggle between, ‘I can’t’ and ‘I must’. This inner battle is expressed in hyperbolic language. “Conscience” is said “to have turned tyrant” and holds “passion by the throat”. Conscience has an “arm of iron” that could “thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony”. As she stands up, she feels dizzy and realises that she has had neither food nor drink all day. She decides to go downstairs both for food and to see how things stand in the household.
When she steps out of her room, she finds Rochester waiting for her. He asks her forgiveness. Jane doesn't respond to him, but she addresses and confides in the “Reader”, with “Reader! – I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot”. She saw “remorse in his eye”, “true pity in his tone”, “manly energy in his manner” and “unchanged love in his whole look and mien”. He carries her downstairs into the library, revives her with sips of wine and attempts to kiss her but she turns her head away. There follows a lengthy dialogue between them (pages 290-310 in the OUP edition). Rochester begins to outline a plan that involves boarding up Thornfield and leaving Grace Poole (with enhanced salary) to look after Bertha (incidentally, we learn that Grace has a supportive son, a gamekeeper, who lives nearby). During this outline, Rochester refers to Bertha as one who stabs, bites and burns people. Jane interrupts with, “You speak of her with hate – she cannot help being mad”.
As he outlines his plan, he assumes that Jane will accompany him. He begins to see that she does not intend to do so. He becomes increasingly agitated and on the verge of violence. She manages to calm him and tells him that she does love him “more than ever” but she adds that “this is the last time I must express it". She then tells him that she must leave him and start a new life. He agrees that she must have a new life, but with him and says they will live in France, in a “white-walled villa on the shores of the Mediterranean”. He says she will not be his mistress but Mrs Rochester, “virtually and nominally”. He sees that Jane does mean it when she says “I must part with you for my whole life”. He becomes frantic again, his “eyes blazed”. Jane had earlier felt that she had a power to control and restrain him. Notwithstanding the blazing eyes, she firmly tells him that to live with him would make her his mistress, not a virtual/nominal Mrs Rochester. He then sets out to explain the circumstances of his marriage in the hope that it will demonstrate that it was not a true marriage.
He begins with his family circumstances. In order not to split his estate between his two sons, Roland and Edward, Rochester’s father sought to arrange a marriage between Rochester and the wealthy daughter of a business acquaintance, a West Indian planter and merchant called Mason. His daughter had a fortune of £30,000. Rochester was sent out to Jamaica and found Bertha to be “the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty”. Rochester was dazzled and excited by her and so married her. He soon discovered that he and Bertha had nothing in common. He also discovered that his mother-in-law was mad and was locked up in an asylum and that Bertha’s younger brother was also mad. He finds that her “cast of mind” was “common, low, narrow”. She is given to outbursts of violent temper. She lacks intelligence and is “intemperate and unchaste”. He describes her as “gross, impure, depraved” which suggests sexual depravity. After four years doctors agree that Bertha is mad. During that period, both Rochester’s brother and his father died and he inherited the family wealth.
At this point, one can raise the question of Rochester’s wealth being linked to the slave trade. As the husband of a rich woman, he would own her wealth. Wealth which, coming from a West Indian plantation, probably owed a lot to the exploitation of slave labour. However, given Rochester’s sizeable inheritance, he probably had no need to draw upon the £30,000 of West Indian plantation money. However, one could speculate, given the link between Rochester’s father and his business acquaintance, Mr. Mason, the plantation owner, that some, at least, of Rochester senior’s wealth derived from investments in the plantation. This slave trade wealth issue will crop up again when we come to Jane’s inheritance.
Bertha is now “shut up” as a lunatic, though within the property that Rochester now owns in Jamaica. He decides to return to Europe with Bertha, though she will be shut up at Thornfield Hall. He will then be free to wander around Europe and behave as if he had no wife. He managed to take Bertha with him back to England and has her confined to the attic with Grace Poole as her keeper. This was done with extraordinary secrecy with nobody knowing of Bertha except Grace Poole and Carter, the surgeon and Mrs Fairfax. However, it seems that they do not know that she is Mrs Rochester. Once this is achieved, Rochester heads for the Continent.
During this Continental period of ten years, he did have three mistresses (French Celine, Italian Giacinta and German Clara), all beautiful but all lacking in character and the affairs were all relatively brief. He says he now hates what he did and regards having a mistress as little better than keeping a slave. At this point Jane thinks to herself that, were she to be his mistress, her relationship could end just as quickly. Completely disillusioned, he returned to England. On his return, his meeting with Jane, his “elf”, by the stile, changed everything. Once returned to Thornfield, unknown to Jane, he observed her carefully and was deeply impressed. Although unused to society and inexperienced, she had a “keen, daring, glowing eye” with “penetration and power in each glance” and had “ready and round” responses to questions. He outlines the gradual, subtle growth of their relationship. Jane stops him, telling him it is too painful to recall those days. He emphasises he much he loves her and that he was wrong to deceive her. Jane experiences a terrible inner struggle. She feels she must renounce love no matter how deeply felt. She must “depart!” When he says he will face absolute despair when she goes, she tells him to do what she must do, and that is “trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet again there”.
Rochester continues to appeal to her. He reminds her that, since she has no family left, nobody would know and be offended by her behaviour, behaviour that simply transgressed against a human law. Inwardly she is pricked by conscience that says she should save him from despair. However, another inner voice says she must, “keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man” – here she refers to the sacrament of matrimony. Rochester sees this determination in her eye and comes close to doing violence, but as he grasps her, he is in awe of the contrast between her physical frailty and her indomitable spirit and he releases her. She says, twice, “I am going”. He consents, but breaks down in anguish and collapses on the sofa. Jane is about to walk out but returns, kneels by him, kisses his cheek and says, “God bless you dear master… God keep you from harm and wrong.” With this blessing, she leaves him with an inner “Farewell”, to which an inner spirit of Despair adds, “Farewell, for ever!”
That night she has a vivid dream. She sees the sky and a “white human form” takes shape. It gazes on her and says, “My daughter, flee temptation!” and she replies, “Mother, I will”. Is this her deceased mother acting as guardian? Is it the Mother Nature she will refer to in the next chapter? Its visionary character recalls the three water colours Jane had completed in her last days at Lowood – see I.13.
Jane leaves Thornfield just before dawn, taking great care to do so silently. She takes footpaths that lead to a road that runs in a direction contrary to Millcote – a known direction. Despite the beautiful summer morning she can take no pleasure in it. She compares herself to someone heading for execution on the scaffold. The thought of Rochester’s despair hurts her even more intensely than her own. She hates herself for hurting her “master”. When she finally arrives at the road, a coach was approaching. She stops it and persuades the driver to take her to the coach’s destination (the driver names the place but Jane as writer does not give the name.) The fare would be thirty shillings. Jane says she only has twenty and the coachman decides it will do. She is the only passenger. The chapter ends with another of the many addresses to the “Gentle reader” with the hope that the reader may never have to “be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love”.
The Journey to Morton and Life at Marsh End House
III.2 – III.9
111.2
After two days travelling Jane is ‘set down’ at a crossroads. She has no money left and suddenly realises that she has left a parcel of her meagre possessions on the coach. From the placenames on a stone pillar she knows that she is in a “north-midland shire”. The nearest signposted town is ten miles away. She is surrounded by moors and mountains. She walks away from the road and on to moorland where she finds shelter for the night under a rock. Full of pity for Rochester, longing for a union that cannot be, she turns to God for consolation. Under a starlit sky, she feels God’s universal presence and prays for Rochester. She is consoled with the thought that Rochester “was God’s, and by God would be guarded.”
Next morning, having heard a church bell, she sees a distant spire and heads for the associated village. She tries, unsuccessfully, to find work by enquiring in a shop. The further events in this chapter can be summarised as follows. She seeks employment, again unsuccessfully, at a “pretty little house”. She seeks help at a parsonage. A housekeeper tells her that the clergyman has been called away on the sudden death of his father and will be three miles away at Marsh End. She calls again at the shop and attempts to barter gloves and/or handkerchief for bread. She fails. Before dark, passing a farmhouse, a farmer gives her some bread. She spends a wretched night in a wood. Towards morning it starts to rain and continues to rain through the day. She makes further unsuccessful attempts to find work. She is given some cold porridge that was being given to the pigs. Feeling that she must die of exposure, she wanders away from the village.
She sees an isolated house, crosses a marsh to reach it and peers in though a window into a lighted room. In the room she sees a “rustic” person and two young graceful women, “ladies in every point”. They are all dressed in mourning clothes. Jane can hear their conversation and discovers that the ladies are called Mary and Diana and the servant, the rustic, is called Hannah. The ladies are translating some German literature. Jane hears Hannah talk of the sudden death of the girls’ father and the expected return of “Mr St. John”. Jane knocks at the door and Hannah answers; Jane asks to speak to the ladies; Hannah, intensely suspicious of this late night caller, refuses. She tells Jane to go away and shuts the door. Jane collapses. St John returns and takes Jane in. He and the girls, his sisters, are sympathetic. The provide some food. Jane, “anxious to avoid discovery”, says she is called Jane Elliott. After some discussion, St John and sisters tell Hannah to prepare a bed and they help Jane upstairs and into a warm, dry bed.
111.3
Jane is semi-conscious for three days. On waking on the fourth day, she finds her clothes cleaned and goes downstairs. She meets Hannah in the kitchen – the members of the Rivers family have gone out for a walk. Jane criticizes Hannah for turning her away the night before. Jane makes it clear that she is not a beggar woman. Hannah apologizes, then tells Jane about the Rivers family. Their father lost his fortune in a business deal and died just three weeks ago. Mary and Diana have been obliged to work as governesses. The Rivers are an “ancient” family and have lived at Marsh End house for generations. St John, the eldest of the three children of “Old Mr Rivers”, is the parson of the nearby parish of Morton – Jane had called at that parsonage.
When St John, Mary and Diana return, the ladies, seeing Jane up and helping in the kitchen, express concern, Diana takes the lead in this. Jane particularly warms to Diana. Left alone in the parlour Jane describes how strikingly handsome St John is. He is tall, slim and between twenty eight to thirty. He is like a perfect statue: he has a “Greek face” and an “Athenian mouth”. Despite his air of calm placidity, Jane senses that within there are elements within him that are “restless or hard or eager”.
Jane gives the Rivers a brief personal history, but refuses to reveal her real name or any details about her former employer. She refers to her time at Lowood – St John knows of the school and of the Rev. Brocklehurst. She claims to have no ties and no family connections in England. She asks for help looking for work of any kind. She confesses that Jane Elliott is not her real name, but she wishes to be known by that name. Mary and Diana assure Jane that she can stay with them. St. John is firm but charitable, albeit in a rather cold and dutiful way. He promises to help.
111.4
Jane quickly becomes friends with Mary and Diana. They share books and conversation, Jane teaches them drawing, and they all enjoy the moorland landscape. Most of the other females in Jane Eyre St John remains distant and uncommunicative. Jane senses a lack of serenity in him and notes his brooding nature. Jane goes to his church and hears him preach an impressive sermon, but a sermon that preaches harsh doctrines. Jane feels that the stern, harsh elements in his sermon reflect unresolved and troubled dimensions within himself.
A month passes in this way, but then Mary and Diana must leave for their jobs as governesses in wealthy households. St John speaks rather obliquely of feeling himself to be an “alien from his native country” and anticipates a “cross of separation” that will take him away. When his sisters leave, he will return to his parsonage at Morton and Moor House will be shut up. St John offers Jane a position running a girls school for the poor children of his parish in Morton. The pay and lodgings are basic, but Jane is glad for the job's independence, so she accepts. He refers to a Mr Oliver, a wealthy factory owner “in the valley”. His daughter, Rosamund, provides financial support for the school.
Soon after, a letter arrives informing St John, Mary and Diana that their wealthy uncle John (their mother’s brother) has just died and left them nothing, with his fortune
going to an unknown "other relation." They tell Jane that it was their uncle who led their father into his disastrous business failure.
The next day, Jane leaves for the school, St John, taking Hannah with him, returns to his parsonage and Diana and Mary leave for the work as governesses at “distant B----“.
111.5
Jane starts work at her school. She has twenty ‘scholars’. Three of them can’t read and none of them can write. While Jane believes that personal potential is not limited to social class, she is very aware of class distinctions. She feels “degraded” since this particular teaching role has lowered her in “the scale of social existence”. She is dismayed by “the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw around me”. However, she reflects that she is far better to have “sank” in this way than “to have sunk down in the silken snare” of being Rochester's mistress; far better to adhere to “principle and law” rather than give way to passion, to “the insane promptings of a frenzied moment”. Now she can feel, notwithstanding the drop in “social scale”, that, as a “village-school mistress”, she is “free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England”. The Continental alternative would have made her a “slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles”.
St John visits Jane on the evening of her first day of teaching. He wants to see how she has settled in to the associated house and the job. As he does so he reveals a lot about himself. He talks of his own struggles with “the workings of inclination” and the need to “turn the bent of nature”. There are clear parallels here with Jane’s own divided self with her opposition between passion and principle. St John’s own inclination is such that the “uniform duties” of a country parson leave him deeply unfulfilled. He seeks a more heroic, adventurous life and has decided that he can achieve that by becoming a missionary. Once he has settled a number of matters and “broken through or cut asunder… an entanglement or two of the feelings” he will be leaving “Europe for the East”.
At this point a beautiful young woman arrives. This is Rosamund Oliver, the heiress to the fortune accumulated by her factory owning father. Jane describes her in close detail. Jane sees that St John’s reaction to Rosamund shows that Rosamund is the source of the “entanglement of the feelings” that he referred to. As Rosamund pats the head of St John’s dog. Carlo, Jane sees in St John’s face a “glow’, in his “solemn eye” she sees “sudden fire” and “restless emotion”. At the same time she sees the power of his will to curb such feelings. Jane, too, has denied her impulses but she would not use the rather reductive terminology of “an entanglement” of feelings. Hers is an abiding love, but one that is forbidden. She lives with the pain of both feeling the love and forbidding its fulfilment. St John, on the other hand, speaks in much more punitive and violent terms when he talks of breaking through and cutting asunder.
Rosamund invites St John to call at their house, Vale Hall, this evening to visit her father. Clearly, this is also an invitation to come to Vale Hall in order to spend time with her. Although pressed to do so, he turns down the invitation.
111.6
As the days pass, Jane starts to enjoy her teaching. Her pupils start to make progress and she becomes a respected figure in the community. She enjoys her new life, but is unsettled by persistent and stirring dreams. She describes these dreams as “many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy”. The dreams are rich in “unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with … risk and romantic chance”. In these dreams she often encounters Mr Rochester, “always at some exciting crisis”.
Rosamund makes frequent visits to the school, conveniently arriving when St John is also there. Once again, Jane notices that St. John is visibly affected by Rosamond's presence. Jane imagines him saying to himself, concerning Rosamund, “I love you” but that his “heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged around it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed”. Jane also points out to her reader that Rosamund, notwithstanding her exceptional beauty and charm, “was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive”.
Rosamund notices Jane’s artistic materials. She wants a portrait of herself and Jane delights in making a sketch of “so perfect and radiant a model”. This leads to Mr Oliver calling to see the portrait. This pleases him so much that he invites Jane to spend an evening at Vale Hall. During this visit, Jane hears Mr Oiver speak highly of the Rivers family. From this Jane concludes that Mr Oliver would have no objection to Rosamund marrying St John.
Jane offers the portrait to St. John, hoping to learn more about his feelings. At first he is reluctant to acknowledge that it is a portrait of Rosamund. Jane persists in making him acknowledge his feelings for Rosamund. She even says that he ought to marry her. He welcomes this opportunity to talk about Rosamund but he allows hiself only a quarter of an hour to do so. He even takes out a watch to time himself. He then speaks of all the sensuous and enchanting pleasures that would flow from a marriage to Rosamund. However, once the fifteen minutes are up, he refers to all he imagined in that time as “delirium and delusion”. He then makes the basic point that he and Rosamund are such different types and that she could never be a missionary’s wife. Notwithstanding the degree of instinctive arousal he experiences when in Rosamund’s company he dismisses it as a “fever of the flesh”, not a “convulsion of the soul”. As he prepares to leave, St John spots something on the edge of Jane’s drawing paper. He tears off a corner of it and, looking agitated, leaves abruptly. Jane, confused, can’t understand the significance of the act.
111.7
The following night, St John struggles through deep snow to visit Jane He tells her a story which, to Jane's astonishment, is her own personal history. St John had been contacted by a solicitor, a Mr Briggs (John Eyre’s solicitor, see vol. II, chapter 10). Mr Briggs had been trying to discover the whereabouts of Jane Eyre since she has inherited a fortune on the death of her Uncle John Eyre. Mr Briggs’s letter had explained the Rochester and Thornfield context leading to Jane’s disappearance. After Jane disappeared from Thornfield, an urgent message arrived that said that her uncle John Eyre had died and left her a fortune of 20,000 pounds.
St John explains why he had been contacted by Mr Briggs. St. John tells Jane that his full name is St. John Eyre Rivers. His mother was Jane's father's sister, so St. John, Mary and Diana are all Jane's cousins. St. John says he pieced together Jane ‘Elliott’s’ true identity from the scrap of drawing paper he had picked up. The paper had shown her signature, "Jane Eyre." Jane is overjoyed to find that she has three cousins. She decides to split her fortune four ways and give £5,000 to each of her cousins. She tells St John to write to Diana and Mary and inform them of their good fortune. They should give up their work as governesses and return to Moor House where Jane will live with them.
Given that Uncle John Eyre was a wealthy merchant and had dealings with Mr Mason, the plantation owner, we could assume that these dealings were profitable and were in some ways dependent on the slave trade. Thus a case can be made for both Rochester and Jane’s money being tainted by its links to the slave trade.
( Here is one way of keeping the family relationships clear: Take four men: a Mr Reed, a Rev Eyre and his brother, John Eyre, and a Mr Rivers. Mr Reed marries Miss Gibson; they have three children, John, Georgina and Eliza. Mr Reed’s sister marries the Rev Eyre; they have one child, Jane Eyre. John Eyre does not marry and has no children. The Rev Eyre’s sister marries Mr Rivers; they have three children, St John, Diana and Mary.)
111.8
When the winter holidays arrive, Jane closes her school, though she promises her pupils that she will return each week and give them a lesson for an hour. She refers to their “unsophisticated hearts” though, notwithstanding Jane’s various other patronising remarks about “rustics”, she praises the “British peasantry” as the “best taught, best mannered and most self-respecting of any in Europe”. We saw an earlier indication of this ‘Little Englander’ sense of British superiority over Continental Europe when Jane had contrasted life in a “fool’s paradise at Marseilles” with life in “a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England”.
Jane, returns to Moor House and with the help of Hannah spends a week going to great lengths to prepare the house for the return of Diana and Mary. On the day of their return, St John arrives first and, whilst respecting the amount of housework Jane has done, he questions whether it was really worth so much effort before sitting down to read a book. This response prompts Jane to reflect on St John’s “hard and cold” character. She sees that he would not be a good husband for Rosamund. His feeling for her was purely “a love of the senses”. He is the type of man “from which nature hews her heroes”, her lawgivers, her statesmen her conquerors. However, in a domestic setting by a fireside he was often “a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place”.
Jane spends a happy Christmas with Mary and Diana. St John on the other hand, is distant and cold. Asked about Rosamund, St. John tells them she has recently married a wealthy aristocrat. He also says that his departure from England was now fixed “for the ensuing year”.
One day, whilst Jane is studying German, St John suggests that she learn "Hindostanee" instead — the language he's studying for his missionary work in India. Jane agrees, and notes that she feels as if St. John is slowly gaining a strong influence over her. He, prompted by Diana, starts to give Jane a chaste, brotherly goodnight kiss. Jane becomes more and more involved in learning Hindi and reflects that she never thought of resisting him. More generally, she thinks that her response to “positive, hard characters” is always one of either “absolute submission” or “determined revolt”.
Jane assures the reader that she has not forgotten about Rochester. She longs to know how and where he is. Two letters to Mrs Fairfax bring no reply. One summer day, a day in which Jane is particularly tearful over hearing nothing from Mrs Fairfax, St John insists that Jane should take a walk with him. They walk into the nearby hills and into a glen. St John says that he will be leaving in six weeks and proposes that Jane should come with him as a missionary’s wife. Jane realises that she has some of the qualities needed to fill the role but theirs would not be a true marriage, it would be a mutual act of self-sacrifice to what St John regards as a call from God. She tells him that she would only be willing to go as his sister. This is unacceptable for St John. She must go as his wife. He will be away for a fortnight saying farewell to friends in Cambridge and during that time he wants her to consider his offer of marriage. He says that if she rejects him then she rejects God and in doing so she could be “numbered with those who have denied their faith and are worse than infidels”. That evening he does not give Jane a customary goodnight kiss. Jane rushes after him and seeks a reconciling handshake. She still sees him as a friend. With a “cold, loose touch”, he shakes her hand. When Jane asks if he forgives her, he replies that he has nothing to forgive since he has not been offended. He is too far above ordinary human feelings. Jane says “I would much rather he had knocked me down”.
111.9
St John decides to delay his Cambridge trip for a week. Jane analyses the subtle way that St John manages to punish her. On the one hand, he is superior to gratification through vengeance – he makes no hostile acts nor uses “upbraiding words” – but his looks and the “air” he created between them ‘said’ that Jane was out of favour. Notwithstanding the things she admires about St John, she sees a division in him between “the corrupt man” and the ”pure Christian”. She now sees him as cold marble rather than warm flesh; his ‘eye’ is a “cold blue gem”. For Jane, this cold estrangement between them becomes a “lingering torture”. She sees how if she were married to him, his very purity would “kill” her whilst his “crystal conscience” would be free from stain. Any effort she makes at reconciliation meets with no response.
On the evening before his departure for Cambridge, Jane attempts to make friends with him. She refers to his departure for India. At this, St John expresses surprise, exclaiming and asking, “What! Do you not go to India?” Their dialogue continues with St John challenging Jane on her refusal to go as his wife – she continues to say that she will go as his assistant. He, for his part, speaks as if she has broken a promise to go with him. Their conversation leads to Jane saying that she can go nowhere until she has resolved the “painful doubt” that she has long endured. He realises that this is a reference to Mr Rochester. He says that this “interest” is “lawless and unconsecrated” and ought to have been “crushed” long since. He now feels that Jane is ‘lost’, though he had thought of her as “one of the chosen” (this alludes to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination according to which souls are predestined to be saved or damned). He says he will pray for her and walks away (they are in the garden).
Jane goes into the house, visibly upset. Diana, who has seen her in conversation with St John, expresses concern. Jane then tells her about St John’s proposal to take her to India as his wife. Diana, who would welcome the marriage if it led to life in England, is wholeheartedly against the idea of Jane going to India. This conversation leads to more qualified praise from Jane for St John. Although a “good and great man” he “forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people in pursuing his own large views.”
That evening, before prayers, St John reads a passage from the New Testament, from Revelations, the 21st chapter. The chapter begins, “Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth, I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Jane finds St John’s way of reading these consoling lines very impressive in its “noble simplicity”. She feels that his fine voice had never sounded so “sweet and full”. However, the passage from Revelations goes on to warn that “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur”. As he reads these lines, he does so with a special deliberation and looks towards Jane. After prayers, which included prayers for the weak-hearted who, even at the eleventh hour, could turn from the temptations of the world, the sisters go to bed and Jane is left alone with St John. He mentions the proposed marriage as part of God’s plan and urges Jane to choose “the better part” and fulfil that plan. He speaks earnestly and mildly and lays his hand on her head as a “pastor” would in recalling “lost sheep. For a moment she is overcome with religious emotion. Angels beckon, God commands. She seems to see beyond death into eternity and is on the verge of agreeing to go as his wife. Yet, not quite. She tells him that she is not certain that it would be God’s will. She appeals to Heaven for guidance and at this point she experiences an “inexpressible feeling” that thrilled her heart and she hears a voice somewhere cry, “Jane! Jane! Jane!” She recognises it as the voice of Rochester expressing pain and woe. She rushes out into the garden and calls out, “Where are you?” Jane feels that this strange phenomenon is the work of “nature” and not deception or witchcraft.
St John, puzzled by her behaviour, follows her into the garden. The submission before him that she felt only moments ago is replaced by a forceful Jane. She commands him to leave her alone. He obeys her at once, such was her “energy to command”. Jane goes to her bedroom and kneels down and prays but in a different way to St John. Instead of clear-cut divinely willed plans, intellectually conceived, Jane feels her way into a presence and intuitively senses a “Mighty Spirit” to which her soul “rushes out in gratitude”. She is now determined to rise at first light and respond to the call of the voice.
Ferndean
111.10-12
111.10
As Jane prepares to leave to go to Thornfield, St. John slips a note under her door urging her to resist temptation. He says he expects her decision in a fortnight when he returns. He will pray for her since he knows that though her spirit be willing, her flesh is weak. Jane, however, feels that her flesh is strong enough “to accomplish the will of Heaven”. Recalling the voice she heard, she is convinced that it was an inspiration and not a delusion.
She makes the long coach journey (36 hours!) from the signpost at Whitfield to near Thornfield. The coach is the same as the one that took her to Thornfield a year ago. As she approaches her destination, she recognises the “green hedges and large fields… the low pastoral hills of the Thornfield country” and contrasts them with the “stern, north-midland moors of Morton”. The coach stops at a wayside inn to water the horses and, having discovered that Thornfield is only two miles away, Jane decides to walk there.
Full of anxious anticipation as she approaches the Hall, Jane finds the house in ruins just as she “had once seen it in a dream”. She returns to the inn and after questioning the “host”, who had once worked as butler at Thornfield for Rochester’s father, she discovers that the hall had been destroyed by fire. Before giving these details, the host refers to the marriage that did not take place between Rochester and “that midge of a governess” – whom he blames for Rochester becoming profoundly depressed and living a reclusive life. He also says that Rochester became “quite savage on his disappointment”, and whilst, “never a mild man”, “he got quite dangerous after he lost her”. The host had witnessed the fire and Bertha’s leap to her death from the roof of the blazing building (he, along with others in the community, knew something of the ‘madwoman’ at the hall but knew no more than local gossip of her identity – “some believed she had been his mistress”) He also describes Rochester’s heroic efforts to lead his servants to safety out of the blazing building as well as his attempts to persuade Bertha to come down from the roof. As a result of these actions, Rochester lost his sight and so badly injured his hand that Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it. Jane discovers that Rochester lives a reclusive life nearby in the house (previously referred to) known as Ferndean. Jane makes immediate arrangements to go there.
111.11
Jane travels to Ferndean, which is deep in the forest. She decides to walk the final mile to the house. It is now evening, just before dark. There is a cold wind and “small penetrating rain.” The path takes her through a gloomy wood before she enters a clearing and sees the house. Rochester comes out of the house and she is near enough to note his appearance. He remains “strong and stalwart” and her description emphasises his “athletic strength”. However, his face has changed: he looks “desperate and brooding” like a “fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach”. By the movement of his head and his outreaching right arm, Jane sees him as trying to sense what lies around him. Jane then sees John, the coachman from Thorndean, come out and offer to lead Rochester in out of the rain. Rochester tells him to leave him alone. John goes in and Rochester follows shortly after.
Jane knocks and the door is opened by Mary, John’s wife. Jane explains that she knows about the fire at Thornfield and all that it entailed. Jane goes from the kitchen to the parlour carrying a glass of water for Rochester. Jane enters the parlour and offers him the water. He recognizes Jane's voice and thinks at first that she is an illusion, but, becoming more and more convinced that he is not dreaming, he catches her hand and takes her into his arms.
Jane tells Rochester about her new wealth and assures him that she will stay with him to care for him. She expects that this ‘staying with him’ would be as his wife and she is somewhat dismayed that he has not yet asked her to marry him. Jane then comes to realise that he has not mentioned marriage because as a “sightless block”, he considers himself no longer eligible as a husband. Jane reassures him. She says that she is in danger of loving him even more because of his injuries. Although he does not mention it, one must assume that he thinks that Jane has been informed by Mary and John concerning all that happened at Thornfield. In particular, he must think that Jane knows that he is now a widower.
After supper. Rochester wants to find out about who Jane has been with. In Scheherazade fashion, Jane says she will leave her tale half-told and will continue it tomorrow.
The next day Jane leads him out of the “wet and wild woods” into “cheerful fields”. There she tells him of her post-Thornfield experiences, softening the account of her three days of wandering and near starvation. Her account of life at Moor House prompts Rochester to make repeated enquiries concerning St John and her feelings towards him. Before making it clear that there was no love between them, she expresses strong admiration for him and says that he wanted to marry her. This delay in making this clear produces something of a re-run of Rochester using Blanche to provoke jealousy in Jane. Finally, once Jane’s feelings for St John are clarified, Rochester asks Jane to marry him and she accepts.
Rochester tells Jane about his relationship with God. He feels punished for intending to involve Jane in a bigamous marriage. He now sees Jane’s departure as the work of the Omnipotent and the fire as the work of Divine justice (including the death of Bertha?). One evening, asking for God's help, he had involuntarily called out for "Jane! Jane! Jane!" and felt as if he heard her respond with, “I am coming, wait for me” and “Where are you?”. Jane reminds the Reader that these are the very words she heard and replied to on the night before her departure from Moor House. She says nothing of this to Rochester for she feels that the “coincidence” seems “too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed.” Having expressed thanks to God for the reality of Jane’s return, he stand up, takes off his hat, reverently bows his head and makes a prayer: “I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto.” Jane then acting as his prop, leads him homeward.
111.12
The final chapter begins with the famous line: "Reader, I married him".” Remaining at Ferndean, Jane and Rochester have a small, quiet wedding and live in perfect harmony. She reveals that as she writes it is ten years since their marriage. Jane never tires of guiding her husband, reading aloud to him, and describing the landscape to him. She now refers to him as “my Edward” rather than “my Master”.
She gives her Reader “one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have frequently occurred in this narrative”. After an unhappy experience at one school and a move to a better school, Adele has had a “sound English education” which “corrected in a great measure her French defects” (!) – see the earlier comment on the superiority of the English peasantry over their continental equivalents. Diana and Mary have been happily married. The couples visit each other once a year. As for St John, Jane had told him, by letter, of her marriage. He had not replied, though six months later, he wrote back though without mentioning Jane’s marriage. Since then they have kept up a regular though not frequent correspondence.
After two years of marriage, some improvement in Rochester’s sight was noted and he eventually recovered the sight in one eye. As a result, he was able to see their “first born”, a son.
Jane ends what she had called her “autobiography” with praise for St John’s missionary work in India. The laudatory adjectives accumulate: he is “Firm, faithful and devoted”; he is a “high master spirit”; he is likened to the “warrior Greatheart” from Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. In language that will strike us as insensitive to the rich traditions of Hindu thought, St John is said to work for the benefit of the Indian people by clearing “their painful way to improvement” and hewing down “like a giant the principles of creed and caste that encumber” their way to improvement. Jane refers to the last letter she received from him. In it, he anticipated his approaching death which he sees as the way to his “sure reward, his incorruptible crown.” Just as Jane responded to the voice of her earthly Master (“Jane, Jane”) , so St John in his final letter says that his heavenly Master has called him and he has replied, “Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!”