Bertha Mason Quotes

While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have pointed out the door whence the accents issued…the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was a high room, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation, but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 11. As Jane tries to settle into her new life at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax shows her around the house. Jane hears a strange and unnatural laugh echoing through the property. Mrs. Fairfax tells her it is from Grace Poole, an eccentric servant. The laugh spooks Jane who at first thinks that it is from a ghost and there is no Grace Poole. Then at Mrs. Fairfax’s call Grace appears out of a nearby room. The incident is foreshadowing of the Gothic horrors to come and that everything is not as it appears at Thornfield. The laugher is actually that of Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s insane wife, who is kept hidden and locked away in the attic.

When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh. There were days when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could not account for the sound she made.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 12. When Jane is pacing through the Gothic mansion of Thornfield, she hears frequently the eeric laugh that she believes to be that of the eccentric Grace Poole. What Jane doesn’t realize yet is that the laughter and strange sounds she often hears are from the madwoman in the attic Bertha Mason.

During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk – a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. “You like Thornfield?” she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows. “Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!”
“I will like it,” said I. “I dare like it.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Rochester makes this speech to Jane after they ascend the avenue at Thornfield and he stops and lifts his eyes up to the battlements. His eyes are said to reflect pain and shame as he refers to the as yet unknown hag he describes as “my destiny.” The hag is Bertha, the secret wife he keeps locked in his attic. Using a simile Rochester compares the hag to the witches of Macbeth, giving an other-worldly and Gothic atmosphere to the passage. Like Macbeth, Rochester too has a wife who went mad.

This was a demoniac laugh – low, suppressed, and deep – utter, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber-door. The head of my bed was near the door and, I thought at first the goblin-laughter stood at my bedside – or rather crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked around and could see nothing; while, as I gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; and my next again to cry out, “Who is there?”
Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up to the gallery toward the third-story staircase: a door had lately been made to shut in that staircase; I heard it open and close and all was still.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. While trying to sleep in the early hours of the morning, Jane is disturbed by a presence outside her bedroom. She hears an unnatural laugh that sounds like it has come from a demon. Unknownst to Jane, Rochester’s wife Bertha Mason has escaped from the attic and is prowling the halls of Thornfield.

Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. After seeing smoke coming from Mr. Rochester’s bedroom, Jane rushes in to discover his bed engulfed in flames and the curtains on fire. We later learn that the fire was started by Rochester’s wife Bertha Mason. This is foreshadowing of the burning of Thornfield Hall by the violently insane Bertha.

I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been concealed. This door was open; a light shown out of the room within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling…I walked round to the other side of the large bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber. An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat at it, dressed with the exception of his coat: he was still; his head leant back; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face – the stranger, Mason: I saw, too, that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in blood.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. The Gothic aspect of the novel comes across strongly in this passage, as Richard Mason is discovered soaked in blood and the snarling of a wild beast is heard. The dark, the candlelight, the pale and lifeless face, heighten the Gothic atmosphere of menace and threat from some mysterious force. We find out later that Mason was attacked by his sister Bertha.

What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner? – what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman’s face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Jane asks herself this as she watches the injured body of Richard Mason, who has been stabbed and bitten in the middle of the night. She wonders what manner of mysterious creature with its demonic scream and wearing a woman’s face is prowling the halls of Thornfield. Jane will later learn that the bed burning incident and wounding of Richard Mason were carried out not by a demon, but by Rochester’s insane wife Bertha. She is cloistered in the highest place within Thornfield Hall.

She bit me…She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her…She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Jane overhears Richard Mason telling Rochester and the doctor how he was victim to a bestial and vampiric attack.
It turns out to be Mason’s sister Bertha – Rochester’s wife – who stabbed him with a knife in the arm and bit him. Using a simile, Mason describes his crazy sister as being “like a tigress.”

I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb – my pet lamb – so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Rochester assures Jane that when he left her alone with Richard Mason for a number of hours she was safe with the door secured. He uses a series of metaphors to compare Jane to a vulnerable lamb, himself to the caring shepherd and Bertha Mason to a predatory wolf. His contempt for and resentment towards his secret wife Bertha is evident here. He also sees Jane as one of his possessions, referring to her as his “pet.”

On sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear…I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking…I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms…I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches that I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me…I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. As they are about to be married, Jane tells Rochester about two dreams she had the previous night. In the first she is on a long and dark road trying to reach Rochester, while a small terrified and crying child clings to her neck and impedes her progress. The second dream takes her to Rochester’s Gothic ancestral manor, destroyed and in ruin, and she loses her balance and drops the child as Rochester rides away from her. Jane’s prophetic dreams are foreshadowing of the end of Thornfield Hall when Bertha sets fire to the place, and also of trouble ahead in her relationship with Rochester. Jane has the ability to foresee the future in her dreams.

She took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. On the night before the are due to wed, Jane tells Rochester how she woke up the previous night to find a strange woman in her room. We hear how the woman takes Jane’s wedding veil from the closet, puts it on her head and turns to the mirror. After gazing at herself she takes off the veil, rips it in two and tramples it on the floor. This foreshadows the existence of Rochester’s wife and that he is already married to Bertha Mason.

Fearful and ghastly to me – oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face – it was a savage face…the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?…Of the foul German spectre – the Vampyre.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. The night before Jane and Rochester’s wedding is an eventful and frightening one for her, as a fearful-looking woman enters her bedroom. Jane doesn’t know yet that it is Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife. Jane describes her features in monstrous and supernatural terms, with savage face, swollen lips and bloodshot eyes, and reminding her of a vampire! Bertha Mason, a mad woman of Creole heritage kept under lock and key in Rochester’s attic, is demonized here.

“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment…It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage; Mr. Rochester has a wife now living.” My nerves vibrated to these low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder – my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire…I looked at Mr. Rochester; I made him look at me…He disavowed nothing…Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognize in me a human being, he only twined my waste with his arm, and riveted me to his side.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. Rochester’s secret that he aleady has a wife is ironically revealed at the altar of his wedding ceremony with Jane. It happens moments before they are to take their vows together and Jane is about to marry a bigamist. The heartbreaking news is delivered by London solicitor Mr. Briggs who interrupts the ceremony just as the clergyman asks Rochester will he take Jane for his wedded wife. It seems that Rochester married Creole woman Bertha Mason fifteen years earlier in Jamaica.

You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. After being outed as already married at his wedding ceremony to Jane, Rochester pities himself. Claiming he was forced into marriage by his father, he tells Jane that his wife Bertha Mason is mad and comes from a family of idiots and maniacs going back three generations. He demonizes Bertha, suggesting she is less than human, and invites Jane to come to the house and see the patient for herself.

He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third story: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and pictorial cabinet.
“You know this place, Mason,” said our guide; “she bit and stabbed you here.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. Rochester is leading Jane up to the third floor of Thornfield to see his mad wife Bertha Mason, who is kept in a locked room. This passage evokes a very Gothic atmosphere, as Rochester’s skeleton in the closet is about to be revealed.

In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not tell: it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing; and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face…the hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind feet.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. Jane meets Bertha. She describes her as a monstrous figure, groveling on all fours and with grizzled long hair, running backwards and forwards. This is Rochester’s legal wife, but portrayed in inhuman terms and not at all as a woman. A simile compares her to a wild animal. She is the source of all the mysterious sounds and happenings that Jane has experienced during her stay at Thornfield. Bertha is dehumanized here. Since because of her mental disability she is unable to act like a proper woman and wife, she is depicted as non-human.

“That is my wife,” said he. “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know – such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And this is what I wished to have” (laying his hand on my shoulder): “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder – this face with that mask – this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the Gospel and man of the law, and remember, with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. Rochester gives his reasons for attempting to remarry while he already has a wife. Introducing Bertha to Jane, he portrays her as a grotesque monster, her physical appearance reflecting her inner madness. She has “red balls” for eyes, a “mask” for a face, and “bulk” for a body. Jane by contrast has “clear eyes,” a proper “face,” and “form.” To Rochester Bertha is no human wife but a devil from the “mouth of hell.” He challenges religious priests and lawyers to judge him for his bigamous attempt to marry Jane.

Though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester explains himself to Jane about imprisoning his mad wife in a room in the attic at Thornfield. He attempts to humanize his actions by saying that he could have housed her in Ferndean Manor, an old house full of dampness and hidden in a wood.

“The paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on – ”
“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate – with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel – she cannot help being mad.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester’s rage is directed at his wife Blanche. He has no sympathy for her, to him she’s the monster. Even though, like him, she is the victim of an arranged marriage, he displays his hated for her. Jane reproaches Rochester for speaking badly about Bertha.

I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester tells Jane the story of his wife Bertha, a woman of Creole descent. He was shipped to Jamaica to wed her in a marriage arranged by his “avaricious, grasping” father. His father had left his estate to Rochester’s older brother, so the father arranged for Rochester to marry a wealthy woman. Bertha was supposted to receive a fortune of thirty thousand pounds from her father. Bertha was a beautiful woman and Rochester was dazzled by her and thought he loved her.

My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too – a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me.
These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger – when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile – when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders…I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them; and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had – and what giant propensities!

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester is describing his clandestine wife Bertha Mason, the mad woman in the attic. Only after he wed her in a marriage arranged by his father, did he learn of her violence and temper. He also discovered that her mother was mad and shut up in a lunatic asylum. He describes his wife’s behavioral and cognitive decline during their first four years of marriage.

To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery; you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly; I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first…shown to you, not my resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity, and to give me yours; Jane – give it to me now.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Explaining his deceit in not disclosing that he had a wife, Rochester admits to Jane that he is a flawed man. He accepts that he was a coward and should have trusted her with the truth about his “demon” wife. Rochester is not the typical romantic hero. He is a moody and brooding Byronic hero who is rough, flawed and haunted by his dark secret. His strong love for Jane speaks loudly in this passage.

It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma’am; he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out before him. As he came down the great stair-case at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash – all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt…He is now helpless, indeed – blind and a cripple.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 36. Jane is told by the inn owner that after Bertha Mason set fire to Thornfield, Mr. Rochester bravely saved the servants from the burning house. He tried to save Bertha, but she jumped from the roof to her death. Rochester lost his sight and one of his hands in the fire, Jane hears.
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