Jane Eyre Character Quotes

To be privileged to put my arms round what I value – to press my lips to what I love – to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. When Jane is reunited with Rochester she openly declares her love for him. He has suggested that she is sacrificing herself to wait on a crippled man twenty years her senior. But Jane dismisses the idea, saying that it is a privilege and not a sacrifice to love him. This quote shows the depth of Jane’s love for Rochester.

I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Jane tells Rochester that she loves him even more now, after he tells her that she will have to “bear with my infirmities…”overlook my deficiencies.” Jane wants to take care of him and Rocheser for his part admits that he is now more willing “to be helped – to be led.” Rochester’s injuries and the fact that he now needs Jane have made their relationship more equal. Equality is very important to Jane.

“As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice – I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was – replied, ‘I am coming: wait for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words – ‘Where are you?’
“I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents – as certain as I live – they were yours!”
Reader, it was on Monday night – near midnight – that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. This passage describes the supernatural connection between Rochester and Jane. He recounts how he called out to her one night through his bedroom window and a voice answered to say they were coming. He feels that he and Jane had met in spirit. Jane confirms that she did indeed hear his voice from afar and spoke those words of reply. This shows that distance could not sever the physical bond between Jane and Rochester.

I, too, had received the mysterious summons; those were the very words by which I had replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in return…If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer; and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Rochester tells Jane of a supernatural experience he had on the previous Monday night in which he spoke to and made a connection with Jane. Jane confirms that she heard Rochester’s “mysterious summons” but decides not to share this information with him because he is “too prone to gloom.”

Reader, I married him.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. The opening sentence of this final chapter is probably the most famous line in Jane Eyre, and one of the most famous lines in English literature. Jane tells us that she has wed Mr. Rochester. A climactic moment, it is also Jane’s most rebelliously defiant moment. She doesn’t say: Reader, he married me. Instead she asserts her gender equality with: Reader, I married him. It is a happy ending for the ultimate love story, a masterpiece of passion and heartbreak, fairytale and gothic horror, tumultuous romance, anger and final peace and contentment. But it is no conventional ending. Thornfield is reduced to ashes. Rochester’s wife has fallen to her death from the roof of the burning house. Rochester is blind and has lost a hand. But out of the ashes of tragedy and torment, the once homeless orphan Jane has found home, family and love with her flawed Byronic hero.

I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. Now ten years married to Rochester, this is Jane’s affirmation of their interdependence. She makes the comment in one of the novel’s final passages, where we learn that she has achieved her happily-ever-after ending. It comes through female empowerment, equality and the love she has always desired. She and Rochester are bonded together by love, we are told. After marrying him as an equal and becoming his carer, she has arrived at the ultimate happiness. Jane’s comment contains a Biblical allusion to Genesis 2:22, in which Adam responds when the Lord presents him with Eve: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” This underlines how pure and spiritual the love between Rochester and Jane is. Here is the full passage from which Jane’s quote is taken: “I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest – blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result.”

We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him; all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result…Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near – that knit us so very close; for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. Jane and Rochester have arrived at the perfect plateau of contentment in their marital togetherness. They are devoted to one another, they depend on each other, love flows through every part of their daily lives. They are in perfect harmony.

He saw nature – he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam – of the landscape before us; of the weather round us and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. A beautiful intimacy develops between Jane and Rochester, as she cares for him and becomes his eyes, through which he is able to see books and the magnificence of nature all around them.

And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad – because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance; he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. Jane speaks of her services to the blind Rochester, becoming his carer, his eyes and his right hand. Rochester accepts help from her because he truly loves her.
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