Jane Eyre Quotes

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.

The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded – not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but – mechanically to take off the wedding dress and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. After having her heart broken at the altar and learning that Mr. Rochester has a wife who is mad, Jane calmly takes off her wedding dress. She metaphorically shuts herself in, closing down her emotions. The word “mechanically” emphasizes her machine-like, emotionless response to her happiness being undone. Jane will sacrifice happiness with Rochester rather than her moral principles.

Jane Eyre, who has been an ardent, expectant woman – almost a bride – was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate…I looked at my love; that feeling which was my master’s – which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms – it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted – confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been, for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: THAT I perceived well.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. Jane speaks about herself in the third person, so deeply affected is she by her ordeal. She has learned that Mr. Rochester cannot marry her because he is already married. Rochester has gone from being her religious idol to someone sadly too human. Following his deception she feels alone and lost once more. Using a simile, she likens the love she has for Rochester to a sick and anguished child suffering in a cold cradle. She refuses to label him a betrayer or wicked, but says that he failed her by being less than truthful. Jane’s moral principles have decided that she must leave him.

My hopes were all dead – struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid – corpses that could never revive.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. To a despairing Jane it is the death of hope, when her wedding to Rochester is called off because of his mad wife Bertha. In a Biblical allusion she compares their love to the dead first-born of the Egyptians who perished in the tenth plague.

Self-abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me – a remembrance of God.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 26. When Jane learns the shocking truth about Rochester’s wife she returns to the solitude of her room. The metaphor of a Biblical deluge is used to convey Jane’s emotional anguish and feelings of loss. The flood is seen as divine punishment for Rochester’s sin against God and Jane’s weakness in loving him more than religion.

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, “What am I to do?”
But the answer my mind gave – “Leave Thornfield at once” – was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears…I could not bear such words now. “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe,” I alleged, “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.”
But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. When Jane wakens in the afternoon, her mind is in torment is in torment. After finding out that Rochester already has a wife, she faces a difficult and painful decision. She has to decide whether to live with a married man she is passionately in love with, or leave him forever. Her conscience wins over passion and she decides to leave Thornfield immediately.

Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester pleads with Jane to forgive him after it is revealed that he is already married. The passage contains a Biblical allusion to 2 Samuel 12:3 – “The poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.”

Reader! – I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot. There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and, besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien – I forgave him all; yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. After Jane’s wedding to Rochester is interrupted by the announcement that he already has a wife, he asks will she ever forgive him. Jane sees the deep remorse and love in his eyes and she forgives him – not in words, but in her heart. However that doesn’t mean she is going to remain under the same roof with him.

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.

“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?”
“I do indeed, sir.”
“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still…you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. After the discovery of his mad wife, Rochester is desperate to hold onto Jane and her love. She wonders out loud would she suffer the same fate if she went mad like Bertha. Rochester assures her of his love, promising that she would as dear to him in sickness and in pain. He makes passionate and romantic declarations of his deep affection, metaphorically describing Jane as his treasure. After these words he pleads with her to move to him to a villa in the south of France, where she will be Mrs. Rochester “both virtually and nominally.”

“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s strength, and break the entanglement like tow!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane is resisting Rochester’s plea to Jane to leave England with him for the south of France, where they can live as man and wife. The “hitch” in Jane’s character is her moral code, which won’t allow her be Rochester’s mistress as his wife is still alive. The reel of silk he talks of is a metaphor for the smooth and loving relationship they have had until now. The knot in the reel is Jane’s morality and Rochester wishes that he had the strength of Sampson to untie it.

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.

Last January, rid of all mistresses – in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life – corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against all womankind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came back to England.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester stikes a cynical and bitter note, as he tells Jane how he came back to England following his disastrous marriage to Bertha. He felt lonely and isolated and had given up his dream of a loving and faithful woman.

You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent…ere long I found you full of strange contrasts…Very soon you seemed to get used to me – I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner…you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure, at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. The day after Rochester’s deception as a married man is revealed, he appeals to Jane to understand his circumstances, forgive him and stay with him. He indicates that he knows her at a deep level, a woman who understands and is compatible with him. His profound love for Jane is shown in this passage.

I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade – the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester recalls how he began to love Jane. He compares her metaphorically to a flower, which he feared would fade if he did not handle her carefully. He did not realize then that Jane was no fragile flower, but was an indestructible gem, metaphorically speaking.
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