That sky expanded before me, – a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 12. On her way back from posting the letter in Hay, Jane lingers at the gates of Thornfield, gazes up at the sky and contemplates the ascending moon and the trembling stars that follow its course. She finds the experience liberating. This world to Jane appears “fathomless” and measureless” as she continues her search for freedom and identity and independence. There is also a sense that something momentous has happened – she soon discovers that the man she met and helped on the way back to Thornfield was her employer.