“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you – you’d forget me.”
“That I never should, sir: you know” – impossible to proceed.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 23. Rochester speaks of the deep physical connection he has to Jane. He uses a striking simile with the image of a cord binding them together to convey the intensity of bond which unites them. He expresses the fear that if Jane travels hundreds of miles away to a job in Ireland, that cord will snap and she will forget him. Jane’s immediate response to that is – never! Rochester, who has told Jane that he is to marry Miss Ingram, is actually trying to determine Jane’s true feelings for him. This passage about the physical bond between them is foreshadowing of a supernatural occurance in Chapter 35, when Jane has left Rochester and is in Moor House – she hears the voice of Rochester calling her and she returns.