Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

I insisted on being shown to Mrs. Reed’s sickroom, where I found the once imperious woman still stern and unyielding, pulling her hand away when I bent to kiss her. Over the following days, she ranted about the burden I had been as a child, her hatred of my mother, and her fury at my violent outburst as a ten-year-old. She confessed that after my uncle had written from Madeira asking for my address so he could adopt me and leave me his fortune, she had lied and told him I had died of typhus at Lowood, refusing to let me rise above her. She admitted she had hated me my entire life, and even as she lay dying, could not bring herself to forgive or show me kindness. I offered her full forgiveness, but she rejected it, lapsing into stupor and dying a few days later without reconciling. Eliza was calm and unmoved, surveying her mother’s corpse without a tear, and followed through with her plan to distance herself from Georgiana. Georgiana only wept for the inconvenience of mourning, not for her mother’s death. I left Gateshead with a somber understanding of the cost of a life spent in bitterness and hatred, and the quiet peace of having offered forgiveness even when it was not accepted.

CHAPTER XXII / CHAPTER XXIV

The month Jane Eyre spent at Gateshead Hall after Mrs. Reed’s funeral stretched far beyond the single week Rochester had granted her, first to soothe the selfish, tearful Georgiana until she could depart for London to marry a wealthy, worn-out man of fashion, then to accommodate Eliza, who insisted Jane stay an extra week while she secretly prepared to leave for a French convent, where she would study Catholic dogma and eventually take her vows, rising in time to become the convent’s superior. Jane bore Georgiana’s feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as patiently as she could, even daydreaming that if they were to live together permanently, she would assign Georgiana her fair share of labour and forbid her half-insincere complaints, though she consented to play the forbearing caretaker only because their time together was so short, bracketed by grief. Their final parting with Eliza was curt and unsentimental: Eliza acknowledged Jane had sense, Jane teased that Eliza’s sharp mind would soon be walled up alive in a nunnery, and they went their separate ways, never to cross paths again.

Jane’s journey back to Thornfield was a tedious two-day, hundred-mile trek, her mind first replaying the grim details of Mrs. Reed’s funeral, then mulling the starkly different fates of her cousins—one the cynosure of London ballrooms, the other a cloistered nun—before shifting to anxious anticipation of the home she was returning to. She had avoided arranging a carriage to meet her at Millcote, choosing instead to walk the final stretch alone on a soft, rose-dusted June evening; no warm pull of belonging drew her forward, only the desperate need to see Rochester again, even as she reminded herself he was on the cusp of marrying Blanche Ingram and would soon be lost to her. She found him sitting on a stile at the edge of the Thornfield grounds, writing in a book, and was immediately unstrung, every nerve trembling when he called her over, teasing her for sneaking back like a ghost after a month’s absence. He asked if she’d seen the new carriage he’d bought for his bride, joked that he needed a charm to make him handsome enough for Miss Ingram, and when she murmured a loving eye was all the charm he needed, he gave her one of his rare, warm, sunlit smiles. As she passed him, she was compelled to turn back and blurt that Thornfield was her only home, then rushed off before she could say more, heart pounding.

The fortnight that followed was a quiet, suspended uncertainty: there were no wedding preparations, no trips to Ingram Park twenty miles away, and Rochester was uncharacteristically cheerful whenever they were together, calling for her more often than ever, and Jane loved him more with every passing day, half-convinced the rumors of his marriage to Miss Ingram had been mistaken. The truth came on Midsummer Eve, when Jane wandered into the walled orchard after Adèle fell asleep, drawn by the scent of Rochester’s cigar. She tried to hide when she saw him, but he called her over to examine a large moth, then invited her to walk with him instead of returning to the house. They wandered down to the ancient horse-chestnut tree at the edge of the grounds, and Rochester delivered the blow: she would have to leave Thornfield in a month, he was marrying Miss Ingram, and he had already arranged for her to take a post as governess to five daughters of a Mrs. O’Gall in Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. When they sat on the bench at the tree’s roots, he confessed he felt as if a string were tied under his left ribs, knotted inextricably to a matching string in her small frame, that the Channel and two hundred miles of land between them would snap that cord, and he feared he would bleed inwardly from the loss.

Jane’s carefully held composure shattered. She argued that the ocean would not keep her from him, that she would never forget him no matter how far she was sent, before erupting into the fierce, impassioned speech she had long held in check: she was no automaton, no soulless machine, no inferior creature whose morsel of bread could be snatched from her lips without consequence; she had as much soul and heart as he did, even if she was poor, obscure, plain and little, and if he married Blanche Ingram, she would go, but he would never break her spirit. Rochester stopped her mid-rant, pulled her into his arms, and swore he had no intention of marrying Miss Ingram: he had feigned the courtship entirely to provoke her jealousy, to make her admit her own feelings, and had tested Blanche by spreading a rumor his fortune was a third of its reputed size, only to watch her and her mother cool instantly. He proposed, Jane finally accepted, and as a summer storm broke over the grounds, they rushed back to the house, where Mrs. Fairfax caught them kissing in the hall at midnight. Jane ran up to her room, giddy with joy, and woke the next morning to find the great horse-chestnut tree split in two by lightning during the night’s storm.