Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

The morning after the proposal, Jane was half-convinced the whole episode had been a dream, until Rochester found her and greeted her with an embrace and a kiss, teasing her about her radiant smile as he told her they would marry in four weeks, in the small local church, then travel first to London, then to Paris, Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice, and Vienna, all the grand European cities he had wandered through in his bitter, unhappy youth, now to be revisited with her at his side. Jane protested that she was no angel, no beauty, that he would tire of her plain, Quakerish self in six months, that she only wanted to be his friend and equal companion, not a jewel-bedecked doll kept in gilded luxury. He countered that he loved her fierce, independent soul, not a simpering socialite, and when she pressed him on why he had feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, he admitted it was a cruel trick to win her, and that Blanche had never cared for him, only his fortune. Jane asked him to explain the engagement to Mrs. Fairfax first, to spare the housekeeper’s anxiety, and when he did, Mrs. Fairfax was stunned, warning Jane that gentlemen of Rochester’s station rarely married their governesses, that she should be careful not to trust him too fully, that their twenty-year age gap and different stations made the match unwise. Jane was hurt by the housekeeper’s skepticism, but the tension broke when Adèle ran in begging to join their trip to Millcote, and Rochester, moved by Jane’s intercession, agreed to let her come, spinning the child a fanciful tale of taking Jane to live in a moon cave.

The drive to Millcote was a trial for Jane: Rochester insisted she pick out new dresses for the wedding, and she hated being fussed over like a doll, arguing him down from six dresses to two, swapping his gaudy picks of amethyst silk and pink satin for sober black satin and pearl-grey silk. She was flushed with embarrassment at the attention until she remembered her uncle John Eyre in Madeira had once written to Mrs. Reed intending to adopt her and make her his heiress; she wrote to him that same day to tell him she was marrying Rochester, hoping a small independent fortune would spare her the shame of being entirely dependent on him. She bantered with Rochester all the way home, teasing him for treating her like a seraglio slave, insisting she would never be his English Céline Varens, that she would continue to earn her own keep as Adèle’s governess even after they married. That evening, she insisted he sing for her, and he performed a heartfelt, passionate poem about a long, secret love that finally won, about loving her as his equal in every way. Jane deflected his sentiment, teasing him about the song’s subject, insisting she would keep him at a deliberate distance for the whole four weeks of their courtship, playing the sharp-tongued, unyielding governess to test his patience, to make sure he would not tire of her plain, practical self. The probationary period worked exactly as she hoped: Rochester was often cross and crusty with her teasing, but he was clearly entertained, and Jane knew the distance kept his affection from curdling into condescension. Yet even as she enforced this playful dynamic, she grappled with a quiet, unspoken conflict: Rochester had become the center of her entire world, the focus of every thought and hope, even eclipsing the religious faith that had once been her anchor; he stood between her and every thought of God, an eclipse blocking out the sun, and she could not bring herself to care.

CHAPTER XXV / CHAPTER XXVII

The final hours of Jane Eyre’s courtship thrummed with a quiet, unspoken dread, thick as the nonstop storm wind that had blown from the south all sweltering July day. Her trunks were packed, corded, and lined up against her chamber wall, bound for London by morning; the tiny address cards Rochester had himself inscribed with “Mrs. Rochester, —— Hotel, London” lay unopened in her drawer, too terrifying to nail onto the luggage. The woman named Mrs. Rochester did not feel real yet, not until she drew her first breath after eight o’clock the next morning, and Jane could not bear to assign that name to the pearl-coloured wedding gown and vaporous veil already displacing her old black Lowood frock and straw bonnet in the closet, their ghostly shimmer cutting through the dim nine o’clock light. “I will leave you by yourself, white dream,” she murmured to the hanging garments, before fleeing the room, feverish with a restlessness that had nothing to do with wedding nerves and everything to do with a strange, unshakable foreboding left over from the night before, when Rochester had been away settling business on his distant thirty-mile estate. She sought shelter in the orchard, the wind tearing at her hair and clothes, and stopped before the great chestnut tree split down its centre by lightning, its two halves still held together by their deep, faithful roots, dead but not yet felled, their boughs stripped bare of leaves and nesting birds. “You did right to hold fast to each other,” she said to the ruined tree, as if it could hear her, finding strange comfort in its shared, unbroken ruin even as its life had been torn apart. When the rain began to fall, she walked to the gates to wait for Rochester’s return, her heart thudding with every passing shadow, until the sharp tramp of hooves cut through the wind, and he came into view, riding Mesrour, Pilot at his side, hat waving in a break of watery moonlight. She ran to meet him, and he lifted her up onto his horse, laughing as she clung to him, dripping wet, before carrying her back to Thornfield. In the library, where a cheerful fire burned and his armchair waited by the hearth, she sat with him while he ate supper, but could not touch a bite of food, her skin burning, her eyes glittering with unspoken fear. When he pressed her to share what weighed on her, she told him of the dreams that had tormented her since he left: first, a dream of carrying a tiny, freezing child down a dark, winding road, chasing after him, her voice frozen in her throat, her movements slowed as he rode farther and farther away. Then, a dream of Thornfield reduced to a roofless, bat-infested ruin, her climbing its fragile, crumbling wall to catch one last glimpse of him disappearing down the road, the wall giving way under her feet, the child slipping from her arms, her fall waking her with a start. She told him she had woken not to daylight, but to a candle burning on her dressing table, the closet door hanging open where her wedding veil was stored. A figure had stepped out, tall, with long dark hair, wearing a white gown she could not name, had picked up the veil, held it up to the light, then draped it over its head and turned to the mirror. Jane saw its face then: purple, bloated, red eyes bulging, brow furrowed, a ghastly, vampire-like visage that made her blood run cold. The figure had ripped the veil in two, trampled the pieces on the floor, then blown out the candle right in her face before she lost consciousness. She pulled the torn veil from her dress to show him, the fabric split clean from top to bottom, as proof the visit had not been a nightmare. Rochester tried to brush it off as Grace Poole acting out, a bad dream mixed with half-waking perception, but Jane was adamant it was real. Worried for her frayed nerves, he sent her to sleep in the nursery with Adèle and Sophie, where she lay awake all night, watching the little girl’s peaceful, passionless sleep, weeping silently as she held her, knowing her old life was ending with the dawn. When the sun rose, she rose with it, kissed Adèle goodbye, and met Rochester for their walk to the church. The morning was grey and still, two strangers lingered by the old Rochester tomb in the churchyard before slipping inside ahead of them. The priest, in his white surplice, began the service, and when he paused to ask if anyone knew an impediment to the marriage, a clear, calm voice rang out from the back of the church: the marriage could not proceed. Richard Briggs, a London solicitor, stepped forward, followed by a pale, shaking Richard Mason, Rochester’s brother-in-law. Briggs produced a marriage certificate proving Rochester had wed Bertha Mason in Jamaica fifteen years prior, and Mason confirmed his sister was alive, locked in the third-floor rooms at Thornfield. Rochester tried to order the priest to continue, his face as white as marble, eyes blazing with barely contained fury, but the clergyman refused. They all returned to Thornfield, Rochester leading Jane by the hand, and he took them up to the third floor, unlocking the inner chamber where Grace Poole bent over a fire cooking, and a huge, shaggy, snarling figure paced in the shadows. Bertha Mason, his wife, mad as her mother before her, lunged at him, bit his cheek, and he had to wrestle her to the ground and bind her with rope before turning to the horrified onlookers. “That is my wife,” he said, gesturing to the snarling maniac, then to Jane. “This is what I wanted instead.” Briggs and Mason left for London immediately, the clergyman departed after a sharp rebuke, and Jane fled to her room, bolting the door behind her, changing out of her wedding dress into her old stuff gown, her mind reeling. All her bright hopes, the future she had dreamed of, were gone in an instant, struck dead as if a Christmas frost had swept through midsummer, a white December storm whirled over June, ice glazing the ripe apples, drifts crushing the blooming roses. She sat at her table, head in her arms, overwhelmed by grief, until Rochester found her, having waited outside her door for hours, ready to break the lock if she did not come out. He carried her downstairs to the library, pressed wine to her lips until she revived, then sat with her while she gathered her strength, and told her the full truth of his marriage: his father and brother had schemed to marry him to Bertha for her thirty-thousand-pound fortune, hiding her family’s long history of madness, he was young and foolish, married her without suspicion, and only discovered her true nature after the honeymoon. She had grown increasingly violent and vicious over the four years they lived together, and when his father and brother died, he was free to leave her, but still bound by law to her. He brought her to England, locked her in Thornfield’s third floor, hired Grace Poole to watch her, and spent ten years wandering the continent, looking for a woman who could understand his situation, until he found Jane. He begged her to forgive him for hiding the truth, said he had only been afraid she would reject him if she knew, then made his offer: he would take her to a small whitewashed villa on the Mediterranean, live with her as husband and wife, no legal marriage needed, they would be happy together, she would be his only love, he would never force her into the role of mistress, she would be safe and cherished. Jane’s heart ached so badly she could barely breathe, because she loved him more than ever, but she knew she could not accept. Her moral convictions, her sense of right and wrong, would not let her become his mistress, no matter how much he loved her, no matter how unfair the circumstances. She told him she had to leave Thornfield, leave him entirely, start a new life somewhere else, no matter how much it destroyed her. Rochester was furious at first, begged her, argued that she was condemning him to a life of endless misery, that he could not live without her, but Jane stood firm. She told him she would trust in God, find her own way forward, that she could not be his, not in the way he was asking. The weight of her duty hung heavy over her, but she would not bend, even as her heart broke.