osprey_archer | Book Review: Jane Eyre

I don't believe I've ever before arranged a reread around following a specific thread through a narrative, but following the fairies through Jane Eyre proved a rich vein right up till the end. When Jane returns to Rochester, she finds him blind and crippled, maimed attempting to save his mad wife from the fire she set, the fire which claimed her life. But he recognizes the sound of her voice, the touch of her small fingers, the curve of her slender waist: "my fairy," he calls her, and then demands, "You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?"

“I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester,” Jane assures him.

But he can't be fooled by this pretense of demure humanity. "You mocking changeling — fairy-born and human-bred!"

This is, I think, the first time that he hits upon the word changeling. Now at last he fully understands her true nature, and that is why at last they can be reconciled and wed. (Well, and also the fact that his first wife is now conveniently dead.)

Leaving aside the fairy theme, this is still true: he recognizes, he bows to the fact that Jane's conscience is a part of her, and that in trying to bully or bribe it aside after the revelation that he was already married, he was wrong, and trying to turn her into something she's not, so as to keep her with him. Now he truly knows her, and his love for her is, likewise, true.

(Hence also the unworthiness of St. John, who saw only half of Jane's soul, and could never have loved her impish mocking side; in fact tries to stamp out the sparks of it whenever they happen to blaze clear.)

This is a theme that will recur in Villette: the one who loves you is the one who knows you, who sees past surface appearances to the burning soul beneath. Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe are not much alike in other ways, but they are similar in that a cool English reserve masks an inner volcano.

First, however, Shirley. And first of all in Shirley, I have to get past the endless prelude with the world's most boring curates. But the path will lead in the end to Shirley herself: to that thought I must cling strong!