(Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre)

“I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give” (Chapter 19)

“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort” (Chapter 22)

Before taking a look at Jane Eyre’s strong temptation to remain with Mr. Rochester after learning he was already married, let us first take a look at one of the most poignant and touching scenes in the novel, the moment when our plain Jane suddenly realizes that she’s beautiful! We might say, with Andrew Lloyd Weber, that love changes everything, and when Jane looks in the mirror the day after her dramatic engagement to Mr. Rochester she sees a new person. She says:

“While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain; there was hope in its aspect and life in its color; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look, but I was sure I might lift my face to his now and not cool his affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on; it seemed no attire had ever so well become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood” (Chapter 24).

But Jane Eyre’s joy and happiness are to be short-lived, and even by the end of Chapter 24 she alludes to a tension that exits between her faith in God and her love for Mr. Rochester (a tension that will not be overcome until Mr. Rochester’s religious conversion much later in the novel). Jane says:

“My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol” (Chapter 24).

And as to confirm that Jane’s upcoming marriage to Mr. Rochester was not made in Heaven three things occur:

1. The Chestnut tree is split in two by lightning shortly after the engagement;
2. Jane dreams two dreams that essentially forecast doom and gloom for her at Thornfield; and
3. In the middle of the night Bertha enters Jane’s bedroom and tears Jane’s wedding veil in two.

And then, on the very day of her wedding, deus ex machina, a lawyer named Briggs appears out of nowhere to inform the Vicar that Mr. Rochester is already married to Bertha. And with this revelation we are told that Jane, “almost a bride,” became “a cold solitary girl again….” Back in her room Jane tells us she had no will to flee the torrent of troubles cast upon her: “I lay faint; longing to be dead.” Only a “remembrance of God…begot a muttered prayer” but she was nevertheless plunged into bitterness, “my love lost, my hope quenched.”

Later that day Jane realizes that she must leave Thornfield “at once,” but states “that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.” Still Jane realizes again that she must leave Mr. Rochester, but adds: “I do not want to leave him – I cannot leave him.” She later tells Mr. Rochester: “Sir, your wife is living…If I lived with you as you desire, I should the be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical; – is false.”

Thus Jane tells Mr. Rochester “I will not be yours.” But Mr. Rochester essentially pleads for Jane to stay, tenderly kissing her head and cheek, and telling Jane that all his happiness “will be torn away” if she leaves. But Jane responds by saying, “Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in Heaven….We were born to strive and endure.” But Mr. Rochester tells Jane that it is better to transgress a mere human law than to drive him into “despair.” And at hearing this argument Jane tells us that her conscience and reason “turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him…and clamored wildly…’Oh, comply!…soothe him; save him; love him…who will be injured by what you do?’ ”

This, then, is the moment of supreme temptation for Jane. A seemingly powerfully persuasive argument has been made for her to stay with Mr. Rochester. But Jane Eyre’s response to Mr. Rochester and to her cunning conscience is simply a theological masterpiece. She says,

 “I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, forgotten determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”

Wow! What an amazing argument, and one for all of us to fall back on when we are beset with powerful temptations to break the moral law. Certainly the most powerful weapon against temptation is continual prayer (and Jane Eyre is a prayerful person), but to dialogue with a temptation, to listen to its cunning deceptions, especially when we are already under duress, or pressured by passions, or suffering distress, is a major mistake! These are the exact moments to be even more fastidious in following the moral law and Christ’s commandments. As Jane says so eloquently, “Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor.“

Late that night Jane experienced an apparition in which her mother said, “flee temptation.” Thus, shortly after midnight Jane gathered a few items and twenty shillings, passed by Mr. Rochester’s room still tempted to open the door to his room, and made her way downstairs, where she got some water and bread, and then opened the door to depart Thornfield on foot until she reached the road, still longing to be Mr. Rochester’s. She relates: “God must have led me on…I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way…a weakness seized me and I fell: I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear – or hope – that here I should die: but I was soon up: crawling forward on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my feet – as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road” (Chapter 27). Jane did in fact finally reach the road (“after sunrise”), where she flagged down a coach, thus continuing her amazing journey probably not totally aware of the immense suffering and destitution she was about to undergo.

Thomas L. Mulcahy, M.A.

Image: Portrait of Charlotte Bronte, the author of Jane Eyre, by George Richmond, as it appears at Wikipedia. The date is 1850. According to Wikipedia this work is in the Public Domain for the U.S.A., but may not be for other countries. See the Wikipedia article on Charlotte Bronte incorporated herein by reference.

References: See my previous blog post, A Short Note on the Ultimate Meaning of Jane Eyre

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