Jane Eyre quotes by chapter, character and theme

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Chapter 1 · Jane Eyre

The first sentence of the novel. Jane is narrating. They had walked in the shrubbery that morning, but since dinner the wind and rain have made going out impossible. Jane says she was glad: she never liked long walks. Mrs Reed, John, Eliza and Georgiana are now gathered round the fire in the drawing room at Gateshead.

The walk is called off before anything else happens, and Jane welcomes it, because coming home meant Bessie's chidings and feeling smaller than the Reed children. In the next paragraph Mrs Reed keeps her out of the group by the fire. Start an essay on childhood here, before the fight with John.

• childhood

Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.

Chapter 1 · Mrs Reed

Mrs Reed, at the end of chapter 1, after Jane has fought John. Eliza and Georgiana have fetched her. Bessie and Miss Abbot are there. Mrs Reed says this as an order. Four hands then carry Jane upstairs. The locking itself is the opening of chapter 2.

The red-room is a punishment she names, not a room Jane chooses. "Lock her in" is the whole of the justice on offer. John hit first. The sentence does not record that.

• childhood
• cruelty

I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me.

Chapter 2 · Jane Eyre

The opening of chapter 2. Bessie and Miss Abbot are carrying Jane upstairs to the room Mrs Reed has just named. Jane says this resistance is new for her, and that it made the two servants think worse of her. She has not yet been put on the stool.

She notices the cost of fighting at the same moment as she fights. The "bad opinion" belongs to Bessie and Miss Abbot, not yet to the whole house. Do not move this sentence back into chapter 1. The order to lock her in is the chapter before.

• childhood

like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.

Chapter 2 · Jane Eyre

Jane's narration, same paragraph as the resistance, still on the way into the red-room. She says a moment's mutiny has already made her liable to strange penalties, and that she feels like any other rebel slave. The comparison is hers. Nobody in the room calls her that.

"Any other" puts her in a class of rebels, not in a private sulk. It is a child's metaphor, and it is extreme. Quote it as her reading of the moment, not as the novel's last word on slavery. Bertha's later imprisonment is a different room and a different narrator.

• childhood
• independence

Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.

Chapter 2 · Bessie

Bessie to Miss Abbot, chapter 2, as they get Jane into the red-room. Jane has struck John and is still fighting. The next speech, "For shame!", is tagged as the lady's-maid, who is Miss Abbot. This line speaks to Miss Abbot by name, so it is Bessie's. The two of them have Jane by the arms.

The animal name is the servant's, not John's. It is how Jane is handled once Mrs Reed has given the order. "Mad" here is an insult about temper. Do not glue it to Bertha Mason, who has not been mentioned.

• childhood
• cruelty

Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?

Chapter 2 · Jane Eyre

Jane to Miss Abbot, as the two servants get her into the red-room. Abbot has just called John "your young master" and scolded Jane for striking her benefactress's son. Jane asks the question while the two women are holding her. She is not asking Mrs Reed, who is no longer in the scene.

The question is about a word, and the word is doing the work of the household. John is master because the adults say so. Jane has no wages and no kinship she will accept. The answer comes in the next speech.

• class
• childhood

No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.

Chapter 2 · Miss Abbot

Miss Abbot answering Jane's question in the red-room. The novel does not repeat Abbot's name on this sentence. It follows straight on from Jane's "Am I a servant?", and Abbot is the person who has just said "your young master." Bessie's next line is tagged a moment later, when she asks Abbot for garters to tie Jane down.

Less than a servant is a rank, not a mood. Servants work for a keep. Jane, in Abbot's account, does not even do that. The insult explains why "master" is not a joke to the child who heard it.

• class

Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,” said Mr. Brocklehurst; “it is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Reed.

Chapter 4 · Mr Brocklehurst

Mr Brocklehurst to Mrs Reed at Gateshead, in chapter 4, with Jane in the room. Mrs Reed has been telling him that Jane is a liar. He agrees, threatens the lake of fire, and says Jane will be watched. He will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers. This visit comes before Jane's outburst later in the same chapter.

He takes Mrs Reed's charge as fact and turns it into a sermon. The child he is condemning is listening. Lowood begins as this conversation, not as a building.

• religion
• cruelty

I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.

Chapter 4 · Jane Eyre

Jane to Mrs Reed, later in chapter 4, after Mr Brocklehurst has gone. They are alone. Mrs Reed is sewing. Jane says she would only claim to love her if she were lying, and that Georgiana is the liar. The book she mentions is the one tied to Brocklehurst's charge. Mrs Reed then asks, "What more have you to say?"

The italics on "you" in the file are a stress, not an extra word, so they are not printed here. Jane separates love from truth. She will not buy peace by pretending affection. That refusal is the same habit she uses, years later, with St John.

• childhood
• identity

I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.

Chapter 4 · Jane Eyre

Jane continues, still to Mrs Reed, still in that room. Mrs Reed has just asked what more she has to say, in a tone Jane thinks is meant for an adult opponent. Jane refuses the name of aunt, says she will not visit when she is grown, and says she will tell anyone who asks that Mrs Reed treated her with miserable cruelty.

"No relation" is both a wound and a release. The Reeds' kindness was always described as charity to a dependant. Jane hands the word back. She is ten. The speech is not calm, and an essay should not tidy it into a lesson she has already learned.

• childhood
• class

It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.

Chapter 6 · Helen Burns

Helen to Jane at Lowood, chapter 6, early in the conversation by the fire. Jane has been saying she would resist being bullied. Helen says a hasty blow would get Jane expelled, which would grieve Jane's relations, and that the Bible tells them to return good for evil. This is before Helen quotes "Love your enemies."

Helen argues from consequences and from Scripture together. The "smart" is a pain only Jane would feel. The "hasty action" would land on other people. Jane is not persuaded yet. The next thing she wants is what Christ actually says.

• religion
• morality

Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.

Chapter 6 · Helen Burns

Helen to Jane, still chapter 6, after Jane asks what Christ says. Helen answers with this sentence. Jane says she should then love Mrs Reed, which she cannot do, and bless John, which is impossible. Helen has turned from school punishment to Gateshead.

It is a quotation inside a quotation: Helen is giving Jane the Gospel wording, not a proverb of her own. Jane's reply is the useful pair. She understands the command and refuses it. Do not write as if Helen's sentence ended the argument.

• religion

I live in calm, looking to the end.

Chapter 6 · Helen Burns

Helen to Jane, still that talk in chapter 6. She has just said that under her creed, revenge does not worry her heart, degradation does not disgust her too deeply, and injustice does not crush her too low. These words close that sentence. She then lowers her head. Jane sees that Helen wants to stop and think, rather than keep arguing.

"The end" is death and what Helen believes follows it, not the end of the school term. The calm is something she claims, and the cough in the later chapters is why a reader should not hear it as comfort only. Jane admires it and does not copy it.

• religion
• morality

my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying.

Chapter 7 · Mr Brocklehurst

Mr Brocklehurst to Miss Temple, chapter 7, in the Lowood schoolroom. He has found that bread and cheese was served as lunch. Miss Temple has just said she is responsible, because one breakfast was so badly made the girls could not eat it and she would not leave them fasting until dinner. He calls her Madam and sets out his plan. Jane is among the pupils who hear him. The sentence goes on, after this stop, into spoiled meals and the primitive Christians.

"Self-denying" is the policy for other people's hunger. He is well fed enough to make the speech. Miss Temple's lunch is the act he is rebuking. Put the line next to the burnt porridge, not next to an abstract sermon.

• religion
• cruelty

If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

Chapter 8 · Helen Burns

Helen to Jane, chapter 8, after Mr Brocklehurst has told the school that Jane is a liar. Jane is crushed. Helen takes her hand and warms her fingers, then says this. She is talking about the charge the school has just heard, which Brocklehurst repeated from Mrs Reed. She is not talking about the red-room.

The friend in the sentence is conscience, and then God, in the sentences around it. Helen does not say the school is right. She says Jane can survive the school being wrong. Jane answers that thinking well of herself is not enough if others do not love her. Keep that reply in mind. Helen has not closed the question.

• religion
• morality

All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory.

Chapter 11 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, chapter 11, while Mrs Fairfax is showing her the house. They are looking at the third-storey rooms, where furniture from the lower rooms has been put away. Jane likes the hush in daylight. The laugh in the corridor comes later. She does not yet know that anyone is shut up there.

The third storey is first a lumber of the family's past, not a Gothic secret she has already solved. "Shrine of memory" is her pleasure in old things. Bertha is living in that storey. The sentence does not say so. Use it as the innocent look, then move to the laugh.

• class
• madness

It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless.

Chapter 11 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, later in chapter 11. She is alone in the long passage of the third storey, the one she has just compared to a corridor in Bluebeard's castle. A laugh is the last sound she expected. It stops, then comes again louder. She does not see who laughed. When she asks Mrs Fairfax, the explanation she is given points to Grace Poole.

Three adjectives, and none of them is happy. "Formal" is the odd one: the laugh sounds shaped, not like a burst of joy. Do not write that Jane knows it is Bertha. She does not. The novel keeps that name back until the wedding day.

• madness

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Chapter 12 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, chapter 12. Her relief, when the day has been too narrow, is to walk the corridor of the third storey alone. This sentence follows that account. She is not speaking to Rochester, and she has not yet met him on the lane. The paragraph about women comes next.

"They must have action" is the claim. Tranquillity is what other people prescribe, and what the corridor only partly supplies. The millions in silent revolt are in the next sentence. This one is the principle. It is easy to misread it as a speech to a man. It is thought, on a landing, before Hay Lane.

• gender
• independence

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

Chapter 12 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, still alone in that third-storey walk in chapter 12, in the sentences immediately after the line about tranquillity. She is not in an argument with Rochester or St John. Nobody is there to answer. Only after this paragraph does she mention that she sometimes heard Grace Poole's laugh while she walked there.

The list of puddings, stockings, piano and embroidered bags is the custom she is refusing. "Their sex" is the category doing the refusing, not her private temper. The line is famous because it is general. In the novel it is also local: a governess pacing a corridor she does not own.

• gender
• independence

Are you injured, sir?

Chapter 12 · Jane Eyre

Jane to the rider in Hay Lane, chapter 12, after his horse has slipped on the ice and he is getting free of it. She has come down to him. She thinks he cannot be badly hurt, because his efforts are vigorous, but she asks. He does not answer this question. He is swearing, or something like it, and then tells her to stand aside while the horse gets up. She does not know he is Mr Rochester.

The meeting is an accident and a practical question, not a recognition. "Sir" is all the rank she has for him. Essays that start the love story with wit should remember that the first words are about whether he is hurt.

• love

You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?

Chapter 14 · Edward Rochester

Rochester to Jane, chapter 14, in the evening at Thornfield, after dinner. Adèle is still in the room, talking quietly over her presents. He turns and finds her looking at his face. She has not said that she was studying him. Her answer, "No, sir," comes in the next line. In the file that answer sits after a dash, so it is not copied onto this line.

He invites a verdict on his face and then has to live with an honest one. The question is a test of whether she will be charming. She fails the test on purpose, or by accident. Either reading is available. The words of the question are his.

• love
• identity

You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more.

Chapter 15 · Edward Rochester

Rochester to Jane, chapter 15, the night his bed is set on fire. She has put the fire out. He tells her to go back to her own room, and says he will sleep on the library sofa until the servants are up. She says good-night and turns to go. He calls her back. His first cry, that she has saved his life, is a different sentence and it contains a dash, so it is not copied here. He asks to shake hands, takes her hand in one of his and then in both, and only then says this. She answers that there is no debt. This is not the fall in Hay Lane.

The debt is the opposite of Miss Abbot's "you do nothing for your keep." Jane has done something that cannot be paid as wages. He stops at "I cannot say more," and the file puts a dash before he talks about the debt not being a burden. Keep the stop. The restraint is part of the line.

• love
• morality

I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. 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 · Edward Rochester

Rochester to Jane, chapter 19, while he is disguised as a gipsy in the library during the house party. He says her brow professes these words. Jane has not spoken them. He is telling her fortune, and the fortune is a reading of her face. The dash in the file comes before the quotation, not inside these sentences.

Students often give this speech to Jane. The thoughts may be true of her. The voice in the room is his, and he is in costume. That double speaker is the point: he tests whether she will sell her soul for bliss, while he is the person who will later ask her to stay on terms she thinks are that sale.

• independence
• love

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?

Chapter 23 · Jane Eyre

Jane to Rochester, chapter 23, in the garden at Thornfield at dusk. He has told her she must leave, because he is going to marry Blanche Ingram. She asks whether he thinks she can bear to have her bread and her living water taken away. This question follows. The next words are "You think wrong!" In the file a dash comes straight after that, so the quotation stops at the question.

Four adjectives, and she chooses all of them. Poor and obscure are her position. Plain and little are her body, as other people have described it. The insult she will not accept is soulless and heartless. The proposal has not happened yet. She thinks she is about to lose the place, not gain a husband.

• class
• love
• gender

it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,

Chapter 23 · Jane Eyre

Jane to Rochester, still in the garden in chapter 23, in the same speech as the poor and obscure question. A few sentences sit between them, broken by dashes in the file: she has as much soul and as much heart, and if she had beauty and wealth she would have made it as hard for him to leave. She then says she is not speaking through custom, conventionalities, or mortal flesh. A dash comes before "it is my spirit" and another after "equal," so this line is only the words between them. He repeats "As we are!", takes her in his arms, and kisses her. She answers that he is as good as married, to Miss Ingram, whom she has heard him sneer at. The bird speech comes after that, when she tries to leave.

The small "it" is required. The sentence has already begun. "Equal" is her claim about souls, and at this moment she still thinks his marriage is to Blanche, not to Bertha. Equality here is not yet a wedding. It is a refusal to be spoken to as a dependant.

• class
• love
• independence

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

Chapter 23 · Jane Eyre

Jane to Rochester, later in the same garden scene, chapter 23. The equality speech and the kiss have already happened. She has told him to let her go, and has said she will go to Ireland. He tells her not to struggle like a wild bird tearing its own feathers. She answers with this. Another effort sets her free and she stands up. He then offers his hand, his heart, and a share of all his possessions. The proposal comes after this sentence, not before it.

The semicolons are in the text. "No net" answers his metaphor, it does not invent a new one. She exerts the will "to leave you" at the moment when leaving looks like exile, because he is supposedly marrying someone else. Chapter 27 is the later choice, after she knows about Bertha.

• independence
• love

I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.

Chapter 24 · Jane Eyre

Jane to Rochester, chapter 24, the morning after she has accepted him. He has said she shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice and Vienna, and that he will revisit that ground healed, with an angel as his comforter. She laughs. The words "I asserted" sit inside the quotation because that is how the sentence is printed. She says she will not be an angel until she dies. The next thing she tells him, about not exacting anything celestial, runs into a dash in the file, so it is left out.

"Myself" is the correction to his pet name. He has been praising a woman he can worship. She wants a marriage she can inhabit. Mrs Fairfax's warning comes later the same morning, and it is a colder version of the same problem: what a governess becomes in a rich man's house.

• identity
• love

Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses.

Chapter 24 · Mrs Fairfax

Mrs Fairfax to Jane, chapter 24, the morning the engagement is announced to her. She tells Jane to keep Mr Rochester at a distance and to distrust herself as well as him. This is the reason she gives. Adèle runs in before the conversation can go further, wanting to go to Millcote.

Mrs Fairfax is not a villain in this speech. She is the person in the house who knows what the station usually does. The sentence is social fact as she has seen it, and Jane is irritated by it. An essay can hold both: the warning is proved by Bertha's existence and by the fortune, and it is also the voice that would have kept Jane in her place.

• class
• love

Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations!

Chapter 26 · Edward Rochester

Rochester in the church, chapter 26, after the wedding has been stopped and before anyone goes upstairs. He has just told the party that the woman they have heard rumours about is his wife, Bertha Mason, married to him fifteen years ago, and sister of Richard Mason. Mason is standing there, shaking. Rochester calls him Dick, tells him to cheer up, and says he would almost as soon strike a woman as strike Mason. Then he says this. Briggs, Wood the clergyman, Mason and Jane are the audience. The next words, about Bertha's mother, begin after a dash, so they are not part of this line. Only after the speech does he invite them up to the house to see Mrs Poole's patient. The room where Jane sees Bertha comes later.

The exclamation is his. "Idiots and maniacs through three generations" is a hereditary story he tells the church, not a diagnosis the novel has proved. Mason's interruption of the wedding is the legal fact. This speech is the husband's version, and Jane has not seen Bertha yet. Keep the church and the upstairs room apart.

• madness
• love

the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.

Chapter 26 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, chapter 26, in the third-storey room at Thornfield on the wedding day. The ceremony has been stopped and the party has been brought upstairs. Grace Poole has just said the woman is snappish but not raging. A cry contradicts Grace. Bertha stands. Jane is the one who calls her a clothed hyena. Grace then tells Rochester that Bertha sees him, and tells him not to stay.

"It" and "hind-feet" are Jane's words in the moment she finally sees Bertha. Bertha is a woman, and the pronoun is part of the violence of the looking. Do not tidy "it" into "she" and still claim to be quoting. Rochester has already said "Bertha Mason is mad", downstairs in the church. This sentence is the looking, not that speech.

• madness

I have for the first time found what I can truly love

Chapter 27 · Edward Rochester

Rochester to Jane, chapter 27, after the interrupted marriage, when he is asking her to go abroad and live with him. He has described a youth and manhood split between misery and solitude. A dash follows this clause at once in the file, before "I have found you." This is not the proposal in the garden in chapter 23. She already knows about Bertha.

"For the first time" erases Blanche, and also Bertha, and also any earlier tenderness. The line is what he offers Jane as a reason to stay. Her answer is not in this sentence. It comes in the inward speech about the law, a little later, when she is alone.

• love

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Chapter 27 · Jane Eyre

Jane to herself, chapter 27. She is not saying this to Rochester. A voice has asked who in the world cares for her, and who would be injured if she stayed with him. The file calls the answer "still indomitable." She says that the more solitary she is, the more she will respect herself. The principles she means are in the next sentences.

Self-respect is doing the work that Helen gave to conscience, but Jane is deciding a sexual and legal question, not a schoolmaster's insult. She is also refusing the idea that being unloved makes her free to break the marriage. Quote the solitude and the respect together. One without the other sounds like pride only.

• independence
• morality

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 rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.

Chapter 27 · Jane Eyre

The same inward reply, chapter 27, a moment later. She has said she will keep the law given by God and sanctioned by man, and hold to principles she received when she was sane. A dash in the file falls between "mad" and "as I am now," so this line starts at "Laws." She still does not speak it aloud to Rochester. Temptation, in the paragraph, is the plea to stay and be his.

The laws matter, she says, only when they cost something. That is the whole argument against staying. It is not a general essay on morality pasted in from elsewhere. "Stringent" and "inviolate" are her words for rules she is about to obey by leaving Thornfield before dawn.

• morality
• independence

I am the servant of an infallible Master.

Chapter 34 · St John Rivers

St John to Jane, chapter 34, at Moor House. She has said that God will protect him because he has undertaken God's work. He answers with this sentence, then says he is not going out under human guidance. He is speaking about the mission. His demand that Jane marry him and come to India belongs to the same stretch of the book, but it is not this sentence.

"Master" has moved from John Reed to God, and the servant is now a man who wants no human check. The certainty is what makes him a difficult ally. Jane can admire the work and refuse the marriage. The line lets you show that split.

• religion

I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.

Chapter 34 · Jane Eyre

Jane to St John, chapter 34. They are outside. He has said there is no other way, and that enough love would follow marriage to make the union right even in her eyes. She cannot help answering. She stands up with her back against a rock. She scorns the idea, scorns the counterfeit, and scorns him for offering it. He looks at her fixedly.

She does not say she scorns God, or the mission. She scorns this account of love. "Counterfeit" is the insult. St John's love is real as duty and false as marriage, in her judgment. The rock at her back is in the sentence, and it is worth keeping, because she is not whispering the refusal.

• love
• religion

I would always rather be happy than dignified;

Chapter 34 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, chapter 34, at Moor House, after a cold parting with St John on the stairs. She says she has not much pride in that moment. She runs after him. He is standing at the foot of the stairs. She wants to shake hands and say good-night. The file prints a semicolon after "dignified," and a dash after "I ran after him." The line is about St John, not about Rochester.

This is the sentence people move to Ferndean by mistake. Happiness here is a truce with her cousin, not a wedding. The semicolon matters if you are quoting the file exactly. She chooses the undignified run downstairs. She does not choose to marry him.

• love
• independence

“Jane! Jane! Jane!”

Chapter 35 · Edward Rochester

The cry Jane hears at Moor House, chapter 35, while St John is in the room. She sees nothing. She gasps, asking what it is, and thinks of saying "Where is it?", because it does not seem to be in the room, the house, or the garden. The voice is not St John's. In chapter 37 Rochester tells her that he spoke these words aloud at Ferndean, near midnight, on that Monday. At the moment she hears them, she does not know that.

The double quotation marks are the ones in chapter 35. When Rochester reports the cry in chapter 37, the file uses single marks. Same three names, two printings. Learn the chapter you mean. The supernatural, or the coincidence, is left unexplained. Do not invent an explanation the book does not give.

• love

I am coming!” I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!

Chapter 35 · Jane Eyre

Jane's answer to that voice, chapter 35. She cries it, runs to the door, finds the passage dark, and runs into the empty garden. She calls "Where are you?" The hills beyond Marsh Glen send the answer back. St John had asked what she heard and what she saw. These words are not her answer to him. They are shouted to the voice.

"I am coming" is a decision, and it breaks the India plan without a debate. She does not yet know that Rochester is blind, or that Thornfield has burned. The cry is not informed consent to a new life. It is a promise to go towards the voice. The journey to Ferndean comes after she has heard the facts from the inn.

• love
• independence

Reader, I married him.

Chapter 38 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, the opening of chapter 38. Thornfield has burned, and she has found Rochester blind and maimed at Ferndean. The next sentences describe the wedding: only she, Rochester, the parson and the clerk are present. When they get back from church, Mary is cooking and John is cleaning knives in the manor-house kitchen, and Jane tells them. It is not a Thornfield wedding, and Bertha is dead.

The comma is in the text. The direct address to the reader is Jane keeping the control of the story at the moment people expect a hush. The quietness of the wedding is the next sentence. Quote that too if you need to show what kind of marriage this is.

• love

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.

Chapter 38 · Jane Eyre

Jane narrating, still chapter 38, after she has glanced at the later lives of the others. Ten years have passed. She says she knows what it is to live entirely for and with what she loves best. The next sentence, about being supremely blest, runs into a dash in the file, so it is not copied here. She also says, in that later sentence, that she is her husband's life as fully as he is hers. The dash is why this line stops earlier.

Ten years is the distance. The marriage is not only the church door. "Entirely for and with" is absolute, and you can ask, in an essay, whether that absoluteness sits oddly beside the governess who demanded a field for her efforts. The novel's answer is the companionship she describes, including her work as his eyes. It does not return her to a schoolroom.

• love
• independence