Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
“A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the
open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the
air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked
under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its
drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of
the tropics kindled round me—I reasoned thus, Jane—and now listen; for
it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the
right path to follow.
“The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed
leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart,
dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled
with living blood—my being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a
pure draught. I saw hope revive—and felt regeneration possible. From a
flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than
the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:—
“‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what
a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You
may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due
attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what
clime you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman, who has so
abused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your
honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her
husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you
have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity,
her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to
impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort:
shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’
“I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not
made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very
first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun
to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family
character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I
added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous
conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make
him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to
publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.
“To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a
monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield,
and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret
inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a
goblin’s cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as
it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be
placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she
had lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she filled up with
abuse of me. At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She
and the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he was
stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my
confidence. Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she
could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the
whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her
own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to
her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled
and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has never
failed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses; once to
secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to
possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the
night-time. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the
attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly
visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then
spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back
vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what might have
happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the thing which
flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage
over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles—”
“And what, sir,” I asked, while he paused, “did you do when you had
settled her here? Where did you go?”
“What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp.
Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the
March-spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its
lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent
woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield—”
“But you could not marry, sir.”
“I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not
my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I meant to
tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to
me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and
be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to
understand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I
was burdened.”
“Well, sir?”
“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open
your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless
movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and
you wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart. But before I go on, tell
me what you mean by your ‘Well, sir?’ It is a small phrase very
frequent with you; and which many a time has drawn me on and on through
interminable talk: I don’t very well know why.”
“I mean,—What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?”
“Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?”
“Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry
you; and what she said.”
“I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked
her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of
Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital,
then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris;
occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided with plenty of
money and the passport of an old name, I could choose my own society:
no circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst
English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German
gräfinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I
thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced
the realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeceived. You are
not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I
longed only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole: and I
longed vainly. Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever
so free, I—warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of
incongruous unions—would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me
reckless. I tried dissipation—never debauchery: that I hated, and hate.
That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her
restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on
riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.
“Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of
mistresses. The first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps
which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know
what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two
successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered
singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks?
Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months.
Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not
one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set
her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But,
Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion
of me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t
you?”
“I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it
not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one
mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course.”
“It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of
existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is
the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and
always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is
degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with
Céline, Giacinta, and Clara.”
I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain
inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching
that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any
justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these
poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now
in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this
conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that
it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.
“Now, Jane, why don’t you say ‘Well, sir?’ I have not done. You are
looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to
the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame
of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with
disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against
all _woman_kind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual,
faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came
back to England.
“On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.
Abhorred spot! I expected no peace—no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay
Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as
negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no
presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the
arbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble
guise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour’s
accident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender
creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed
to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go:
it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a
sort of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.
“When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new—a fresh sap
and sense—stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf
must return to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could
not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish
behind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home
that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of
you or watched for you. The next day I observed you—myself unseen—for
half-an-hour, while you played with Adèle in the gallery. It was a
snowy day, I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my
room; the door was ajar: I could both listen and watch. Adèle claimed
your outward attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts were
elsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you
talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last she left you,
you lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to
pace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out
at the thick-falling snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again