This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering – a throe of true despair – rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned – I wrung my hands – I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation – this banishment from my kind!
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 28. After leaving Thornfield a homeless Jane has been wandering in the wilderness for days in search of food and is weak from hunger and exhaustion. The destitute Jane sees the distant light of a house across the moors and follows a road to it. But when she knocks at the door of Moor House (aka Marsh End) looking for shelter, the elderly servant turns her away. In Jane’s darkest moment of despair, she breaks down and collapses to the wet ground, waiting for death. Her struggle for independence threatens to destroy her.