Jane Eyre Gypsy Quotes

You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 19. A mysterious gypsy fortune teller appears at Thornfield Hall and tells Jane her fortune. The gypsy is later revealed as Rochester in disguise. In this passage Rochester teases Jane about her feelings for him, suggesting that she is to blame for her loneliness and suffering. It is clear that Rochester’s masquerade, in which he changes gender and class, is done to manipulate Jane and trick her into giving information about her feelings for him.

“What tale do you like best to hear?”
“Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme – courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe – marriage.”
“And do you like that monotonous theme?”
“Positively, I don’t care about it: it is nothing to me.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 19. The old gypsy woman (Rochester in disguise) and Jane discuss courtship and marriage. Rochester is trying to manipulate and draw Jane out and admit that she loves him. Jane is in love with her employer Rochester, but she doesn’t believe there is any future in it.

The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 19. Jane makes this acidic comment to the old gypsy woman fortune teller. The gypsy has been trying to probe Jane about her feelings on Rochester, marriage and Blanche Ingram’s interest in him. Jane makes clear that she has no interest in gossip or having her fortune told by the gypsy (who happens to be Rochester disguised). In the rest of this passage, we learn that Jane feels like she is wrapped in a dream: “I said this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice, manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse.”

He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 19. The gypsy fortune teller suggests to Jane that her love rival Blanche Ingram is marrying Rochester for his wealth. The gypsy then reveals that Miss Ingram’s mouth fell and she looked “wondrous grave” when told that Rochester is not as wealthy as he appears. Rochester is aware of Blanche’s plan to marry him for his money, as he is Mother Bunches the gypsy in disguise.

Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman’s voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass – as the speech of my own tongue…I looked…The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers…a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again, I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me…
“Well, Jane, do you know me?” asked the familiar voice…
And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his disguise.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 19. As she listens to the gypsy fortune teller, Jane is a dream-like state. But then the voice changes and Jane observes the gypsy’s hand stretched out and illuminated by the flame of the fire. She recognizes a ring on the old hag’s finger that she has seen countless times before. The true identity is revealed. The hag turns out to be no hag, but Mr. Rochester.
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