Jane Eyre Quotes

“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”
The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. In the penultimate chapter Rochester and Jane enter the final stage of their relationship. It is one in which he is dependant on her. A series of animal metaphors convey the joy and intimacy of the moment. Rochester describes Jane as his skylark, while she likens him to a royal eagle chained to a perch, which has to ask a sparrow to be its purveyor. This is a beautiful intimate moment of shared love.

Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. The image presented here in the fields around Ferndean is light and airy and full of the promise of spring. Jane becomes Rochester’s eyes as she leads him across the open fields and describes the greenery and the flowers and the sparkling blue sky. This contrasts with the gloomy atmosphere of Thornfield. The passage signifies the rebirth of life and love for Jane and Rochester.

He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgence for me – no fondness. He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth – only a few useful mental points.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. When Jane describes what she has been doing for the past ten months, Rochester becomes jealous of St. John Rivers and believes that Jane loves him. But Jane reassures him that St. John has no love for her. She uses a simile to compare him to the coldness of an iceberg.

Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I do love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir; it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Jane reassures Rochester that there is no love between her and her cousin St. John, that she was merely teasing him to distract him from his sadness. Declaring her love for Rochester, he using a metaphor to tell him that he forever has her heart.

“I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard,” he remarked ere long. “And what right would that ruin to have bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?”
“You are no ruin sir – no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Rochester uses nature metaphors to compare himself to the splintered chestnut tree in the orchard at Thornfield, and Jane to a budding new plant. He feels that he has no right to a fresh young woman like Jane because of his ruined body. However, Jane tells him that his strength makes him green and vigorous and will provide safety for plants that grow around him.

To be privileged to put my arms round what I value – to press my lips to what I love – to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. When Jane is reunited with Rochester she openly declares her love for him. He has suggested that she is sacrificing herself to wait on a crippled man twenty years her senior. But Jane dismisses the idea, saying that it is a privilege and not a sacrifice to love him. This quote shows the depth of Jane’s love for Rochester.

I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Jane tells Rochester that she loves him even more now, after he tells her that she will have to “bear with my infirmities…”overlook my deficiencies.” Jane wants to take care of him and Rocheser for his part admits that he is now more willing “to be helped – to be led.” Rochester’s injuries and the fact that he now needs Jane have made their relationship more equal. Equality is very important to Jane.

Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer; judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower – breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death…Of late, Jane – only – only of late – I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Rochester apologizes to Jane for his attempt to marry her in deceit and then trying to make her his mistress. He metaphorically compares Jane to an “innocent flower” that he would have sullied. Now a profoundly changed man, he reveals how he has turned to God and repented the wrong he did Jane. The disasters that he suffered were, he believes, divine justice for his transgression against Jane. He is now grateful to God for returning Jane to him.

I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged – that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words – “Jane! Jane! Jane!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Rochester confirms that he was so filled with longing and desperation the previous Monday night, that he screamed out Jane’s name aloud. This matches with the scream Jane heard at the same time.

“As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice – I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was – replied, ‘I am coming: wait for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words – ‘Where are you?’
“I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents – as certain as I live – they were yours!”
Reader, it was on Monday night – near midnight – that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. This passage describes the supernatural connection between Rochester and Jane. He recounts how he called out to her one night through his bedroom window and a voice answered to say they were coming. He feels that he and Jane had met in spirit. Jane confirms that she did indeed hear his voice from afar and spoke those words of reply. This shows that distance could not sever the physical bond between Jane and Rochester.

I, too, had received the mysterious summons; those were the very words by which I had replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in return…If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer; and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 37. Rochester tells Jane of a supernatural experience he had on the previous Monday night in which he spoke to and made a connection with Jane. Jane confirms that she heard Rochester’s “mysterious summons” but decides not to share this information with him because he is “too prone to gloom.”

Reader, I married him.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. The opening sentence of this final chapter is probably the most famous line in Jane Eyre, and one of the most famous lines in English literature. Jane tells us that she has wed Mr. Rochester. A climactic moment, it is also Jane’s most rebelliously defiant moment. She doesn’t say: Reader, he married me. Instead she asserts her gender equality with: Reader, I married him. It is a happy ending for the ultimate love story, a masterpiece of passion and heartbreak, fairytale and gothic horror, tumultuous romance, anger and final peace and contentment. But it is no conventional ending. Thornfield is reduced to ashes. Rochester’s wife has fallen to her death from the roof of the burning house. Rochester is blind and has lost a hand. But out of the ashes of tragedy and torment, the once homeless orphan Jane has found home, family and love with her flawed Byronic hero.

I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. Now ten years married to Rochester, this is Jane’s affirmation of their interdependence. She makes the comment in one of the novel’s final passages, where we learn that she has achieved her happily-ever-after ending. It comes through female empowerment, equality and the love she has always desired. She and Rochester are bonded together by love, we are told. After marrying him as an equal and becoming his carer, she has arrived at the ultimate happiness. Jane’s comment contains a Biblical allusion to Genesis 2:22, in which Adam responds when the Lord presents him with Eve: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” This underlines how pure and spiritual the love between Rochester and Jane is. Here is the full passage from which Jane’s quote is taken: “I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest – blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result.”

We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him; all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result…Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near – that knit us so very close; for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. Jane and Rochester have arrived at the perfect plateau of contentment in their marital togetherness. They are devoted to one another, they depend on each other, love flows through every part of their daily lives. They are in perfect harmony.

He saw nature – he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam – of the landscape before us; of the weather round us and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. A beautiful intimacy develops between Jane and Rochester, as she cares for him and becomes his eyes, through which he is able to see books and the magnificence of nature all around them.

And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad – because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance; he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. Jane speaks of her services to the blind Rochester, becoming his carer, his eyes and his right hand. Rochester accepts help from her because he truly loves her.

As to St. John Rivers…He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amid rocks and dangers…His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth – who stand without fault before the throne of God…No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. In the final passages of the novel, Jane tells us what happens to St. John Rivers, who played a major part in her life. He entered the missionary life with a pioneering zeal and stands before God “without fault” and with no fear of death.

“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily he announces more distinctly, – ‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond, – ‘Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus!'”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 38. The novel ends on a religious note, with Jane quoting from one of St. John’s letters to her in the book’s final lines. Here St. John is anticipating his own death and calmly accepts it and prays for God to take him. The unmarried St. John is a missionary in India and is near death. It is the kind of life he prayed for and the one he received.
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