Mr. Rochester Quotes

In the names of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?…what have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Mr. Rochester shouts this to Jane when he suddenly wakes up in a pool of water with his bed and curtains set on fire. He calls her a witch and sorceress, thinking she has done something diabolical. But Jane has just saved Rochester by pouring water on the bedroom blaze stared by his mad wife Bertha. The bed-burning incident foreshadows that Bertha will later burn down the entire house.

You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owning you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different; – I feel your benefits no burden, Jane…I knew…you would do me good in some way, at some time; – I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not…strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good night!

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Here Rochester displays intense emotion and shows the first signs of his affection for Jane. She has just rescued him from certain death or injury when an unknown attacker (his secret wife Bertha Mason) sets Rochester’s bed ablaze while he sleeps. In this intimate moment Rochester abandons sarcasm and gruffness to speak passionately of his emotional connection with Jane.

I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned, I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a refreshing gale wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne; but I could not reach it, even in fancy, a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium, judgment would warn passion.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Here the author uses a metaphor to compare Jane’s intense joy and confusion to a ship tossing and voyaging across a restless sea. Beulah is a Biblical allusion to the land of the Israelites, the earthly paradise to which the Jewish people must return. Jane’s love for Rochester is clear by the intensity of this passage. In the midst of her new emotions she sees an image of herself being borne beyond the “wild waters” of her confused feelings to her own “hills of Beulah.” This is foreshadowing that a change for the better is about to happen in Jane’s life, one that involves Rochester.

It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him in turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far: beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear or uneasy restraint: this suited both him and me.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 16. Though a governess in Rochester’s home, Jane has a growing confidence in her more-than-employee relationship with him. She delights in being able to argue, banter and converse with him freely. He is a willing participant in her manipulation. Exerting her power over him “of vexing and soothing him in turns,” Jane is careful to stay within socially permitted boundaries. She has come a long way from being a lowly and powerless orphan to an independent, assertive woman who can hold her own with her gentleman employer.

When these fine, fashionable people get together, they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate. Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr. Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would not think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in their eyes: but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his wealth and good blood, make amends for any little fault of look.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 16. Housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax tells a disappointed Jane that Rochester has left Thornfield to attend a party of aristocratic friends at Mr. Ashton’s house. He will be gone for several days. Jane learns that Rochester is popular with the ladies who will be in attendance at the party.

I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment: but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder – how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter in which I had any cause to take vital interest.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. With Rochester not having returned for ten days, Jane is struggling with her feelings for him during his absense. She is dismayed when Mrs. Fairfax suggests that he may even take off to Europe for a year.

You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him: so don’t make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth. He is not of your order: keep to your caste; and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. Jane’s inner struggle between her emotional feelings for Rochester and what logic tells her continues. She reminds herself that she is from a different social class and should not be developing romantic feelings for Rochester. He is her employer and she should be grateful to him for her job as governess, she tells herself.

And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester would be likely to make? I could not tell – I did not know his taste in female beauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty; then she was so accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her, I thought; and that he DID admire her, I already seemed to have obtained proof; to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to see them together.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. After Rochester arrives back to the house with his guests, including Blanche Ingram, Jane talks here about her impressions of Blanche. She tries to figure out Rochester’s taste in female beauty. Most men would admire such a majestic and accomplished beauty as Blanche, she says. Jane believes that Rochester is attracted to her.

I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking, – a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. Jane feels something akin to a guilty pleasure when she looks at Rochester’s face following his return home after an absense of weeks. It is a tension-filled, passionate moment for Jane, as Rochester has arrived home with the beauty Blanche Ingram in tow. Jane likens the moment metaphorically to pure gold, and also a thirsty man drinking from a well that he knows is poisoned.

I had not intended to love him: the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. Jane expresses her love for Rochester unreservedly and unashamedly. After his two-week absense, she can finally admit her love for him, having before now tried to talk herself out of it. It is also clear that what attracts her to him is not any physical beauty he possesses, which he doesn’t have, but what lies on the inside. Here is the fuller quote: “Most true is it that ‘beauty is in the eye of the gazer.’ My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, – all energy, decision, will, – were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me: they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, – that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him: the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”

“He is not to them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine; – I am sure he is, – I feel akin to him, – I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him…I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract: I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered: – and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. Jane has retreated to a corner to observe Rochester and his party of upper-class houseguests. She believes that he has more in common with her than he has with them. Despite their difference in rank and wealth, she feels a kinship with Rochester. However, she doubts that the social class barriers dividing them can be overcome. Yet at the same time she feels that her blossoming love for Rochester cannot be stopped.

Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing room every evening; it is my wish, don’t neglect it.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 17. Rochester has been flirting with Blanche Ingram in a bid to make Jane jealous and make her believe that he is going to marry Blanche. So when Jane slips away from the party in the drawing room, Rochester catches up with her and speaks this passage to her. He demands that she spend time with him and his guests each evening. But when he notices tears in her eyes he excuses her for that evening.

Ere long, a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party) bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow: by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 18. Jane has to watch while the man she loves, Rochester, teams up with Blanche Ingram for an elaborate game of charades. They pantomine a wedding ceremony in which Rochester is the groom and Blanche Ingram the bride. After it Rochester tells Miss Ingram, “remember, you are my wife.”

Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy; she was too inferior to excite the feeling…She was very showy, but she was not genuine. She had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature…She was not good, she was not original…Tenderness and truth were not in her…Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character…Yes, the future bride-groom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity…this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments toward her, that my ever-torturing pain arose.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 18. Jane has watched Rochester and Blanche Ingram move closer to marriage, with both taking part in a mock-marriage charades game during Blanche’s stay Thornfield. But Jane doesn’t feel any jealousy. She ironically calls Blanche “inferior,” even though Blanche belongs to an aristocratic family and is a social class above Jane. But the real Blanche, as Jane sees her, is poor in mind and character, lacking in heart and full of show. Jane believes that Rochester doesn’t love Blanche, so it hurts her that he is going to marry her.

I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point – this was where the nerve was touched and teased – this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 18. The big question is – who should Rochester marry: Blance Ingram or Jane? A jealous Jane accepts that Rochester has social and family reasons for marrying Blanche, and on those levels they would be compatible. But Jane is convinced that Rochester doesn’t love Blanche and a woman like her kind would never, metaphorically speaking, win such a “treasure.”

Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart – have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 18. Jane uses the metaphor of arrows being shot to the breast to describe Blanche Ingram’s attempts to flirt with Mr. Rochester. A jealous Jane is relieved that Blanche’s efforts don’t work and her “arrows” simply bounce off Rochester and fall harmlessly away. Rochester obviously doesn’t love Blanche, she observes.

I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his intention; I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education, etc., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram, for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles; I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness, offered by this plan, convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 18. Jane is considering the possible marriage between Mr. Rochester and Miss Ingram. She concedes that both have grown up in a world where they are expected to follow the rules of their social class. But she finds it difficult to understand why a man like Rochester would be influenced by these rules to marry simply for “interests and connections.” Jane, who is in love with Rochester, is adament that she would have to love the person she marries.

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.

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.

“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Rochester says this to Jane, after he calls his home at Thornfield a “mere dungeon” and she remarks that it is a “splendid mansion.” Rochester uses a series of metaphors to compare the gilding, silk draperies, marble and polished woods to slime, cobwebs, slate and refuse chips.

I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb – my pet lamb – so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Rochester assures Jane that when he left her alone with Richard Mason for a number of hours she was safe with the door secured. He uses a series of metaphors to compare Jane to a vulnerable lamb, himself to the caring shepherd and Bertha Mason to a predatory wolf. His contempt for and resentment towards his secret wife Bertha is evident here. He also sees Jane as one of his possessions, referring to her as his “pet.”

“You are my little friend, are you not?”
“I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Following the stabbing and biting attack on Richard Mason, Rochester asks Jane to stay with him and be his friend. She says that she will serve him as her master, emphasizing the class differences between them. But true to her independent and rebel nature, Jane says that she will only obey him in “all that is right,” suggesting that if he asked he to do something morally wrong she would refuse.

I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me – working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, “all that is right:” for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, “No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot do it, because it is wrong;” and would become immutable as a fixed star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at once.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Rochester appears to acknowledge that Jane would refuse to do anything he asked her to do that was morally wrong. Yet later he asks her to do just that, when he wants her to be his mistress!

Sir…a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in their wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend, and solace to heal.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Jane echoes Helen Burns’s philososphy when she tells Rochester that a person’s redemption should never depend on a fellow human being. She is responding to Rochester’s story about a man who lived a sinful life then wished to begin a pure life with a virtuous stranger, but a “conventional impediment” stood in his way. Rochester posed her the question: “Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?”
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