You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 15. Rochester says this to Jane as he tells her of Adele’s origins and the passionate affair he had with her mother, French opera dancer Celine Varens. He is commenting on Jane’s sexual inexperience. While Jane has felt love (for her friend Helen Burns), Rochester is correct in that she has little or no experience of romantic or familial love.