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.