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By Michael Millerman
“And the first seeds of the longing for justice blow through the soul like the wind.”
The paroxysm that lands Jane in the “red room” early in the novel marks an
important transition: an awakening of her self to her self (II, 28). She becomes keenly
aware of the injustice caused by the imposition of another’s will on one’s own. Much
like Rousseau’s Emile, she must now strengthen and cultivate the instinct of amour de
soi, love of self, and come to see herself not as a cogwheel of society, but as an agent of
natural freedom. This fundamental realization guides Jane along a path of courage and
justice; a path founded on principles whose truth she has discovered for herself. It is not
without difficulty and sacrifice, however, that Jane maintains her autonomy.
Rochester finds in Jane the very heavenly innocence that he longs to regain for
himself. With penetrating insight, he discerns in her both the infinite capacity for love
and the stubborn refusal to give it any reign over established independence. When Jane is
under the impression that she sits in the company of a magic-woman, a gypsy
fortuneteller, (though she actually sits before a disguised Rochester), she is forced to face
a reality about the state of her soul:
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.’ (XIX. 217-8)
We can perfect our individual characteristics, but sublime synthesis is in relation; a truth
which Jane has not yet had the pleasure of realizing. It becomes Rochester’s purpose,
both for his own good and hers, to sublimate her amour de soi from one of protective
reservedness to one of harmonious completion. Or, as he says to her in his gypsy guise,
“Chance has meted you a measure of happiness . . .. She has laid it carefully on one side
for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand and take it up:
but whether you will do so, is the problem I study” (XIX, 221).
Where passion tempts, resolve must reign; one results in despair, the other in
triumph. What causes Jane, against the tempest of her passions, to journey out into
uncertainty, with no destination and little hope? On the night that Jane has bid ‘farewell,
for ever!’ to Rochester, she falls into a ‘trance-like dream’, which takes place in the red-
room at Gateshead - the same room that served as constant reminder of her dependence
and lack of freedom during her childhood. A light seems to tremble in the center of the
ceiling, which gives way to clouds, high and dim, revealing,
[…] Not a moon, but a white human form […] in the azure, inclining a glorious
brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably
distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my head – ‘My daughter, flee
temptation!’ ‘Mother, I will.’ (XXVII, 344)
This voice cuts through the tumultuous uproar of her soul, and she realizes at once upon
waking that she must align her will with Fortune, despite the “stormy, scalding, heart-
wrung tears” (XXVII, 347); as it is said: everything is in the hands of Heaven, except the
fear of Heaven. And so dear Jane enters into her ‘dark night of the soul’. No family, no
friends, no money, no food, no home; nothing but an undying love for Rochester, and the
company of God. Whilst contemplating “His infinitude, His omnipotence, His
omnipresence”, Jane intuits the inherent order of creation and realizes that “the Source of
Life was also the Saviour of spirits” (XXVIII, 349).
Jane, initially a victim of imposed will, but eventually strengthening her own, has
proceeded to a principle much higher than those she has held thus far: nothing
advantageous or disadvantageous happens in any part that is not suitable to and in
harmony with the totality (St. Augustine, 2). This principle demonstrates itself clearly in
the remainder of the novel. Jane chooses to trust in the Wisdom of Providence, not the
Voice of Temptation, and soon discovers what a prudent decision she has made. She is
taken in, cared for, and nurtured (physically and intellectually) by a family (consisting of
a saint, a moon goddess, and the mother of Christ – or, at any rate, their namesakes…)
she soon learns is her own. She comes into wealth through the gracious benefaction of
infinite improbability. Thoughts of Rochester, however, continue to distress.
The loveliest melodies are those plucked on the strings that bind man’s heart to
God’s. Act in accordance with the best, and it shall befall you. Jane’s emersion from her
‘dark night of the soul’, marked symbolically by her arrival at ‘Whitcross’, is
characterized by a complete faith in harmony, despite the fact that she has turned away
from the one object in the universe that she most wholly loves, Mr. Rochester. Thoughts
of Rochester permeate Jane’s entire being and burn in the deepest recesses of her soul; so
too does hopelessness of reunion. John Rivers himself perceives this in a conversation
with Jane, as she tells him of ‘a point on which I have long endured painful doubt’: “I
know where your heart turns, and to what it clings,” says St.John, “Long since you ought
to have crushed [the interest you cherish]: now you should blush to allude to it. You
think of Mr. Rochester” (XXXV, 442). And so, when Rivers proposes to Jane (appealing
not to love, but duty) she is right to respond that ‘she could decide if she were sure that it
was God’s will’ (XXXV. 447), being uncertain of her own.
It is at this moment in the novel that the religious and romantic tensions find their
synthesis in a most beautiful fashion, and harmony is finally bestowed on a love long ago
proclaimed divine. Jane entreats the Heavens for a sign, and it is provided. The voice of
Rochester speaks to her soul, calling out her name, in pain and desperation, and with a
new unwavering resolve, she sets out to find him. “It was my time to assume
ascendancy. My powers were in play, and in force,” Jane tells us (XXXV, 448). “I
seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His
feet,” (XXXV, 449). We soon learn that Rochester really had called out to her at that
moment and it is no surprise that their love is eventually, at long last, realized in mutual
bliss and perfect harmony. As Goethe writes, “It is true symbolism when the particular
represents the more general, not as dream and shadow, but as the living, present
revelation of the unfathomable” (qtd. in Miller, XIV).
This, then, is what emerges from the pages of Jane Eyre when we allow it to
speak for itself. As Ruth Yeazell perceptively notes, to uncover and experience the
essence of Jane Eyre requires a certain amount of ‘necessary faith in miracles or
extrasensory perception’ (Yeazell, 127). A transcendentally naïve reading makes it
impossible to discern the novel’s deeper meaning from it’s surface expression. The
essential beauty available to the reader consists in the realization that “hanging before
one’s eyes and passing through one’s ears is the absolute itself;” a celebration of the
Divine (Earle, 100). Keeping this in mind, we can soar like eagles to the brilliance of the
sun instead of circling, like flies, the weak flicker of candlelight.