It is obvious to the reader, although not to Jane, that the reason why Mr Rochester stays at Thornfield much longer than usual is that he finds her company enjoyable. Jane, unknowingly at first, falls in love with him.
There is something about Thornfield that is mysterious. Jane is encouraged to focus her attentions on the servant Grace Poole. It is clear to the reader, though, that Mr Rochester's emotional engagement is immense. When his bed is set on fire, Jane rescues him, but does not understand why the matter is not pursued, despite Mr Rochester assuring her the culprit is Grace. The next morning Grace behaves as though she has done nothing wrong.
Eventually, Mr Rochester leaves, to go to a house party. He brings everyone at the party back with him, transforming the atmosphere in the house, and delighting Adele.
One of the guests is Blanche Ingram, whom Mr Rochester is confidently expected to marry. However, it is clear from the way she is portrayed in the book that she is arrogant; our sympathies are not with her.
Mr Rochester is called away from the house, and when he returns he chooses to play the role of a fortune teller. It is clear to the reader that one of his motives is to try to turn Blanche against the idea of marriage to him. While he has clearly bothered her, he is unsuccessful.
With Jane his emotion is very clear, but why he is so caught up less so. However, it is obvious he wants happiness for Jane.
A visitor had arrived at the house while Mr Rochester was away, a Mr Richard Mason. News that this man was staying clearly upset Mr Rochester, but a bigger upset was to come.
Jane was called to help in the night. Mason had been savagely attacked, his flesh torn by a knife, but also by teeth. Jane still thinks it is Grace, but the reader realises Mason must hold some key to the mystery, as Mr Rochester tells him and Jane to say nothing to each other while he fetches the doctor – supposedly to save Mason's strength.
Mason leaves with the doctor. Jane is left with Mr Rochester. Their closeness is very apparent.
The following afternoon, Jane hears that John Reed is dead and Mrs Reed, who is probably on her death-bed, has been asking for her. With strict instructions from Mr Rochester to return quickly, she sets off to Gateshead.
On arrival, she realises she no longer hates her cousins. However, Mrs Reed is still bitter towards her, owing to the fact that Jane's mother was Mr Reed's favourite sister and this resulted in him apparently favouring Jane over his own children.
A short time later, Mrs Reed gives Jane a letter from her uncle, John Eyre that was written three years earlier. It explains how he planned to adopt Jane and allow her to inherit his fortune. Mrs Reed never handed the letter over because of her bitterness. Jane tries once more to seek reconciliation, but without success; her aunt dies that night.
Jane is excited about returning to Thornfield and Mr Rochester, even though she believes he is married to Blanche Ingram. It is obvious when they meet that Rochester is delighted to see her, too.
What follows is “a fortnight of dubious calm”, in which Jane expects to hear about the marriage but nothing is said.
On midsummer eve, Jane goes into the garden after Adele has gone to bed. She finds Mr Rochester there. The scene is described in extraordinary detail, as it moves to his proposal.
He is perhaps teasing or testing Jane as he talks of her having to move on, claiming to have found her a new position in Ireland. Eventually, however, he proposes, revealing that any chance of a relationship with Blanche ended when he pretended to have less money than she considered acceptable.
Rochester talks frequently of what he is doing as being wrong, but claims his love and care for Jane will atone for it. As readers, we think there could be something sinister behind this. However, Jane does not pick up on more than his emotion as they go into the house.
Jane is blissfully happy, but still aware that Mrs Fairfax seems shocked. So she asks Mr Rochester to speak to her the following day. Her congratulations, when they come, seem very subdued, fuelling our suspicions.
Jane decides she will not abandon her previous path. She refuses expensive gifts and spends a lot of time with Adele. Mr Rochester is eager to be with her, but allows her to dictate terms in this way in the four weeks leading up to the wedding.
Then we hear of a very bizarre episode. Mr Rochester has had to go away. When he returns, Jane describes having been woken by someone in her room. She describes the woman in hideous terms, and explains that her wedding veil was ripped in two, so it could not have been a dream. Mr Rochester encourages her to continue to blame Grace, and insists she shares Adele’s room the night before the wedding.
The wedding morning arrives. Mr Rochester is possessed by tension and a desire that everything should be done quickly. Even Jane is encouraged to hurry.
There are no family present at the wedding. Perhaps for this reason, Jane notices two men, apparently waiting for the ceremony, enter the church before them.
When the priest asks if there is any impediment to the marriage, one of the men, Mr Briggs - a lawyer - explains that Rochester is already married to the sister of Mr Mason, who comes forward at this point.
Clearly, there can be no marriage. Mr Rochester takes them back to Thornfield to see his wife, Bertha, a dangerous lunatic, and Grace, her keeper. Bertha attacks Mr Rochester, but he is able to restrain her. Even though bigamy is a serious crime, it becomes easy to understand what drove him.
Before Briggs and Mason depart, we learn that it was a chance connection between Jane’s uncle in Madeira and Mr Mason that brought Briggs and Mason to stop the marriage. We also learn that Jane’s uncle is on his death-bed.
Jane spends a long time numb with shock at what has happened. She eventually meets with Mr Rochester and he tries everything in his power to keep her with him. He explains how he was trapped by his family into the marriage, and how he spent time in Europe seeking, in vain, some kind of escape.
He asks Jane to come away with him, but she is controlled by conscience and cannot allow herself to be loved by a married man. She knows she cannot stay with him and keep her resolution, so says she will leave.
Jane leaves Thornfield in the early hours of the next morning. She knows it is the only way she can resist him. Mr Rochester has suggested they go to Europe together. This would offend every moral tenet by which she lives her life.
She leaves without saying goodbye, travelling as far as her modest resources will allow. Jane only take items with her that she judges to be really hers – not, for instance, the pearl necklace associated with what would have been a bigamous marriage. However, she is so distressed she leaves even this small parcel on the coach.
Jane is destitute. She has no money and nowhere to go. She is forced to beg; most people are resistant to her pleas. A farmer gives her some food and, when she collapses outside the house of a parson, having been turned away by a servant, she is brought back into the house by the orders of the parson himself, St John Rivers.
The house has four inhabitants: St John, his sisters Diana and Mary Rivers, and their servant, Hannah. They are in mourning for their father, who died recently. While far from destitute, they are not wealthy and must soon leave the family home forever – Diana and Mary as governesses, and St John and Hannah to go back to his parsonage.
Before this happens, Jane, who adopts the pseudonym Elliot, has a chance to regain her strength and find a measure of tranquillity in the company of Diana and Mary.
Thanks to St John, she is offered a future as a village schoolmistress. The day before Diana and Mary go to their governess roles, Jane goes to the cottage that goes with the job.
It takes a little time for Jane to get used to her new life. But she soon finds great satisfaction in her work, and in the progress of many of her students. She recognises that her efforts are well received within the community, and this brings her considerable fulfilment.
It is one of the points in the book that where you get a strong sense of social class. Jane admits that at first she felt 'degraded' in her new position. Later, Mr Oliver (the patron of the school) says he thinks her too capable to stay long in her new position. His daughter, Rosamond Oliver, says Jane is bright and educated enough to be "a governess in a high family". The cottage and her work offer security and opportunity far beyond what Jane had when she came to the Rivers family, and she tells St John this when he visits.
We learn that St John will soon be leaving his work to become a missionary, something that his father's disapproval had kept him from doing earlier. He is in love with Rosamond and it is clear her father would not disapprove of the match, but he is determined to fight his love and follow the path his conscience has dictated.
When he visits Jane at the cottage, St John shows he has some understanding of how she must have struggled with herself in some way to give up her previous life as she did, and he urges her not to be weak.
Jane has painted a picture of Rosamond, which she offers to St John. Although he admits he would love the picture, as he loves Rosamond, he says he will not sacrifice his desire to be a missionary – or what that represents – and that she is not suited to being his wife. He refuses the picture, but is fascinated by a scrap of paper he takes with him.
When he next visits we learn that Jane had absent-mindedly written her real name on the paper. St John reveals that he knows everything that has happened to her and tells her she is the sole heiress to her uncle's fortune of £20,000 (a very considerable amount of money at the time). She wonders why Mr Briggs, the solicitor, should have approached St John to try to find her, and he explains they are in fact cousins. This fills her with joy.
She is determined to share the legacy between the four of them, and does. Characteristically, she remains at the village school until a replacement is found.
Jane returns with Hannah to Moor House. Diana and Mary are to join them in time for Christmas and the start of their new lives together. Jane is ready to be content in her new life, but St John seeks to inspire her to join him as a missionary.
He gets her to learn Hindustani and offers a chilly kind of affection, shown by the kiss he gives her every night. Eventually he asks her to be his wife and to come with him when he leaves in six weeks. She is distressed because she has been unable to obtain news of Mr Rochester, and says she will go as St John’s companion. He insists that it must be as his wife. She refuses.
She sticks to this refusal and eventually St John says he will go alone, but make arrangements for her to go out there with a married missionary couple. Despite this, he still wishes to persuade her. Jane is on the point of agreeing to marry St John when she believes she hears Mr Rochester calling to her.
She leaves to go back to Thornfield the next afternoon (a Tuesday), arriving on Thursday morning. Jane wonders what she will find – whether Mr Rochester will in fact be in England. She is shocked to see the house has been destroyed by fire.
She learns from an old man who was butler to Mr Rochester's father that, after she left, he sent Adele to school and gave Mrs Fairfax a pension and sent her away, too. Two months later, Bertha burned the house down. Mr Rochester saved the servants and tried to save Bertha, but she threw herself from the roof. Mr Rochester was badly injured when a beam fell on him, and has been blinded. He is now living at Ferndean.
Jane goes to him. At first, he struggles to believe it is her, but finally allows himself to do so. They learn to be together after everything that has happened, and in new circumstances. Jane learns he did indeed call to her and he heard her answer. They feel their reunion is a gift from God, with his blessing.
In the final chapter, we move on ten years and learn that Jane and Mr Rochester are married, and have had a son. Both Diana and Mary are happily married, too. Adele has enjoyed a happy time at the school Jane moved her to, and is now a young lady. Mr Rochester has regained some sight in one eye. St John is a missionary, still driven by the hope of bliss in Heaven as reward for his Earthly work.
