Mr Rochester then opened a door which was hidden behind a tapestry and “In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.” Mr Rochester introduced us to his wife who everyone could then see was insane. “I recognised well that purple face, -those bloated features.” I stood there in complete shock, I felt like I was in a dream. I just couldn’t take it all in. I had been living in the same house as Mr Rochester’s wife and was oblivious to everything that had been said. It was all clear now; everything seemed to fall into place. It explained the continuous laughing in the middle of the night and my veil that had been savagely torn in half. Mr Rochester then “flung me behind him” and “the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek.” I was full of shock and couldn’t do anything but stand there and take it all in. I was horrified to see this poor creature being locked up in this room for all these years, knowing that Adele was in the house and Mr Rochester didn’t do anything to stop a tragedy occurring.
Soon after everyone had left I locked myself in my room and plunged into despair. All these questions were floating around in my head and I didn’t know how to answer them. “Where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday? -where was my life? -where was my prospects? “My hopes were all dead-struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt.” “I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.” “I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master’s-which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr Rochester’s arms-it could not derive warmth from his breast.” I prayed for God to be with me.
In the afternoon “I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gliding the sign of it’s decline on the wall, I asked, what am I to do?” My mind told me to leave Thornfield at once but that thought “was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears.” But, then, a voice within me averted that I could do it and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me.” I got up to open the door but fell over an obstacle and was supported up by Mr Rochester who had been sitting across from my chamber threshold. Mr Rochester told me he did not mean to hurt me and he asked for my forgiveness. “I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.” He tried to kiss me “but I remembered caresses were now forbidden.” Mr Rochester suggested we leave Thornfield and live together and he even suggested that I do not love him! How could he think such a terrible thought! He was the one with the secret wife, not me. He explained his past to me and even threw himself on the sofa and desperately pleaded me to stay. Those “words cut me: yet what could I do or say? I had made my decision and it tore me to speak these words but it was what I had to do. I told him that “I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes.” I could not bear to stay and watch the love we had twist and turn bitter, knowing that I could never be his wife because it is wrong, I will never be more than a mistress to him while Bertha is alive.
As soon as I went to bed that evening, a slumber fell on me. I could not stay and endure another minute so I got up, got dressed and gathered my belongings. I whispered farewell to Mrs Fairfax and my darling Adele. I am going to miss them terribly, for they have cared for me and made me feel like a whole person for the first time in my life. As I walked past Mr Rochester’s chamber, “my heart momentarily stopped it’s beat, my foot was forced to stop also.” I could hear him pacing up and down his room. This was the worst experience I ever had to endure, “that kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone.” I went downstairs “I knew what I had to do, and I did it mechanically. I opened the outside gates and departed Thornfield. I do not know what the future holds for me but I just have to start again somewhere new. All I ever wanted was to be loved and treated fairly with someone who respects me and is honest with me. After a life of loneliness and neglect I wondered if I could ever find another man who values and loves me in the way Mr Rochester does yet my conscience tells me that I will respect myself all the more if I bear suffering alone and does what I believe is right. I love Mr Rochester with all my heart but he is a married man and it is wrong. I must forget about Thornfield and pray and hope I find true happiness elsewhere.
Jane