Q: “How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter — by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.” (Brontë 36)

C: Jane has finally had enough of her cousin’s house and misses Mr. Rochester deeply, something we may never agree on but this is her story not mine, so she goes off running back to his estate. Jane finds the property blackened and the home destroyed. She asks around about what happened and it seems to her that bertha started a fire in the attic. With that, she jumped out of a window and died on impact. BRUTAL. Anyway because Mr. Rochester tried to save Bertha, even though he hated her, and sustained his own injuries (I believe he lost his sight and maybe his hand??) either way Mr. Rochesters’ senses have been lost to fire. Jane on the other hand just lost the version of herself that was known to be wild and crazy, that sexual passion of her in the form of Bertha’s death. The two were intertwined this whole book. A wife but not a bride (Bertha) and a bride but not a wife (Jane). Bertha represented Janes’s fire, her rebellion, her passion. In my mind, Jane has shut away all of those things that made her unique to be Mr. Rochester’s wife and decided she prefers the domestic life over the adventures she had been having before.

Q: What does the loss of Mr. Rochester’s sight resemble? What is its significance?