Jane Eyre is a manual for Christian romance and anybody in love should read it. The lessons in it are many, but here is an unexpected one: the lover tells the beloved what he needs to hear and not always what he wishes to hear.
Jane and Rochester initially are separated by God and Jane’s obedience to Him. At the end of the novel a miracle happens to bring Rochester and Jane together. God shows mercy in His judgment of the pair.
I would question this plot device more if this sort of miracle hadn’t happened to me and so many people I know. Jane, far away from her beloved, hears the voice of Rochester and rushes to him. When she comes to him, he tells her something important:
‘Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower- breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane- only- only of late- I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.
‘Some days since: nay, I can number them- four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy- sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night- perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o’clock- ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.
‘I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars, and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged- that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words- “Jane! Jane! Jane!”‘
‘Did you speak these words aloud?’‘I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy.’
‘And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?’
‘Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious- some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true- true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.
‘As I exclaimed “Jane! Jane! Jane!” a voice- I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was- replied, “I am coming: wait for me;” and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words- “Where are you?”
‘I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. “Where are you?” seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents- as certain as I live- they were yours!’
And so what did Jane do? She did what I would have lacked the strength to do and what no Hollywood movie would allow:
Reader, it was on Monday night- near midnight- that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.
Jane wanted what was best for Rochester and what was best for Rochester was for his own growth toward God to continue. If she had shared the miracle that brought her to Rochester, the miracle would have tied him closer to her, but would have given a Gothic turn to his mind. This Gothic novel refuses to make the hero into a character fit only for a Twilight novel.
Miracles are rare, in part, because they are so bad for most of us. We are excited by them and begin to worship the site, the miracle, or the sign of the miracle. We miss the point and look for a repetition of the wonder. A man like Rochester might decide that Jane had a “connection” with him and presume on it, look for it, and miss it when it was “gone.” God disappears from our thoughts as we look for his signs. We worship the miracle and not the Giver.
This is damnably dangerous, but Jane knew it was also deadly to human love. Teach a man to love the gift over the Giver and you teach him to value his wife for what she does for him and not for herself. Too many men love for what is done to them and not for the doer of the lovely deeds. This sickening materialism is hard to spot at first, but slays married love as the husband begins to demand.
The desire for treats and magical tricks from the Beloved is the end of true religion and true romance. Days come when fasting is necessary and service is required. Our love is less magical and more a matter of commitment and duty. On that day, the wildest thing is humility. Gothic humility is so rare in our age, we do not know what it is, but the humble man knows himself and knows his place.
I want to love the person and not her accomplishments. They may end, but she is eternal.
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