Summary: Chapter 17
Rochester has been gone for a week, and Jane
is dismayed to learn that he may choose to depart for continental
Europe without returning to Thornfield—according to Mrs. Fairfax,
he could be gone for more than a year. A week later, however, Mrs.
Fairfax receives word that Rochester will arrive in three days with
a large group of guests. While she waits, Jane continues to be amazed
by the apparently normal relations the strange, self–isolated Grace Poole
enjoys with the rest of the staff. Jane also overhears a conversation
in which a few of the servants discuss Grace’s high pay, and Jane
is certain that she doesn’t know the entire truth about Grace Poole’s
role at Thornfield.
Rochester arrives at last, accompanied by a party of elegant
and aristocratic guests. Jane is forced to join the group but spends
the evening watching them from a window seat. Blanche Ingram and her
mother are among the party’s members, and they treat Jane with disdain
and cruelty. Jane tries to leave the party, but Rochester stops her.
He grudgingly allows her to go when he sees the tears brimming in
her eyes. He informs her that she must come into the drawing room
every evening during his guests’ stay at Thornfield. As they part,
Rochester nearly lets slip more than he intends. “Good-night, my—”
he says, before biting his lip.
Summary: Chapter 18
The guests stay at Thornfield for several days.
Rochester and Blanche compete as a team at charades. From watching
their interaction, Jane believes that they will be married soon
though they do not seem to love one another. Blanche would be marrying Rochester
for his wealth, and he for her beauty and her social position. One
day, a strange man named Mr. Mason arrives at Thornfield. Jane dislikes
him at once because of his vacant eyes and his slowness, but she
learns from him that Rochester once lived in the West Indies, as
he himself has done. One evening, a gypsy woman comes to Thornfield
to tell the guests’ fortunes. Blanche Ingram goes first, and when
she returns from her talk with the gypsy woman she looks keenly
disappointed.
Summary: Chapter 19
Jane goes in to the library to have her fortune read,
and after overcoming her skepticism, she finds herself entranced
by the old woman’s speech. The gypsy woman seems to know a great
deal about Jane and tells her that she is very close to happiness.
She also says that she told Blanche Ingram that Rochester was not
as wealthy as he seemed, thereby accounting for Blanche’s sullen
mood. As the woman reads Jane’s fortune, her voice slowly deepens,
and Jane realizes that the gypsy is Rochester in disguise. Jane
reproaches Rochester for tricking her and remembers thinking that
Grace Poole might have been the gypsy. When Rochester learns that
Mr. Mason has arrived, he looks troubled.
Summary: Chapter 20
The same night, Jane is startled by a sudden cry for help.
She hurries into the hallway, where Rochester assures everyone that
a servant has merely had a nightmare. After everyone returns to
bed, Rochester knocks on Jane’s door. He tells her that he can use
her help and asks whether she is afraid of blood. He leads her to
the third story of the house and shows her Mr. Mason, who has been
stabbed in the arm. Rochester asks Jane to stanch the wound and
then leaves, ordering Mason and Jane not to speak to one another.
In the silence, Jane gazes at the image of the apostles and Christ’s
crucifixion that is painted on the cabinet across from her. Rochester
returns with a surgeon, and as the men tend to Mason’s wounds, Rochester
sends Jane to find a potion downstairs. He gives some of it to Mason,
saying that it will give him heart for an hour. Once Mason is gone,
Jane and Rochester stroll in the orchard, and Rochester tells Jane
a hypothetical story about a young man who commits a “capital error”
in a foreign country and proceeds to lead a life of dissipation
in an effort to “obtain relief.” The young man then hopes to redeem
himself and live morally with a wife, but convention prevents him
from doing so. He asks whether the young man would be justified
in “overleaping an obstacle of custom.” Jane’s reply is that such
a man should look to God for his redemption, not to another person. Rochester—who
obviously has been describing his own situation—asks Jane to reassure
him that marrying Blanche would bring him salvation. He then hurries
away before she has a chance to answer.
Summary: Chapter 21
Jane has heard that it is a bad omen to dream
of children, and now she has dreams on seven consecutive nights
involving babies. She learns that her cousin John Reed has committed
suicide, and that her aunt, Mrs. Reed, has suffered a stroke and
is nearing death. Jane goes to Gateshead, where she is reunited
with Bessie. She also sees her cousins Eliza and Georgiana. Eliza
is plain and plans to enter a convent, while Georgiana is as beautiful
as ever. Ever since Eliza ruined Georgiana’s hopes of eloping with
a young man, the two sisters have not gotten along. Jane tries to
patch things up with Mrs. Reed, but the old woman is still full
of hostility toward her late husband’s favorite. One day, Mrs. Reed
gives Jane a letter from her father’s brother, John Eyre. He declares
that he wishes to adopt Jane and bequeath her his fortune. The letter
is three years old; out of malice, Mrs. Reed did not forward it
to Jane when she received it. In spite of her aunt’s behavior, Jane
tries once more to smooth relations with the dying woman. But Mrs.
Reed refuses, and, at midnight, she dies.
