Summary
Rochester wakes early the next morning feeling suffocated,
having dreamt that he was buried alive. Cold and sick, he staggers
to his dressing room and vomits, and he continues to vomit the rest
of the day. He believes he has been poisoned. He enters Antoinette's
room and hatefully watches her sleep. Detecting a smile on her lips
as she dreams, he covers her face with a torn sheet, as though he
were covering a dead person.
Rochester runs outside to the forest and finds himself
near the ruined house he had seen on his earlier forest walk. He
sleeps for several hours, waking when it is already late and chilly.
He heads back to Granbois, where he shuts himself in his dressing
room. The servant Amelie comes to care for Rochester, bringing him
food and wine and cradling him as though he were a child. She tells
him, "I am sorry for you," then begins to laugh merrily. Rochester
pulls Amelie down onto the bed with him. Not until the next morning
does he consider Antoinette, who has been listening to his sexual
play with the servant through the thin partition between their rooms.
As Amelie dresses the next morning, Rochester offers her
money, which she accepts without a word of thanks. She details her
plans to leave Granbois and travel to Rio to find rich men. After
Amelie exits the room, Rochester hears Antoinette leave the house
on horseback.
Antoinette does not return for three days. On the third
day, Rochester writes a letters to his friend in Spanish Town inquiring about
Christophine, who had earlier been arrested for practicing obeah.
Rochester learns that Christophine has disappeared after being released
from jail, and that the local police are on the lookout for any
trouble.
As Rochester sits in his hammock at dusk, Antoinette returns home
and goes immediately upstairs to her room, without uttering a word
to her husband. He follows her inside the house and tries to enter
her room, pushing her blocked door partially open. He sees her lying
in bed, furiously ringing her hand-bell as she summons Baptiste
and Christophine (Rochester has already spotted Christophine in
the kitchen).
When Antoinette opens the door, she looks crazed and unkempt. She
grabs for a bottle of rum and accuses Rochester of being no better
than the slaveholders he condemns, having slept with a servant and
sent her away. Antoinette cries when Rochester calls her "Bertha,"
accusing him of trying to transform her through obeah magic. She
says she hates him for ruining the one place she loved. When Rochester
grabs Antoinette's wrist, she sinks her teeth into his arm. Ferocious
and wild-eyed, she curses him, and then begins sobbing when Christophine
enters the room. Rochester walks to the veranda and hears Christophine
comfort his wife, speaking softly and singing.
