When Christophine accuses Rochester of "breaking" Antoinette,
he remains speechless, not responding to her litany of questions.
Christophine assumes total control of their dialogue; all Rochester
does is repeat her words to himself silently. Christophine thus
silences Rochester just as Rochester silences Antoinette by refusing
to listen to her. Rochester becomes Christophine's speechless marionette,
her puppet, much as Antoinette is his marionette. Indeed, Rochester
explicitly identifies with Antoinette when he imagines himself in
the place of his wife. Antoinette's words invade his narrative thoughts
as he contemplates what she must have said to Christophine about
his affair with Amelie. Christophine's dialogic control aligns Rochester—albeit
for a short time—with his powerless wife.
As Rochester listens to Christophine, he is inundated
with many different voices, from Antoinette's to Daniel's. Rhys
thus offers a glimpse into Rochester's unconscious and his unspoken
thoughts. Often, Rochester is too self- restrained and rational
to expose his inner self. The letter he writes to his father, for
example, betrays little of Rochester's anger and resentment, but
is instead formal and proper in tone. The only time Rochester does
express his unconscious is when he absentmindedly doodles a drawing.
As though his innermost thoughts were struggling to spell out a
warning, the picture that he draws coincides with the future that
he chooses; the reader of Jane Eyre recognizes
the significance of Rochester's scribbled picture of a woman staring
out from the attic window.
