Celine Varens
Celine Varens, a French opera-dancer, was the object of what Rochester later called a "grande passion" during his younger, more reckless years in Paris. Her calculated betrayal of him—conducted with a brainless young vicomte—shattered his romantic illusions and left a lasting imprint on his character, souring his view of women and love for years afterward. She is also the mother of Adele Varens, the little girl Rochester brought to England and placed under Jane Eyre's care, a living consequence of that failed affair.
Identity and Background
Celine Varens was a performer on the Parisian stage, an opera-dancer by profession. Rochester described her as a "Gallic sylph" who professed to return his passion with even superior ardour, flattering him by claiming she preferred his "taille d'athlete" to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere. Flattered by this preference, Rochester installed her in an hotel, providing a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, and lace—beginning, as he put it, "the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony." He later reflected that he had been "green"—"grass green"—in his infatuation with her.
The Betrayal and Its Discovery
Rochester's disillusionment came one warm June evening when he called on Celine unexpectedly. Finding her out, he sat down in her boudoir, then stepped onto the balcony to smoke a cigar. From this vantage point he watched her elegant close carriage draw up to the hotel door. As she alighted, a second figure jumped out after her—a man in an officer's uniform, whom Rochester recognised as a young vicomte, a brainless and vicious youth he had sometimes met in society. Concealing himself behind the curtain, Rochester listened as the pair talked. Their conversation was frivolous, mercenary, and heartless; they insulted him coarsely, with Celine waxing "rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them." This was the same woman who had habitually launched into fervent admiration of what she called his "beaute male." The contrast struck Rochester at the time. His love for Celine sank under an extinguisher; he recognised that a woman who could betray him for such a rival was not worth contending for, deserving only scorn.
Confrontation and Aftermath
Rochester walked in upon the pair, liberated Celine from his protection, gave her notice to vacate the hotel, and offered her a purse for immediate exigencies—disregarding her screams, hysterics, prayers, and protestations. He made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne the next morning, where he left a bullet in one of the young man's arms. He thought he had done with the whole crew. However, six months before this rupture, Celine had given birth to a daughter, Adele, whom she affirmed was Rochester's child. Rochester saw no proofs of such paternity written in the girl's countenance—remarking that his dog Pilot was more like him than she was—but he acknowledged no natural claim on Adele's part to be supported by him. Some years after he broke with the mother, Celine abandoned her child entirely, running away to Italy with a musician or singer, leaving Adele destitute.
Legacy and Significance
Rochester took the "poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris" and transplanted her to England, where Mrs. Fairfax found Jane Eyre to train her as a governess. When Jane learned the truth about Adele's parentage, she declared that Adele was not answerable for either her mother's faults or Rochester's, and that she would cling closer to the lonely little orphan than before. Celine Varens thus functions in the novel as a cautionary figure—the embodiment of the mercenary, sensual love that Rochester once pursued and that left him cynical and distrustful. Her ghost haunts Jane's own relationship with Rochester: Jane explicitly refuses to become his "English Celine Varens," insisting on maintaining her independence and her role as Adele's governess rather than accepting jewels and fine dresses that would make her feel like a kept woman. Rochester's later reflections on his mistresses—Celine, the Italian Giacinta, and the German Clara—reveal his own disgust with that "grovelling fashion of existence," and his recognition that hiring a mistress is "the next worse thing to buying a slave." Celine's betrayal thus marks a turning point in Rochester's moral history, the beginning of a long period of dissipation from which he is only redeemed by his love for Jane.
