Reunion with Mr. Rochester at Ferndean

The reunion of Jane Eyre and Edward Fairfax Rochester at Ferndean Manor is the novel's climactic resolution, where the two protagonists, each shattered by the events that followed their interrupted wedding, find their way back to one another not as master and dependent but as equals. It is the moment when Jane's long ordeal of wandering, starvation, and moral testing, and Rochester's catastrophic punishment by fire and blindness, converge into a new beginning founded on mutual need and reciprocal love.

The Setting and the State of the Protagonists

Ferndean Manor is a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood. Its site is ineligible and insalubrious, and the house had long remained uninhabited and unfurnished except for a few rooms fitted up for the squire when he went there to shoot. Jane arrives just before dark on an evening marked by a sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating rain. The last mile she performs on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with double remuneration. The iron gates between granite pillars admit her into the twilight of close-ranked trees; a grass-grown track descends the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts. The house, when she finally reaches it, is scarcely distinguishable from the trees, so dank and green are its decaying walls. There are no flowers, no garden-beds—only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat set in the heavy frame of the forest. The whole looks, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, "quite a desolate spot." It is as still as a church on a week-day; the pattering rain on the forest leaves is the only sound audible.

Rochester himself has been transformed by the catastrophe at Thornfield. He is stone-blind, having lost one eye when a beam fell during the fire, and the other eye inflamed until sight was lost entirely. One hand was so crushed that the surgeon, Mr. Carter, had to amputate it directly. He is now helpless—blind and a cripple. When Jane first sees him, he comes out onto the step without a hat, stretching forth his hand as if to feel whether it rains. His form is still of the same strong and stalwart contour; his port is still erect, his hair still raven black; his features are not altered or sunk. But his countenance looks desperate and brooding, reminding Jane of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird—the caged eagle whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished. He gropes his way back to the house, and re-enters, closing the door.

The Recognition and Embrace

Jane enters the parlour carrying a tray with water and candles. Pilot, Rochester's old dog, pricks up his ears when she comes in, then jumps up with a yelp and a whine and bounds toward her, almost knocking the tray from her hands. Rochester, hearing the commotion, asks for water. Jane approaches him with the now half-filled glass. When he checks the water on its way to his lips and seems to listen, he asks, "This is you, Mary, is it not?" Jane answers, "Mary is in the kitchen." He puts out his hand with a quick gesture but, not seeing where she stands, does not touch her. He demands, "Who is this? Who is this?" Jane replies, "Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening." Rochester cries out, "Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?" Jane assures him, "No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy." He gropes; she arrests his wandering hand and prisons it in both hers. He cries, "Her very fingers! her small, slight fingers! If so there must be more of her." The muscular hand breaks from her custody; her arm is seized, her shoulder, neck, waist—she is entwined and gathered to him. He asks, "Is it Jane? What is it? This is her shape—this is her size—" She adds, "And this her voice. She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again." He can only say, "Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre." She answers, "My dear master, I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I am come back to you." He asks, "In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?" She replies, "You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?" He calls her "My living darling!" and says it seems a dream, such as he has had at night when he clasped her once more to his heart, kissed her, and felt that she loved him. She presses her lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes, sweeps his hair from his brow, and kisses that too.

The Revelation of Independence and the Proposal

Jane tells Rochester that she is now an independent woman: her uncle in Madeira has died and left her five thousand pounds. He cries, "Ah! this is practical—this is real! I should never dream that." She offers to be his neighbour, his nurse, his housekeeper, his companion—to read to him, to walk with him, to sit with him, to wait on him, to be eyes and hands to him. He replies not at first, seeming serious and abstracted. She begins to withdraw from his arms, but he eagerly snatches her closer. He says, "No—no—Jane; you must not go. No—I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence—the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys." He speaks of his infirmities—his blindness, his lost hand—and asks if she will marry him. She answers, "Yes, sir." He presses further: "A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?" She says, "Yes, sir." "A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait on?" She says, "Yes, sir." He asks, "Truly, Jane?" She answers, "Most truly, sir." He blesses her, and she tells him that to be his wife is for her to be as happy as she can be on earth. He speaks of his gratitude to God, acknowledging that he did wrong in trying to make her his mistress, and that the Omnipotent snatched her from him. He says he has experienced remorse, repentance, and the wish for reconcilement to his Maker. He tells her of the night, four days before her arrival, when he supplicated God and cried out "Jane! Jane! Jane!" and heard her voice reply, "I am coming: wait for me." Jane, who had indeed received that mysterious summons at the same hour, keeps the coincidence to herself, pondering it in her heart.

The Marriage and the Life That Follows

Jane marries Rochester in a quiet wedding with only the parson and clerk present. She writes to Diana and Mary Rivers, who approve unreservedly. She brings Adele Varens home from the strict school where Rochester had placed her, finding her a more indulgent institution and visiting her often. Rochester remains blind for the first two years of their union, and Jane becomes his vision, reading to him, describing the landscape, and conducting him where he wishes to go. She says, "I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand." At the end of two years, Rochester begins to recover the sight of one eye. He can find his way without being led; the sky is no longer a blank to him, the earth no longer a void. When their first-born is put into his arms, he can see that the boy has inherited his own eyes as they once were—large, brilliant, and black. Jane concludes, "My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most love are happy likewise."