"I saw a blackened ruin": Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charlotte Brontë —> Brontë Gallery —> Next]

"I saw a blackened ruin" (Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield)

H. S. Grieg

Source: Brontë, facing p. 251.

See Chapter 35 in the Victorian Web text of Jane Eyre. Summoned by an unearthly voice, Jane returns to Thornfield to find a "blackened ruin" instead of a "stately house." She realises that there is no need to hold back from disturbing anyone here: even the grounds are desolate. [Commentary continues below.]

Image scan and text by Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one. Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text to see the links.]

"And there was the silence of death about it," she says,

the solitude of a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen — by conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble, and woodwork, had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked, as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it — not even dumb sign, mute token.

After this moment of shock, dreadful uncertainty and fear, Jane will be reunited with her "master" in one of the best-known endings of any novel.

Related Material

Bibliography

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre (2 vol. ed, Vol II). Illustrated by H. S. Greig. London: Dent, 1896. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of California Libraries. Web. 5 December 2017.

Created 5 December 2017