Reviews

Jane Eyre: Beyond the Counterfeits of Love
by Marilyn Green Faulkner

Editors’ Note: Each month members of Meridian’s Back to the Best Books Club read a work of fiction together and join for an online discussion with Marilyn Green Faulkner.

This month’s selection is Jane Eyre. For information on joining the club, contact us at [email protected]

Eros is one of the Greek words for love, meaning specifically the love between man and woman. But its meaning is deeper than sexuality. Eros refers to intimacy, to romance, to the ethereal, inexplicable state of “being in love.” One of the most revolutionary revelations received by Joseph Smith was the idea that Eros, romantic, physical love, was not only ordained by God but constitutes a part of God’s eternal existence. That couples can and should anticipate an eternity that includes physical intimacy in a resurrected state turns conventional Christian dogma upside-down. Yet, if we can be married forever, our intimate relations on earth are sanctified in a way that should change our perception of them forever.

Though too often in literature we find only counterfeits of love, here and there we do find beautiful examples of writing that combines the appreciation of the physical with an understanding of the spiritual nature of romance. In Jane Eyre we find such a scene, which combines at least eight senses that I can count. Of course the five physical senses are represented, but several spiritual senses are there too. I don’t know how many of those exist, I am still learning, but I can count three at least. Perhaps you will find more.

The scene opens on Midsummer Eve, a deeply symbolic night for the English, who are just a step away still from their Druidic roots. It is a Midsummer night’s dream, of course, with all the magic Shakespeare ever imagined about to commence. Jane describes her desire to enjoy the beautiful grounds, but aware that Rochester is watching from the house, she steals into the orchard to be alone. “No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers.” Well, now we are in Eden, and our senses are called into play. Flowers and their fragrances are described, our sight is drawn to the lovely rising moon, and each sound of bird and breeze is carefully described. As Bronte (the master craftsman) slips quietly into the present tense we are drawn right into the garden with Jane; with her, we smell a familiar fragrance, Mr. Rochester’s cigar. (Until the recent past, this was one fragrance that was distinctly and exclusively masculine.) Adam has arrived.

And of course, he is eating fruit! He wanders among the trees and vines, sampling this cherry and that plum, and stoops to examine a great moth. (Watch out Jane, moths are drawn to flame. There is fire imagery everywhere.) As Jane attempts to escape she is accosted not by his person, but only by his voice. He speaks without turning and she is as much his captive as the moth. She wonders how he knows she is there – “could his shadow feel?” she asks herself. It is the first reference to the spiritual communication she senses between them. Since we are in Eden we are not surprised that they seat themselves at the base of a great tree.

Smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch. Such are the physical senses, and were the scene to end here with our lovers entwined in an embrace, it would take its place among endless similar scenes in countless forgettable volumes. But it is here, seated in their own quiet Eden, that spiritual senses come into play. There is that remarkable sense that separates us from the beast, human conversation. Jane and Rochester begin to talk. At first he tries to draw her out by pretending that he must marry Blanche Ingram and send Jane away, which causes her to drop her ever-present reserve. Her true feelings begin to pour out, and what began as an attempt to manipulate Jane’s emotions becomes a deep and intimate communication. As Rochester talks, he reveals a curious spiritual sense that is at the heart of the highest expressions of human intimacy, what he calls “a cord of communion.”

As they discuss their imminent parting, Rochester asks, “Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?” She is too emotionally overcome to respond, so he goes on:

“Because,’ he said, ‘I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

There is not in literature a more beautiful description of the feeling of kinship that exists between a man and a woman who are truly “in love.” They feel, in short, like a family even before they are one. We’ve passed by the giddy, deceptive affections that have selfish gratification at their center, for all our talk today about people who love but can’t commit is silliness: there is no love without commitment. C.S. Lewis, in his famous discussion of Eros in the book The Four Loves, describes this emotion thus: “To be in love is both to intend and to promise lifelong fidelity. Love makes vows unasked; can’t be deterred from making them.” (The Four Loves, p. 158) Every happily married person who reads this will understand what I am saying when I talk about the kinship that exists between two people, who might otherwise be comparative strangers, that impels them to create a family rather than just pass each other by. This sense of kinship is spiritual, but it is essential to the deepest kind of human intimacy.

Finally, still convinced that any chance of marriage to Rochester is impossible, Jane is roused to respond and expresses the third spiritual sense discernable here, the sense of an eternal identity. Drawing herself to her full height (which I imagine to be about five feet tall) she faces Rochester and utters these famous words:

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? – You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you, – and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh: – it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal – as we are!”

Jane understands instinctively that eternal relationships are based on equality. There is no place in true marriage for intimidation or fear. She calls Mister Rochester her Master and rejoices in his masculine strength. He, in turn, vows he is mastered by her and rejoices in her equal, yet deliciously different, feminine strength. They each have the strong sense of self that comes from through the spirit. This balance does not come immediately, but through the fiery trials through which they pass together. Like most of us, they only glimpse the possibility of true union in the orchard. There is much pain and sorrow between that beginning and their final happiness.

It is significant that this wonderful scene ends in a manner entirely appropriate to the unmarried state of the lovers. That’s what I call a real love story, one that stretches beyond the bounds of earth and soars heavenward, where we hope to dwell. And now, for those of you who have felt the curious call of kinship, the thrill of true communion, and the intimation of your eternal identity that have combined in a commitment to another soul on earth, can you feel it still? The flame of true love is an eternal flame, and it is good to be thankful for it, and to let it rekindle in our hearts. Like Jane may we say, “I know what it is to live with and for what I love best on earth.”

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