Guide to Jane Eyre, Chapters 11-15

Guide to Jane Eyre, Chapters 11-15
This section moves fast. Jane leaves Lowood School to go to Thornfield. She takes up
her position there as governess to Adèle Varens. She is hopeful about her new life, but
has dark thoughts too. She meets Mr. Rochester on the road, and by the time she
rescues him from the fire at the end of Chapter 15, she is already in love with him.
Chapter 11
“The death of Wolfe”: General Wolfe commanded the British forces who captured
Quebec, in Canada, in 1758. Both he and the opposing French general were killed in
the battle (95).
Connexion: Just an old-fashioned spelling of “connection.”
Muff: Women formerly used muffs instead of gloves to keep their hands warm (96).
http://cache.lionbrand.com/graphics/patterns/klw-feltedMuff3.jpg
Happen: Country dialect for “perhaps” (96).
Common: A meadow used for grazing by all the people in a village (96).
Noan: None, i.e. not (96).
Beau-ideal: French (though incorrect) for the perfect form of something (97).
Negus: Hot wine (97).
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Chintz: A kind of flower pattern popular then (99). Here is a chintz plate:
http://reviews.ebay.com/Tableware-History-CHINTZ-Royal-Winton-Kent-amp-MOR
E_W0QQugidZ10000000000901119
Thorns (99, 100):
http://www.alicewebb.com/ThroughTheThornsTmp18.JPG
Want: lack (100).
Quaker-like: Quakers make up a Christian denomination committed to nonviolence
and plainness. Today, they dress like anybody, but then they looked like this:
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www.trousseau.net/trousseau2.asp?P=2&I=219
“A gentleman’s manor-house not a nobleman’s seat”: The number of people who
actually had noble titles was small, and many of those few were extremely rich. A
gentleman necessarily had money, but not as much as a nobleman typically would.
A gentleman’s manor-house:
http://www.maggiesale.ca/The%20Lune%20Valley/images/03%20Manor%20House%
20adj.jpg
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A nobleman’s seat:
Belvior Castle
http://www.meltononline.co.uk/ppimageupload/image165.JPG
Rook:
http://www.bto.org/birdtrends2003/images/rook01GHH300w.jpg
Rookery: A collection of rooks’ nests (101).
Proprietor: Owner. Compare “propriety” (101).
Ward: A child that a person takes care of, who may not be a relative (102).
“A redundancy of hair”: More hair than is really necessary. Compare “excrescence”
earlier (102).
“C’est la gouvernante?” Is that the governess? (102).
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“Mais oui, certainement.” Yes, certainly (102).
“She is gone to the Holy Virgin”: This means she’s dead, of course, but the way it is
put is very Catholic, and would be strange to English Protestants (103).
Hazel eyes: green-brown eyes (103).
Naïveté: Innocence (104).
La Fontaine: The seventeenth-century author of many French poetic versions of
fables, some from Aesop and some invented. The talking animals make them seem
childish, but the morals are far from naïve, and are even cynical (104).
Boudoir: A small room with elegant furnishings for a lady (105). The word occurs
again later, where it is a lady’s bedroom. The room is red and white, perhaps to
emphasize the brightness of this world in contrast to the greyness of Lowood.
“Time out of mind”: As far back as anyone can remember.
Unimpeachable: Not open to criticism. This differs very much from his own account
of himself later (106).
“You cannot always be sure whether in jest or in earnest”: A very English way of
joking is to remain very serious, in an effort to persuade your listener that you are not
joking at all. This is sometimes very funny (106).
“After life’s fitful fever they sleep well”: From Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth
has murdered King Duncan so that he can be king. When he is king, he finds that he is
not secure or happy in his position. He says:
Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further. (Act 3, Scene 2, Lines 22-26)
Since he has committed a murder, in short, his own life is so bad that he envies a dead
man. Perhaps it is significant that there are three witches in the play (107).
Crow colony: Strictly speaking, rooks are of a different species from crows, but Jane
does not make the distinction (107).
“Like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle”: “Bluebeard” is a rather horrifying
fairy tale, in which a young woman marries a strange man named Bluebeard. No one
else will marry him because his blue beard makes him ugly. He tells her what rooms
the keys are for, but forbids her to enter a certain room. When she enters it, she finds
that it is full of blood, and she sees the dead bodies of Bluebeard’s former wives. She
drops the key into the blood, and is unable to clean it. On Bluebeard’s return, he sees
the blood and tells the wife she must die, but her brothers arrive just in time to save
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her. Read the story at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0312.html
“The laugh was tragic”: If you try to produce a tragic laugh, you will find it is a
challenge. Nevertheless, such things do exist (108).
“Mesdames, vous êtes servies!...J’ai bien faim, moi!”: Ladies, dinner is served! I’m
very hungry!
Chapter 12
Par parenthèse: By the way (between parentheses) (110).
Porter: Black beer. Guinness is porter (112).
“Revenez bientôt, ma bonne amie, ma chère Mdlle Jeannette”: Come back soon,
my good friend, my dear Miss Janet (112).
Stile: A place in a fence with steps so that people can climb over it (113).
http://econoclectic.powerblogs.com/files/econoclectic-SixPenceUponStile.jpg
Causeway: A sort of raised road out of earth and gravel to cross a pond or a wet place
(113).
Pretercanine: Not naturally like a dog. Charlotte Brontë seems to have invented the
word for this occasion (OED) (114).
Deuce: A euphemism for “devil” (116).
“The mountain will never be brought to Mahomet”: IF THE MOUNTAIN WILL
NOT COME TO MOHAMMED, MOHAMMED WILL GO TO THE MOUNTAIN -
"If one cannot get one's own way, one must adjust to the inevitable. The legend goes
that when the founder of Islam was asked to give proofs of his teaching, he ordered
Mount Safa to come to him. When the mountain did not comply, Mohammed raised
his hands toward heaven and said, 'God is merciful. Had it obeyed my words, it would
have fallen on us to our destruction. I will therefore go to the mountain and thank God
that he has had mercy on a stiff-necked generation.' The saying has been traced back
in English to 'Essays,' (1625) by English philosopher Frances Bacon (1561-1626). It
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was included in John Ray's book of English proverbs in 1678." From "Random House
Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" (1996) by Gregory Y. Titelman
(Random House, New York, 1996). The phrase is still current (116).
“an incident of no moment”: Moment, here, means weight, importance (117).
Chapter 13
“coined pretexts”: To coin is to make fake money, or counterfeit. To coin pretexts is
to invent excuses that have no reality (120).
Ami: friend (masculine).
“Et cela doit signifier … qu’il y aura là-dedans un cadeau pour moi, peut-être
pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé de vous : il m’a demandé le
nom de ma gouvernante, et si ce n’était pas une petite personne, assez mince et
un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui : car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?” And that
must mean that there will be a present for me in the box, and maybe for you too, Miss.
Sir talked about you: he asked me the name of my governess, and whether she wasn’t
a little person, rather thin and a bit pale. I said yes, because it’s true, isn’t it, Miss?
(120)
“In the clear embers I was tracing a view”: Jane is looking into the fire, and using
the poker (a sort of heavy metal bar with a handle) to draw a picture of a castle in
Germany with flaming coals (121).
“Dress for the evening”: To “dress for dinner” is to put on formal “evening clothes”:
www.blacktieguide.com/History/1800s.htm
These clothes are actually later than our period, but you get the idea (121).
“Wax candles … superb fire”: Contrasts with the rushlight and scanty fire of
Lowood School (121).
http://trulyvictori
an.netfirms.com/
historypages/77i
mg2.jpg
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“Decisive nose”: Alongside phrenology, which we have seen, the Victorians had a
“science” called “physiognomy” which consisted in learning people’s characters from
the shapes of their faces. I’m not very sure what a decisive nose would look like,
except that it might be large (121).
“good figure”: It’s interesting to notice that this expression, now exclusively applied
to women, used to apply to men as well (121-2).
Caprice: Random whims (122).
Piquant: Full of flavour (122).
“N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre dans votre
petit coffre? ”: Isn’t it true, Sir, that there is a present for Miss Eyre in your little box?
(122)
Cadeaux: Presents (122).
“Beat about the bush”: Talk about everything but the real point (123).
Deserts: (pronounced deZERTS) What a person deserves (123).
Meed: Reward. We’ve seen this one before (123).
Chiffonière:
http://www.heironsmith.com.au/images/Achiff.gif
Tenacious: Holding hard to something, not giving up (123).
Constitution: A person with a strong constitution will not get ill easily (123).
Fairy tales: The fairy tales that have come up in the story recently are not
encouraging : Bluebeard, the gytrash, and the three witches from Macbeth (123).
Men in green: Meaning mythical little people, fairies or leprachauns (124).
“One of your rings” Fairy rings are rings of mushrooms, supposed to be the places
where fairies dance. According to the stories, if a person stumbles into a fairy ring
while the fairies are dancing, he is cursed.
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Fairy_Ring.jpg/800px-F
airy_Ring.jpg
Foresook : Past tense of forsake, meaning leave, abandon (124).
“Eulogiums”: A formal speech of praise. One hears a eulogy at a funeral (124).
“Felling my horse”: One fells a tree with an axe. This is a metaphor, making Jane out
to be violent and powerful (124).
Religieuses : Nuns (French) (125).
Blasphemous: Insulting to God (125).
“the head and front of his offending”: Shakespeare again, from Othello. Othello is
accused of using witchcraft to persuade Desdemona to run away with him. He says:
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
It is most true; true, I have married her:
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent, no more. (Act 1 Scene 3 Lines 78-81)
“Features and countenance are so much at variance”: Rochester means that her
face looks young, but its expression looks older (125).
“The first … swollen sea”: We see the Romantic love of storms here, and the storm
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in Jane’s picture goes with a number of storms in the “real” world of the novel (127).
“A woman’s shape”: The woman represents the Evening Star, that is, the planet
Venus as it appears in the evening before other stars come out (127).
“A colossal head”: The shape seems to be of a Scandinavian god, as the Romantics
loved northern literature, but not one that we can name from knowing the stories
(127).
Latmos: A mountain now in Turkey, where there is a ruined ancient Greek city.
Rochester must indeed have travelled widely if he has seen it (128).
Chapter 14
“Amuse yourself with disembowelling it”: An implied metaphor. Bowels are the
intestines of a person or animal. Rochester is comparing Adèle to a flesh-eating
animal like a hyena (130).
“Tiens-toi tranquille, enfant; comprends-tu?” Keep quiet child; do you
understand?
“Oh, ciel! Que c’est beau!”: Oh, heavens! It’s beautiful!
“tête-à-tête”: “Head to head” i.e. in one-on-one conversation.
Brat: Badly behaved child, or an insulting term for any child.
Lustre: Chandelier (it is called by this name on p. 134):
http://www.art-et-cristal.com/6-lustres/lustre-01-282x424.jpg
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Damask: Silk with a pattern like this:
http://www.sewmamasew.com/media/ccp0/prodlg/spa_damask300.jpg
Nonnette: Little nun. Not a common word even in French (132).
Suave: Sweet, in this context, but usually refers to a man who is agreeable and
confident (133).
Philanthropist: One who loves the human race (133).
Pervious: Permeable, that is, capable of being penetrated by water, or something like
it. Bricks are permeable. Glass is not (133).
Dumb: Unable to speak. The sense of this word as “stupid” came about later than this
book, and is slang rather than formal English (134).
“Et j’y tiens”: And this is important to me.
“Indifferent, not to say bad”: “Indifferent,” as we have seen before, means “less
than good.” “Not to say bad” suggests that he knows “bad” might be more accurate,
but he doesn’t want to say so (135).
Piqued: Offended (135).
“God wot”: God knows (poetic) (136).
“Bilge water”: literally, the water that you find in the lowest part of a wooden ship,
which is filthy (136).
“trite … hackneyed”: Words most often applied to styles of writing. If you write as
others do, with no personality or imagination, your writing will be trite and hackneyed
(137).
“Paltry ribaldry”: Ribaldry is obscene or indecent language. Paltry means minor,
unimportant, contemptible (137).
Remorse: What you feel about the wrong things you have done (137).
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Cameo head (137):
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/egallery/images/collection_large/65238.jpg
“Devil … angel of light”: Still referring to pleasure (138).
“A fallen seraph of the abyss”: A reference to the story of Lucifer, who was an angel,
but rebelled against God and became Satan, the Devil. A seraph is a kind of angel
(138).
“Messenger from the eternal throne”: The word “angel” means “messenger,” and
apparently Rochester knows this (138).
“Disguised deity”: There are many old stories about people who took a stranger into
their house and afterwards found that the stranger was a god or an angel. One of the
more famous ones is the story of Philemon and Baucis (138).
“Paving hell … good intentions”: A reference, which Jane doesn’t catch at first, to
the proverb “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” That is, the worst events
come about because people try to do the right thing. Rochester is suggesting that he
will try to do right, but thinks he will end up in hell anyway (138).
“Pure ore … foul dross”: In mining, “ore” is the stone that contains the precious
metal, and “dross” is the stone that is thrown away (139).
“Medes and Persians”: A reference to the Bible (Daniel 6:8). The laws of the Medes
and Persians were said to be unchangeable (139).
“New statute”: A statute is a new law passed by Parliament. Jane is objecting that
this law cannot be unalterable, because he has just now altered it (139).
“I swear by my household gods”: The ancient Romans kept gods in a shrine in their
house, much as Taoists do now, with statues of the gods of the house (139).
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Sphinx: A mythical animal in ancient Greek mythology. The Sphinx of Thebes asked
a riddle of every traveller who came by, and if the traveller could not answer it, she
would kill him (139).
personal.bgsu.edu/~jmpfund/Aenigmata.html
Enigmatical: Riddling (139).
Austere: “Grave, sober, serious” (OED) (139).
“Il faut que j’essaie … et l’instant même”: I must try it right now (140).
“Est-ce que ma robe me va bien? … et mes souliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je crois
que je vais danser”: Does my dress suit me? And my shoes? And my stockings? Wait,
I think I’m going to dance (140).
“Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté … C’est comme cela que
maman faisait, n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”: Sir, I thank you a thousand times for your
goodness … That’s what Mama used to do, isn’t it, sir? (140)
“comme cela”: Like that (140).
Green: Immature, lacking judgement. Vernal is also green, with a suggestion of
spring (141)
“French floweret … root … blossom”: An extended metaphor of Adèle as flower.
To manure a flower is to put excrement on it to help it to grow—but he decides that it
is only an artifical flower, not a real one (141).
“Expiating numerous sins … by one good work”: In the Catholic church, a person
confesses to the priest, who assigns some sort of task to gain God’s forgiveness. For
small sins, one says prayers a certain number of times, but for great sins, one might
have to do something large and virtuous. He specifies that this is a Catholic principle,
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ecause Protestants think otherwise, and he and Jane are both Protestant (141).
Chapter 15
“Shuttlecock”: A badminton bird (142).
http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com/sports/images/miscellaneous/shuttlecock1.JPG
“Taille d’athlète”: Taille means “height,” but Céline seems to mean “athletic build.”
“Apollo Belvedere”: A famous statue, showing an ideal male body.
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http://faculty.washington.edu/nh2/classes/apollo.jpg
“Gallic sylph … British gnome”: References to mythical beings. Gallic means
“French.” A sylph is an air spirit, and the term is used for a slender, attractive woman:
http://tarot.indeep.ru/minors/V_Asw.jpg
A gnome is a small, ugly male figure, like a dwarf:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb224/dbarsne/gnome_MJ_large.jpg
Gnomes are more of a joke than any kind of serious myth. Some people have little
statues of gnomes in their gardens (142).
Hotel: Not a hotel in the modern sense, but a big house in the city (142).
Cashmeres: Clothes made of very fine wool from Kashmir, India (142).
Dentelles: Lace (142).
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“Ruining myself in the received style”: A man ruins himself by spending all his
money and reducing himself to poverty and/or by ruining his good reputation. “In the
received style” means in the normal, conventional way, the way everybody knows. In
short, his life is trite and hackneyed (142).
Spoony: A silly person, especially a fool for love (142).
Gaslight: At the time, streetlamps had gas flames (142).
Croquant: Eating (142).
Barbarism: He is using the French grammatical form incorrectly. The apology
involves a delicate compliment to Jane, because he is showing that he knows she will
see the mistake, that he knows she will care, and that he cares to show her that he
understands the issue (142).
“Mon ange”: My angel (143).
“Spurred heel”: Only a man would wear spurs (143):
http://www.horsebugstuff.com/assets/images/Spur_Holders.jpg
“Porte cochère”: Coachman’s door, that is, the side door (143).
“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre?” She will shortly, and perhaps he
already intends to make her feel it (143).
“Rocks … breakers … channel … whirl and tumult … crag points”: An extended
metaphor, suggesting this (143):
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“Sky of steel”: The sky is overcast with clouds (143).
“A hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth”: At the beginning of
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth meets three witches, who predict he will be King of
Scotland. They lead him on to commit his murders (144):
http://www.theoldglobe.org/images/newsletter/Macbeth2.jpg
“Job’s leviathan”: A monster from the Bible (Job 41)(144):
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/4/4a/250px-Destruction_of_Le
viathan.png
“Passing strange”: A rather Shakespearean turn of phrase that means “at least a little
strange”(144).
Blight: A plant disease that causes plants to dry up (145).
Roué: An irresponsible, dissolute man (145).
Vicomte: A viscount (kind of nobleman)(145).
“beauté mâle”: Male beauty, but the word mâle is usually applied to animals (145).
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“The contrast struck me”: Does he love Jane because she is different from Céline?
(145)
Abridge: Make a long story short (145).
“A meeting at the Bois de Boulogne”: That is, a duel, in this case with pistols. The
Bois de Boulogne is a wooded park then on the outskirts of Paris (146).
Fillette: French for little girl (146).
“Mrs Fairfax found you to train it”: Why does he use “it” here rather than “her”?
“Disowned by you, sir”: Jane seems to be assuming that Rochester is Adèle’s father,
and won’t admit it. The “sir” seems ironic (146).
Hauteur: French for “Highness,” that is, pride (147).
Relish: Strong pleasure (also a verb) (147).
“Thin-crescent destiny”: She imagines her destiny as the moon, first a crescent, and
now growing (147):
http://img2.travelblog.org/Photos/5703/93701/t/600677-Crescent-moon--Luna-crecien
te-0.jpg
Sardonic: Sarcastic (148).
Fulminating: Thundering (150).
Anathemas: Curses. This word will come up again (150).
Creditor: A person to whom one owes something, usually money, but here gratitude
(152).
Genii: Here, just “spirits” rather than more specifically Arab spirits (152).
“Hills of Beulah”: There is a brief reference to the blessed land of Beulah in the
Bible, but the immediate reference is probably to John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
(1678). In that book, it is the country next to Heaven (152).
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