Introduction

Lord Byron’s Descendants 73
I was tempted to cease struggling with him – to rush down the torrent of
his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my self. I was almost as
hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by
another. I was a fool both ties. To have yielded then would have been an
error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment.
(368)
Nevertheless, in the end, she can resist him and the confrontation ends with a
sharp attack on St. John’s hypocrisy, arrogance and idea of love:
“I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood
before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit sentiment
you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.” (359)
Jane finally recognises that St. John’s heroic image is nothing more than a masquerade;
he is merely a fallible, imperfect human being. Moglen argues that Jane
was under the influence of St. John’s sexual power but that her final refusal “yields
awareness and self-discovery instead of dread annihilation” (139). Furthermore:
Much of the dangerous appeal of Rochester’s sexuality had derived from a
similar charisma power (a charisma not completely lacking, as masculine
force, even in Brocklehurst and John Reed). That appeal is experienced by
here fully – and finally, absolutely rejected. (139)
3.6 An Independent Woman
When the dangerous appeal of sexual power is finally broken, Jane can withstand
and explore it without running into the danger of losing herself. She consciously
chooses the semiotic, she chooses Rochester. The inner struggle between the
symbolic and semiotic is ended and she once again can enter the semiotic, but this
time with a new strength and on her own terms. Jane needed to resist the force of
the symbolic power once again to be able to choose freely between the two orders.
Rochester’s call thus comes as a response of the need in herself for the semiotic:
“I heard a voice somewhere cry, ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ noting more … it spoke
in pain and in woe – wildly, eerily, urgently” (369). From this moment on the
temptation which St. John constitutes is forgotten and Jane hurries back to
Thornfield to be with Rochester, even though she has not yet learned of Bertha’s
death.
When she arrives at Thornfield she finds it a ruin. She is told that Bertha set
the mansion on fire and although Rochester tried to rescue her, died from a jump
of the roof. After the destruction of Thornfield, Rochester has retreated to
Ferndean, where Jane finds him maimed and blinded by the fire. The Byronic
hero is broken and does no longer exist. Rochester’s threatening sexual power is