of the glamorous aristocratic world, as against the unobtrusive inner world of the observing outsider. When the curtain is drawn aside, the effect is of a proscenium arch. As the present tense dissolves into the past in the third paragraph, the theatrical effect recedes. Edgar E. Shannon in ‘The Present Tense in Jane Eyre’ (CA, Vol. II, pp. 111–27) counts seven major tense-shifts in the novel.
15. ‘père noble de théatre’: Stage role of the paterfamilias.
16. germs: Seeds.
17. native pith: Natural or innate vigour (with the sense of authenticity).
18. on the chapter of governesses: An affected usage meaning ‘on the topic of governesses’. Jane Eyre is a novel on what was referred to as ‘the governess question’. Charlotte Bront? wrote in a letter of 8 June 1839 that ‘a private governess has no existence, is not considered as a living and rational being’ (Letters, Vol. I, p. 191).
19. incubi: Demons.
20. ‘Tant pis’: Too bad!
21. charivari: Traditionally, ‘rough music’, a hullabaloo using household objects in mockery of a socially stigmatized person, especially a woman.
22. parson in the pip: Sickly parson.
23. Rizzio … James Hepburn: Blanche and Rochester, having begun to converse in affected Italian, the language of opera, invoke Mary Queen of Scots’ passion for her Italian musician and secretary. Her second husband, Lord Darnley, assassinated Rizzio. James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, murdered Darnley.
24. appanage: Special province.
25. device: Motto, serving as heraldic emblem.
26. I dote on Corsairs: The review in The Christian Remembrancer, April 1848, quotes this scene and mocks the badinage, suggesting that its satire ‘falls back … on the head of the satirist’ (CA, Vol. III, pp. 22–3) and that its artificiality exposes the lower caste of the author, who sees high life ‘through the area railings’ and draws it ‘with the black end of a poker’.
27. ‘Gardez-vous en bien’: ‘Take care!’ A term from fencing.
CHAPTER XVIII
1. sacques … lappets: Sack-dresses, black silk gowns, hat-pendants, probably dating back to the eighteenth century and hence quaint enough to furnish piquant costume for the charades.
2. pantomime of a marriage: Literally, ‘the dumb-show of a marriage’, but also implying the inauthenticity of a marriage between unequals. This is the first of a sequence of three mock-marriages in which Rochester participates.
3. turban … emir: Both Rochester and Blanche display themselves according to the cult of Romantic orientalism, implying exotic glamour and repulsive sensuality and patriarchal tyranny. ‘Paynim’ features are pagan, anti-Christian, especially of Saracens and Moslems. An emir is a Saracen or Arab prince.
4. ‘She hasted … to drink’: In Genesis 22 and 24, Isaac, forbidden by God from marrying a woman of an alien tribe, was nevertheless permitted to marry Rebekah, who drew water from the well, since she was in fact his blood-relation. Later in the paragraph, Eliezer is Abraham’s servant, who negotiates the marriage in Genesis 24. Rebekah had also watered his camels from the well.
5. Bridewell: The third phase of the charade shows Rochester’s actual condition, chained to a lunatic wife. A Bridewell was a generic name for a prison, often associated with female sexual deviants. The narrative of the charade has shown to the reader a bridal union fit for a bridewell.
6. hero of the road … Levantine pirate: Highwaymen and Far Eastern pirates traversing the Mediterranean are ascribed a high sexual potency, as outsiders to the law.
8. features … brown eye: Physiologically and racially, Mason is effete and intellectually slack but also ‘unsettled’, without roots or principles. His vapidity is near to the condition of ‘vacancy’ (an empty interior life) and he can only be described in terms of negatives (‘no power … no firmness’). The British aristocracy assembled find Mason attractive, demonstrating the twin degeneracy of the inbred English elite and the West Indian whites.
9. girandoles: Branched candle-holders.
10. Mother Bunches: Rustic females without graces, associated with tall tales, ale and folklore. This scene shows the influence of Richardson’s Pamela, in which a visit by a well-wisher dressed as a gypsy, to tell Pamela’s fortune, exposes the sham marriage Mr B. proposes, in which ‘a sly artful fellow of a broken attorney’ has been hired to impersonate a minister.
11. crock: Smut, smudge.
12. tinkler: Tinker.
13. sibyl: In the ancient world a prophetess with powers of divination.
14. something not right: A quibble: not right in the head; or, endowed with sinister powers (a witch).