of a black person but also the facial attributes considered appropriate to the maniac. The ‘black’, ‘dark’ and ‘purple’ apparition of the attacker, with ‘swelled’ lips and ‘bloodshot’ eyes, seems to imply an eliding of these two conventions, especially in view of the use of the word ‘savage’. However, the purple and distended features may also be read as an emblem of rage: Mrs Rochester is consumed by ire at the usurpation of her rights. When Jane looks in the mirror, she sees this face in place of hers, implying unconscious identification between the two.
14. so tranquil, so passionless: This moving closure (contrasting with the nightmarish dream about the child) owes something to the ‘Haidée’ episode in Byron’s Don Juan, when Haidée watches over Juan as he sleeps: II. 197: ‘For there it lies so tranquil, so beloved; /All that it hath of life with us is living … Hush’d into depths beyond the watcher’s diving.’
CHAPTER XXVI
1. fair or foul: A glancing allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth: ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (I. iii. 38): Macbeth makes this observation just before he enters the realm of ambivalence represented by the witches.
2. Damer … Marston Moor: At the decisive Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, Cromwell’s New Model Army defeated the Royalists, among whom the fictional Rochester ancestor would have numbered.
3. quenchless fire and deathless worm: Isaiah (66:24) describes the torment of the transgressors after death: ‘their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.’
4. Bertha Mason is mad: Charlotte Bront? had used the name ‘Bertha’ in the tale, ‘The Green Dwarf’ (1833). This aged hag had imprisoned Lady Emily in a ruined tower (Juvenilia, v. 164–5). Rochester never calls his wife by her married name, as if to repudiate the relationship.
5. Creole: Generally, the term signifies a European native of the West Indies but it can also refer to persons of mixed race or to black people. Given that her brother is of pale, not to say pasty, complexion, it is likely that Bertha is envisaged as white, perhaps of ‘mixed race’, but this is not clear.
6. embruted: Variant of ‘imbrute’, meaning ‘to make bestial’, used in PL when Satan enters the body of the serpent, to connect the demonic with the animalistic (PL, Bk IX, l. 166).
7. clothed hyena … virile force: The hyena is a dog with powerful shoulders, muzzle and upper parts and less developed lower quarters, associated with rapacity and betrayal, because of its laughing cry and the fact that it feeds on carrion. This image dehumanizes Bertha and associates her with animal and demonic cunning, an ‘it’ rather than ‘she’. Her bite is like that of a vampire and she is further dehumanized by being viewed as a perversion of femininity.
8. ragout: A spiced stew. Sardonically, Rochester is presenting Jane as the second course of a meal, the first having burnt his mouth.
9. remember … judged: Matthew 7:1–2: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.’
10. Funchal correspondent: Representative of a business at the capital of Madeira.
11. the first-born … Egypt: The first-born of the Egyptians were slaughtered on the night of the Passover (Exodus 12:29–30).
12. ‘Be not far … none to help’: Psalm 22:11.
13. ‘the waters … overflowed me’: Psalm 69:2: ‘I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.’ In PP, Christian in the River of Death cries, ‘I sink in deep Waters, the Billows go over my head, all his Waves go over me’ (p. 128).
CHAPTER XXVII
1. you shall … right hand: Alludes to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, in which he condemns sexual fantasy, continuing, ‘if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee … And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off …’ (Matthew 5:28–30). Charlotte Bront? extends the imperative to the heart, as the seat of the affections and agent of life itself. The motifs of the torn arm and the blinded eye prefigure the penalties exacted from Rochester for his attempted adultery.
2. poignant: Connotes ‘sharp, piercing’.
3. one little ewe lamb: 2 Samuel 12:3. See Ch. XX, note 5.
4. tent of Achan: In Joshua 7, Achan stole ‘the accursed thing’ (silver and finery) and hid his spoils in his tent: he was condemned to death: ‘And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them [that