to recognize him when he returns to Ithaca: ‘Now, at the moment he perceived that Odysseus had come close to him,/ he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped’ (Homer, Odyssey, XXVII, ll. 330–1, tr. Robert Fagles, London: Viking Penguin, 1996).
4. Is it only a voice: Keats, ‘Ode: To a Nightingale’: ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?’ (ll. 79–80).
5. I always … empty mockery: See Introduction, p. xxix.
6. lameter: Lame or disabled person.
7. ‘faux air’ of Nebuchadnezzar: Driven out into the wilderness, this tyrant lived on all fours like a beast and ‘his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws’ (Daniel 4:33). ‘Faux’ is affected.
8. scar … forehead: Romanticization of Satan in Milton’s PL: ‘his face/Deep scars of thunder had intrenched’ (Bk I, ll. 600–601).
9. leave my tale half told: Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights never finishes her stories, thereby deferring her execution.
10. Saul … harp: 1 Samuel 16:23.
11. redd up: Tidied up, set to rights (northern dialect).
12. rain … gone: Allusion to the Song of Songs: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone’ (Song of Solomon 2:10–11).
13. my skylark: Allusion to Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’: ‘Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert … The blue deep thou wing-est, / And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest’ (ll. 1–2, 9–10, in Percy Bysshe Shelley, Complete Poems, ed. R. V. Weekes, London: Viking, 1993).
14. ‘Jeune encore’: Still young.
15. high-lows: High boots worn by low rustic persons.
16. Apollo … Vulcan: Apollo, the classical sun-god, represents perfect harmony of physique, while Vulcan, the blacksmith god, is burly, squat, powerful and swarthy.
17. Yes, sir: A reversal of the anti-marriage ceremony in ch. XXVII.
18. scrag: Usually defined as ‘neck’, which does not make sense: probably an ornamental pin beneath the cravat.
19. kept … heart: When Mary learns, in Luke 2:19, the divine origin of her child, she ‘kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart’.
20. prop and guide: A reversal of the conventional relationship between man and woman.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CONCLUSION
1. noan faal: By no means ugly.
2. bone … flesh: Genesis 2:23. The Book of Common Prayer incorporates this kinship into the sacrament of the marriage service.
3. He saw … through me: Charlotte Bront? had been caring for her blind father, during and after the operation to restore his sight by removal of cataracts, when she began to compose Jane Eyre: she spent six weeks divided between this and the writing of the novel.
4. the sky … blank: Reference to Milton’s lament for his blindness in PL: ‘a universal blank, / Of nature’s works to me expunged and razed’ (Bk III, ll. 48–9). A ‘blank’ refers to the page left blank by a printer.
5. Greatheart … Apollyon: In Bunyan’s PP, Part II, Greatheart guides Christiana, the female pilgrim, to the Celestial City. In the first Part, Christian defeats Apollyon, which means ‘angel of the bottomless pit’, who then retires to the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
6. ‘Whosoever … me’: Mark 8:34.
7. incorruptible crown … faithful servant: incorruptible crown: 1 Corinthians 9:25; good and faithful servant: at the end of the parable of the talents, the master says, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’ and promises dominion and joy (Matthew 25:21).
8. Surely I come quickly: Revelation 22:20.
Chronology
1816 21 April: Charlotte Bront?, third child of Patrick and Maria Bront?, born at Thornton, Yorkshire.
1817 26 June: Patrick Branwell Bront? born.
1818 30 July: Emily Jane Bront? born.
1820 17 January: Anne Bront? born. April: the Bront? family move to Haworth, where Patrick Bront? becomes Perpetual Curate.
1821 15 September: Mrs Bront? dies. Her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, joins the household to care for the children.
1824 Charlotte and Emily Bront?, along with their older sisters Maria (b. 1813) and Elizabeth (b. 1815), are sent to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge.
1825 6 May: death of Maria from tuberculosis. 15 June: death of Elizabeth from tuberculosis. Charlotte and Emily are removed from the school.
1826 Inspired by the gift of a box of toy soldiers for Branwell, the children begin their shared ‘Young Men’s Play’, which is to lead to the Glass Town and Angrian sagas.
1831 January: Charlotte goes as a pupil to Miss Wooler’s Roe Head school, on the outskirts of Mirfield near Huddersfield, where she meets Mary Taylor and Ellen Nussey, who are to be her lifelong friends and correspondents.