Returning to the issue of their first meeting, it is correct that Bronte is giving us two messages--- genius on the surface and one under that surface. On the surface, it is a meeting of a universe of power and a woman of service who kit and boodle for him.
By the end of their meeting, however, he has become awargon of the fact that she works for him, but he does not let her know that, obviously feeling that knowledge is power. Perhaps he is somewhat caught take guard by the message under the surface of their meeting---he is dependent on her even then. He has hurt himself falling away his horse and needs her help physically (Bronte 110).
Although he needs, asks for and accepts her help, he remains in a controlling position in this first meeting, giving her orders: "Now make haste with the garner to Hay, and return as fast as you can" (Bronte 113). Jane accepts these orders without thought, although she does not yet know that he is her employer. She is in an inferior position, in class and gender, and she accepts this inferior status. By the end of the book, of course, she will have changed dramatically in terms of her view of herself as fountainhead as her view of her kin with this man Rochester.
Falling on his knees, he asks strength to take a new life henceforth, and then "he stretched his generate out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder. . . . I served both for his prop and guide. . . . " Like an echo of the end of Paradise anomic they enter a new life, putting behind them the unlawful Eden of the garden at Thornfield, all forbidden heating plant spent (Martin 96-97).
The reader would be forgiven for concluding that the burning of the house, the destruction of Rochester's wife, and Rochester's blinding are acts of divine intervention meant to bring Jane and Rochester at long last together.
And the reader would be forgiven for concluding as well that they are meant to be together in precisely the sort of relationship which occurs---with Rochester, once the commanding employer and dissolute man, now dependent on Jane, once the meek employee.
As Martin argues, their new relationship is a sort of reversal of the relationship of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with respect to the female being blamed for rescue the man down morally. Martin notes that Jane is in the position of the moral deliverer rather than the moral destroyer. This is the most meaningful interpretation of the habituation of Rochester on Jane at the end of the book. It is not that the woman has triumphed o'er the man. It is not that some sort of gender retribution is at work which has reversed their positions in the relationship. What has taken place is that Rochester has been protected morally by her and by God. Rochester moves, says Martin, from "gross superstition" to "a belief in the supernatural." He declares "Now I thank God!" As Martin writes
Martin, Robert. Charlotte Bronte's Novels. New York: W.W. Norton, 1968.
. . . All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is bestowed to me: we are precisely suited in character---perfect concord is the result" (Bronte 441-442).
For all Jane's temptations, she is enabled to r
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