Jane Eyre: The Wedding

On the morning of her wedding, Sophie took so long fastening Jane’s plain veil that Mr. Rochester, impatient, sent up to ask why she had not come down.He met her at the foot of the stairs, called her a lingerer, said that his brain was on fire with impatience, and gave her only ten minutes to eat some breakfast before they left for the church.There were no guests, no bridesmaids and no relatives, only the two of them, and Mr. Rochester walked so fast, with such a grim, fixed look on his face, that Jane could hardly keep up.

At the churchyard gate he stopped to let her catch her breath, and Jane noticed two strangers walking among the graves, who slipped into the church and stood quietly by the old Rochester tomb.The clergyman, Mr. Wood, began the service, and when he asked whether anyone knew of an impediment to the marriage, Jane thought that hardly anyone ever answers such a question.But a clear voice behind them said, “The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment,” and Mr. Rochester, without turning his head, only said, “Proceed.”

The speaker was a London lawyer named Mr. Briggs, who calmly explained that fifteen years earlier Mr. Rochester had married a woman named Bertha Mason in Jamaica, and that this wife was still alive.Mr. Rochester demanded proof that she was living, and Mr. Briggs answered that he had a witness, her own brother, who had seen her at Thornfield Hall the previous April.When the second stranger, Mr. Mason, stepped forward, Mr. Rochester glared at him so fiercely that it seemed he might strike him, but Mason only said in a faint voice that his sister was alive and living at Thornfield.

The clergyman protested that he had never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield, and Mr. Rochester, with a bitter smile, replied that he had taken care that nobody should.He told the clergyman to close his book, since there would be no wedding that day, and he admitted openly that he had meant to marry Jane although he was already married.He said that Jane had known nothing of this secret, that his wife’s family had hidden her illness from him before the marriage, and he invited the three men to come to the house and see the truth for themselves.

On the third floor, behind a curtain of hangings, was a second room without a window, where Grace Poole, the servant whom Jane had long connected with the strange laughter in the night, was caring for a tall woman with wild dark hair: Bertha Mason.When Bertha saw her husband she attacked him, and they struggled until Mr. Rochester, who would not strike her, at last held her arms and bound her to a chair.“That is my wife,” he said bitterly to the men, and then, laying a hand on Jane’s shoulder, he said that she was the one he had wished for instead.

As they left, Mr. Briggs told Jane that she was free of all blame, and that her uncle in Madeira, who had heard of the wedding and begged Mr. Mason to prevent it, was seriously ill.Jane went to her room, locked the door, took off the wedding dress and sat alone, and she felt that her hopes had died in a single morning, like a summer that had suddenly turned to winter.