Jane Eyre did none of these things. As soon as she was aware of her passion for Mr. Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing (poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was the enormity that was never forgiven her.
"'You'll like Ireland, I think,'" says Rochester in his torturing mood; "'they are such kind-hearted people there.'
"'No matter, a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.'
"'Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier.'
"'From England and from Thornfield, and--'
She had done it. She had said, or almost said the words.
It just happened. There was magic in the orchard at Thornfield; there was youth in her blood; and--"Jane, did you hear the nightingale singing in that wood?"
And she was the first heroine who had. Adultery, with which we are fairly familiar, would have seemed a lesser sin. There may be extenuating circumstances for the adulteress. There were extenuating circumstances for Rochester. He could plead a wife who went on all fours. There were no extenuating circumstances for little Jane. No use for her to say that she was upset by the singing of the nightingale; that it didn't matter what she said to Mr. Rochester when Mr. Rochester was going to marry Blanche Ingram, anyway; that she only flung herself at his head because she knew she couldn't hit it; that her plainness gave her a certain licence, placing her beyond the code. Not a bit of it. Jane's plainness was one thing that they had against her. Until her time no heroine had been permitted to be plain. Jane's seizing of the position was part of the general insolence of her behaviour.
Jane's insolence was indeed unparalleled. Having done the deed she felt no shame or sense of sin; she stood straight up and defended herself. That showed that she was hardened.
It certainly showed--Jane's refusal to be abject--that Jane was far ahead of her age.