Charades and Social Performance — Jane Eyre

Thornfield has become a house of constant movement after months of solitude. One evening the guests propose charades. The dining room is rearranged, costumes are fetched from the third storey, and Rochester selects his party, naming Miss Ingram first. When he asks Jane to play, she shakes her head and he lets her return to her seat. Lady Ingram, overheard, refuses to have Jane join: she looks too stupid for any game of the sort. Three tableaux follow. The first is a dumb-show wedding with Rochester and Miss Ingram kneeling before Sir George Lynn. The second shows Rochester as an Eastern emir and Miss Ingram as Rebecca at the well. The third reveals Rochester in fetters as a Bridewell prisoner. The syllables spell bride-well. Afterward Rochester banters with Miss Ingram, playfully calling her his wife before the witnesses, and she flirts about highwaymen and pirates.

Jane no longer watches the performers. She watches Rochester and Miss Ingram whispering and realises she cannot unlove him though he never looks her way and plainly courts the great lady who scorns her. She insists she is not jealous: Miss Ingram is a mark beneath jealousy, showy but not genuine, cruel to Adèle, and unable to charm Rochester despite her nearness. Jane sees that he observes Blanche's defects with clear-eyed surveillance and lacks passion for her, yet will probably marry her for rank and connection. That is what tortures Jane: not rivalry with a superior woman, but watching repeated failure while knowing a surer hand might succeed. She grows lenient toward Rochester's faults and even envies Blanche the future right to explore his hidden depths.

On a wet afternoon Rochester is called to Millcote and does not return. The party disperses into billiards and cards. Adèle, watching from the window with Jane, cries that Monsieur Rochester is coming back. Miss Ingram rushes forward, but the post-chaise brings not Rochester but a sallow, unsettled stranger who says he is an old friend and will wait for his return. After dinner Jane learns he is Mr. Mason, recently from Jamaica, where he first knew Rochester. Jane compares Mason's vacant smoothness with Rochester's force and finds the contrast unbearable. While the gentlemen talk, a footman reports that an old gypsy woman has planted herself in the servants' hall and refuses to leave until she tells fortunes to the gentry. The young people overrule the dowagers and Blanche insists on going first to the library alone. She returns stiff, sour, and disappointed, though she dismisses the woman as a hackneyed fraud. The Misses Eshton go together and come back shrieking that the gypsy knows everything about their childhood. Then Sam finds Jane: the gypsy declares there is another young single lady in the room who has not come yet, and she will not go until she has seen all. Jane accepts at once and slips out unobserved, closing the door behind her.