Despite her outward resolve to cast him off forever, she can’t stop loving him and can’t forget him. She also dreams that Blanche Ingram, the woman she believes for a time has Rochester’s heart, has shut the gates of Thornfield against her.Įven after her wedding is ruined and she runs away, Jane is still plagued by dreams of being in Rochester’s arms. Jane’s dreams almost always center on this relationship and its doom, as she dreams of Rochester walking so far ahead of her that she can’t catch up, or, on another occasion, that she is climbing among the ruins of Thornfield (another apt premonition) while Rochester remains only a tiny speck in the distance. When Jane dreams of children, which she does repeatedly over the course of a week, it also points the reader to her secret wish to marry Rochester and become a mother. Whenever one of the characters dreams about children, for instance, they receive news of a death in the family soon afterward. In keeping with common superstitions of the day, dreams in Jane Eyre are also instruments of foreboding. Because of this, dreams offer the reader a valuable glimpse beyond Jane’s guarded demeanor and into the fears and longings she keeps hidden. One of the overarching themes of this book is Jane’s ability, despite a difficult childhood during which she she was prone to tempestuousness and outbursts of feeling, to become the ideal Victorian woman-outwardly calm, strong feelings always suppressed or hidden. What is most interesting about this dream, however, is its timing, as her description of it sets off the biggest turning point in the book: Heathcliff, hiding in the shadows, only overhears Catherine saying that it would degrade her to marry him, and runs away before she goes on to describe the depth of her love for him.Įmily Brontë’s equally famous sister, Charlotte, uses dreams freely in Jane Eyre. Her joy at being tossed back to earth by the angels speaks to her of her heart’s preference for Heathcliff over Linton. In her dream, she chooses to be cast out of heaven and lands on the moor where she and Heathcliff spent so much of their childhood together. The novel’s second dream comes from Catherine herself, as she describes it to Nelly in the kitchen shortly after accepting Linton’s proposal of marriage. Lockwood later describes the encounter to Heathcliff as a dream, yet Heathcliff’s fearful reaction makes us wonder if, in fact, Catherine’s ghost might be more than just a figment of Lockwood’s imagination. Towards the dream’s end, the child Catherine tries to get in at his window, and he is violent in his attempts to keep her out. Lockwood, experiences a harrowing dream when he is forced to spend the night in the room that once belonged to the now long-dead Catherine. Very near the start of Wuthering Heights, our narrator, Mr. Frightening or foreboding dreams are the perfect device for Gothic literature, with its haunted mansions and lowering skies. Brontë uses dreams sparingly in her classic tale of lost love, but the ones she does employ pack a punch. This is one of my all-time favorite Victorian novels, and one from which I even drew an epigraph for my own book.
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