Key to the Secret
Secrets are what fills the silence and paints the white-washed pages of this dark, gothic novel. Jane Eyre lives in a world of secrets. She keeps them close; to close for her deceptions cause much trouble because she does not share them. Mr. Rochester also has his secrets and his caused him and everyone else much more trouble. Two secrets in particular were the very focal point of this book. The one was that Jane loved her master, the other was that Mr. Rochester was already married, and for both of these people unknown were the effects that their secrets had on each other.
Jane's love for the head of the house was an unforeseen event for her. It went against all protocol of the time and to her was not something that could ever be realized. Her automatic attempts to hide her feelings only exacerbated the situation by making her time around Rochester very nerve-wracking. In many cases her feelings cause her to make rash decisions and certainly tormented her throughout a large part of her life impeding many joys and changing the way her life flows. Without this secret there is no reason for her to have fought, left, or returned, there is no reason for a story without it.
On the other hand her master's secret also created tension. It made him the bitter man he was because of the perceived injustice of the fates in shackling him forever to such a creature. The fact he was married caused him at first to stave off the possibility of Jane's feelings causing her to believe that he wanted nothing to do with her. When he had accepted the fact of his love for her and acted on it, it made him lie to Jane, although his intention was to make her happy at all costs. A man once said "There is no glory in honesty if it is destructive. And no shame in dishonesty if its goal is to offer grace," this is the very philosophy that vindicated Mr. Rochester in his own mind when he stood married before the altar to wed again to another woman.
Throughout the story these hidden truths play against each other. At every turn when one is prevailing and Jane's love seems to finally be coming to the fore than the other secret will interfere and Jane will wake up one night with a lunatic hanging over her bed wearing her wedding veil. Or when at last it seems that Mr. Rochester is indeed married to a monster and is in despair at Thornfield Hall than the house will burn down, his wife will die, and Jane will return from her adventures to take care of her one true love. That however is at the very end when these two secrets having caused their mayhem, having been revealed, are played against one another like chess pieces to discover the final winner. Naturally, true love wins.
In the end it is not the secrets themselves that matter. Though Jane's love was the story and Mr. Rochester's wife was the conflict. It was the friction between the two that holds the reader enthralled throughout Rochester's tears and Jane's refusals. Friction between people, morals, and ideals was the cement of this story and you could take this particular brand and place it in a different novel with different characters and conflicts and the excitement would still be the same. Through all of the passions; the loyalty, humility and dedication of Jane, the storms of Rochester, this tension holds the key to the secret of the reader's attention.