Volume 2, Chapter 7 / 22

Synopsis of Volume 2, Chapter 7 / 22

After Mrs Reed's funeral, Georgiana goes to live in London, while Eliza travels to France, with the intention of converting to Roman Catholicism and probably becoming a nun. When Jane returns to Thornfield after a month's absence, Rochester greets her cheerfully and shows her the carriage he has had built for the new Mrs Rochester. Jane admits to herself that she loves Rochester.

Commentary on Volume 2, Chapter 7 / 22

a religious house near Lisle … the Roman Catholic dogma Lisle was the former spelling of the French city of Lille. It is perhaps notable that Eliza leaves England to enter a convent, as if Charlotte Brontë wishes to suggest that Roman Catholicism is a non-English branch of Christianity. During the 1830s and 1840s, there was some public concern about the dangers of Catholicism, partly due to a revival of High Church practices in the Church of England, and partly due to an influx of Irish immigrant labourers, especially into cities in the North of England, such as Liverpool and Manchester.

As I shall not have occasion … which she endowed with her fortune With this sentence, Jane firmly dismisses her cousins from her narrative.

Nunnery … take the veil … superior … novitiate Jane here narrates the completion of Eliza's journey towards becoming a Roman Catholic nun. She first serves as a novice (her novitiate) during which she will discover if she has a true vocation. She then takes the veil (i.e. becomes a full member of the religious order. In Eliza's case, she goes on to become Mother Superior, the head of a convent or nunnery.

car or carriage Both horse-drawn wheeled vehicles.

a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh See note in Chapter 15.

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