JE #9

“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes…and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark” (297). Bronte floods this passage with metaphors. The imagery she creates leads to a better understanding of the thoughts of Mr. Rochester. He depreciates the value of his home generating the general theme of social status. To Jane the house is a “splendid mansion” but to Mr. Rochester it seems not much more than “slime.” The differences between these two characters, and their separate social status, eventually kindles the love between them.