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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Jane Eyre, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Family, and Independence
Social Class and Social Rules
Gender Roles
Religion
Feeling vs. Judgment
The Spiritual and the Supernatural
Summary
Analysis
The guests remain for several days. Each night Jane has to watch Blanche flirt with Rochester, including during a game of charades from which Jane is excluded.
Rochester forces Jane to attend the parties, while the other guests exclude her. None of them treat her as an equal.
Themes
Quiz
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Jane senses that Blanche, despite all her efforts, cannot charm Rochester. Still, she thinks Rochester will probably marry Blanche, perhaps for political or social reasons that Jane doesn't understand.
Jane continues to believe that Rochester will place a higher priority on class constraints than on his emotions.
Themes
Quiz
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One day, Rochester is away on business. A strange gentleman—Mr. Mason—comes looking for him. The man's unusual, vacant appearance makes Jane uneasy. She learns from Mr. Mason that he and Rochester both had business in the West Indies.
Mr. Mason's disturbing nature seems to link him to the Gothic events at Thornfield. His West Indies origins make him an outsider, and therefore suspect.
Themes
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A few nights later, while Rochester is still away, an old gypsy woman comes to the house to tell the fortunes of the party. Blanche demands to be first, but returns from the library looking disappointed. The other girls twitter about the gypsy's surprising knowledge. The old woman then requests to see Jane.
The gypsy's presence emphasizes Brontë's interest in a supernatural connection between minds, which will come into play later in the novel.
Themes
Quiz
Test Yourself
Get the entire Jane Eyre LitChart as a printable PDF.
