My rewrite of Jane Eyre

Constant rain made Mr. Rochester feel emptier after Jane left. After having supper very simply, he read books sitting on the rocking chair beside fire place a little while and went to bed early wishing to have a deep sleep. After Jane Eyre had gone, Rochester lost all desire and could not have a deep sleep because he usually woke up after being suffered from bad dreams in the midnight. He thought that all the results were inevitable retribution caused by his previous faults.

On that day, same as usual, Grace Pool was dozing on the table being drunk from the early evening. After knowing that all family went to bed, Bertha Mason pulled out key of the attic from the pocket of Grace Poole and opened the door and slipped out the attic. From a little while ago, Bertha’s heart was burning with revengeful thought against Mr. Rochester. She was going to set the house on fire and kill all the family and kill herself too. She set the fire to curtains of windows with the candle light which she brought from the attic. The flame was spread out in a moment and all houses were wrapped in flames and smoke. When Mr. Rochester went out from the bed room after hearing screaming of ‘fire’, all family were getting out to the garden of that house. He went up to the attic through the flames and found that Grace Poole already escaped to downstairs and he could see the feature of Bertha in the flames vaguely. When he ran to her closely, it was the moment that she was going to die by falling down to the ground from veranda of the attic.
“Wait! Bertha, wait a moment!” Mr. Rochester’s shouting was spread out to dark night sky with the flames.
“Don’t take me. I hate you. You destroyed my life!”
When Bertha was turning back to see him, he ran very fast and grasp her roughly. When he dragged her out hardly, the fire was spread out the entire house and the flame was spring up high to the night sky. In Bertha’s eye, who was watching the fire on grass of the garden, the flame of anger against Mr. Rochester and the past of her life were burning out together. Also, tears which have no reasons were falling down from her eyes continuously and over the flames burning out her feeling mixed with love and hatred; the stars were twinkling in the far and dark night.

After the accident of fire, Bertha’s condition was recovered rapidly. May be, her mind was purified by the large amount of tears that was run down on that day, because all grudge and anger might be come out from her mind with tears. So she could have meals with family and talk each other sometimes. Actually, she was returning to normal person.

After Bertha went to her mother’s house by making up excuse of recuperation, Everyday life of Mr. Rochester was continuous agonies. He couldn’t decide which way is better to wait recovery of Bertha and continue marriage life or to try to find Jane and confess his love and persuade all situations and then start new life with her. After all, he decided to find Jane Eyre because the thought that ‘women are exist just for men’ was dominant in his mind. After a few days’ asking around, Mr. Rochester found where Jane is and prepared to start immediately. She was staying at a pastor’s house in a village of country side. It was a typical country village where small mountains blocked back yard and a small stream was flowing in front of the village.

When Mr. Rochester arrived and approached to the gate, he could see over the lower fence somebody is moving in the house. He could recognize it was Jane Eyre immediately even though it was a profile and hidden by the window. As if some movement might be sensed, she stopped working and looked outside. And then she was coming out in haste showing her surprising feature at the same time.
“Oh! Mr. Rochester. How can you come here?”
She muttered when looking at Mr. Rochester with the face expression mixed with surprising and joy. “Jane, I haven’t seen you for a long time. Is everything going well? You look so lean!” He rather stepped backward restraining the feeling of urge to embrace her roughly. “Come on in inside.” She was talking kindly, but Mr. Rochester couldn’t read warm facial expression she used to have.
Although the house looked small, but it was a nice wooden house used classic architecture.
“Please, wait a moment here.” Jane Eyre guided Mr. Rochester to a table and went to kitchen for preparing tea and fruit.
“How are your family? Is everybody good? And how about your work?” Jane asked putting tea and fruit on the table.
“Yes, everybody is fine.” He answered unconsciously. Mr. Rochester felt that Jane’s face was changed from the feature of looking naive to matured woman.
“When I was wandering here and there, St. John, who is the owner of this house, helped me. He is a pastor of a church in this village.”
“He is very kind man.” Mr. Rochester just answered absentmindedly. But actually, he could be a new rival of love to Mr. Rochester.
“I wonder, may be, he likes you.” Mr. Rochester had a big gesture to show that he was joking.
“Actually, St. John has a woman who loves him. Her name is Rosamond Oliver, who is good minded and naïve.” Jane Eyre said.
The attitude of Rosamond Oliver was changed greatly than before after she felt that St. John was going far from her and he is coming close to Jane Eyre. Somehow she seemed to express her hatred to Jane recently.
“St. John will go missionary trip sooner or later and he wants to go with me instead of Rosamond Oliver. He said he needs a woman who is strong and has a good faith than a weak minded woman like Rosamond Oliver.” Jane said. She looked much matured person who can look down herself objectively.
There was a silence and some kind of tension between two people as if they were liquidating their past emotions.
“Jane, my house became deserted like empty house without your presence and I always thinking of you everyday. I have become a useless man now who is living narrowly and losing all desire. I think you are the only woman who can blow new life to me. Let’s go with me and make our new life together.” Jane Eyre was just watching the sun which was falling down into mountains when Mr. Rochester begged eagerly.
“Mr. Rochester, there is no change of my mind about respecting you and loving you, but I realized seriously this time that there’s a big gap between loving mind and real daily life. For an extreme case, if people in the world decide all matters and progress those just having love, morality and order of the world might be broken down and the world might become chaos.” Jane Eyre said continuously turning her eyes from outside of the window to Mr. Rochester.
“I think you should look after your wife more carefully. I heard that for people who have mental disease, we have to give more love to them and make free circumstances in order to resolve the bitter feeling in their mind.”
There was no sign of agreement on his facial expression when he was listening to Jane Eyre.
“Jane, please listen to me. Bertha’s family originally has a history of mental disease from their ancestor. I didn’t know that and was cheated to marry her. I was just interested in their financial power.” He seemed to be thirsty; ends of his fingers were trembled slightly when he lifted his cup of tea.
“Mr. Rochester, I just want the rumour that the reason why Bertha became mad was that you had a secret love affair with another woman is not true. Anyway, I think you are responsible for the life of Bertha after marriage.” Jane said. Although, he could agree to the opinion of Jane, Rochester always thought that such a matter can be happened to men easily from time to time.
“Jane, in fact there was a big fire and all houses were burnt out except a cottage. Bertha set fire to my house and tried to die by jumping to the ground but I took her out from the flame narrowly. After that, her disease was getting better mysteriously and now she has gone to her house but she might not be return.”
Jane Eyre seemed to be surprised but could be calm immediately and said looking mountains in the sunset through windows.
“Mr. Rochester, my mind for thinking of you is same as before, but now I don’t want to jump into your complicated situation.” Some kind of tight resolution could be caught on Jane’s facial expression.
“Have you decided to go missionary trip with St. John?”
“Even if I go to missionary trip with him, I will not marry him.”
Mr. Rochester could understand that she could distinguish between missionary and her marriage clearly because he had known Jane’s faith was very deep.
Already sunset was disappeared and it grew dark outside.
“Mr. Rochester, I think all men in the world are selfish and cold hearted fellow because, if needed, they try to find another new woman, abandoning women easily who were their lovers before. They seem to be not concerned about how the abandoned women might be suffered emotionally. In fact, I don’t understand why St. John wants to marry me instead of Rosamond Oliver too.”
Sound of rain drops could be heard from outside and the front door was opened with sound of footsteps, St. John and Rosamond were returning from outside.

“St. John, this is Mr. Rochester who I told you before. Please, exchange greetings.” Jane Eyre said. St. John shook hands with Mr. Rochester, hiding his surprising awkwardly and with smiling. Rosamond Oliver went up to her room in upstairs directly and Jane Eyre went to the kitchen to prepare tea and fruit.
After a long silence, St. John started to speak first. “Jane told me a lot about you. How are you doing?” St John thought he might steal Jane away from him before he goes off on the mission trip. “I am well thank you. I don’t know if you heard but there was a fire at my house. No one was hurt, but the house got burnt down.”, said Rochester, trying to sound casual, regretting that he said it. He realised he wasn’t ready to talk about it. “I am sorry to hear, but I am relieved that no one was hurt. God’s mercy.”
The mention of God irritated Rochester who has little faith in church and God. “How is your church?” asked St John to make the matters worse. “Well, I haven’t been to church for a while.”, said Rochester, wanting to say religion is for people who are too weak to believe in themselves and want to rely on something or someone else. “That’s a shame. I hope you start going to church again. You can never find true happiness without Jesus. Material things and physical pleasures are only temporary, what’s important is knowing the truths and having faith.”
Rochester nodded, losing interest in what St John was saying and looking in the direction of where Jane went. Jane came back with tea and fruit. She stayed for a little while, but soon left sensing awkwardness between the two men who both love her. As she was leaving, she heard St John say to Rochester, “She is a good lady matured and strong having lost parents at a young age.”
“Are you going on a mission trip with Jane?” asked Rochester. St John answered “I asked her to come with me. She hasn’t given me an answer yet.” “I heard a lady called Rosamond likes you.” said Rochester, unsure of whether it is appropriate for him to mention this. St John got a little defensive and said “We dated for a little while and it is none of your business”. “Forgive me, but I think it is the right thing to look after her.” said Rochester.
Annoyed but still looking at Rochester, St John said, “I heard about your wife. Why don’t you take care of your own wife?” Jane heard the conversation, the raised tone of these two men from upstairs. She came down and said to them, “It’s not the right time for me to get involved with anyone at the moment. I need time. Time to think about things that happened in the past.” The tears in her eyes reflected the light and shined. “Please, I want you to leave, Rochester.” Rochester started walking towards the door and St John stared at his back as he walked away.

It was pitch dark outside and pouring down. As he was riding his horse back home, he thought to himself ‘I’m losing everything. The world I know, the world in which I could do everything I wanted to do, is gone.’ He felt rage and ran his horse faster and faster. It was wet and the horse slipped and he fell down at the corner of the road. He felt enormous pain in his leg, thought it was broken, but couldn’t see forward and it was still raining. Fortunately, his horse didn’t seem to have gotten hurt and was up and waiting for Rochester to get up, but he couldn’t get up. After a while, a carriage passed by and people in the carriage saw Rochester and helped him.

Jane spent a few days disconcerted after she asked Rochester to leave. She had nightmares at night and during the day she couldn’t concentrate on her work. Then, she heard about the accident from the neighbours. They said he broke his leg and would probably be crippled for the rest of his life. She felt so sad at the news and an urge to go see him and nurse him. But she suppressed the urge. Things were uncomfortable with St John as well, who pretended to be busy but his mind was on Jane. Jane thought love was a strange thing. Like a bad experience that’s buried deep in your mind but appears every now and then to disturb you, it doesn’t go away easily. Then she wondered whether it was real love. Shouldn’t love make you happy, completely? She wondered whether Rochester’s love was unselfish love. Does he want to have me because he really loves me? What about St John? How could he leave Rosamond after all? Jane Eyre thought St. John is a selfish man too.

A few days later, Jane went to a cathedral by herself. She walked along a little path with flowers on both sides that danced with the wind that led to the cathedral. She hoped this excursion to the cathedral would help her forget past things. There was a statue of Maria in front of the cathedral and as she was approaching it, a nun came out and kneeled before the statue to pray. When Jane saw her face, she let out a small ah sound because she never saw a face as happy and peaceful as the nun’s before. It was the face of someone who was in love with God and it was so beautiful. Jane went into the cathedral and prayed. She wanted to lay all her worried before God. She prayed that she would be able to be free from Rochester and make the right decision about the mission trip with St John. On the way back home, she was still thinking about the nun’s face. She wondered how deep the nun’s faith would be. She felt ashamed as the nun seemed so pure and unselfish and a desire to become a nun herself. Then she would be free from all her problems and be in peace like the nun she saw today. But, she realised she had two minds about it. One part of her thought was that she didn’t want to be a coward and become a nun to run away from her problems. Another part was that she wanted to face and overcome them and learn from them.

Jane Eyre spent the next few days thinking about her future. On a beautiful day when sun was shining and birds were signing, she decided to leave St. John’s house. She decided not to go on the mission trip with St John. She would be free from both of them at last. She decided to go back to her hometown and stay there for a while. St John, as he saw Jane off, said to her “I hope you write to me as soon as you get there.” But Jane knew it was the end. She would start a new life! She hopped on a carriage, excited about her bright future.