62 THE FAITHFUL READER becomes Jane’s only friend, there is Miss Temple, the only teacher who shows the girls kindness and warmth. Together, they encourage Jane to release her anger toward all the unjustness she has faced in her life by turning toward God and an eternal life, rather than this cruel and temporary one. Helen tells her in a statement Jane would later echo to Mr. Rochester that “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” Helen soon dies of sickness, as many of the girls did from the school’s poor provisions, and Jane takes her friend’s words to heart. Jane begins to care less of what others think of her and focuses instead on her own spirit and what she knows to be true about herself. Years later, she returns to Gateshead to see her dying Aunt Reed, and though Aunt Reed still refuses to acknowledge Jane kindly, Jane’s temper has since tamed to wisdom: “Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” she tells Aunt Reed. “You have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s and be at peace.” Her convictions for her self-respect remain strong, but they have now been tempered with passionate mercy instead of resentment. Her own conscience is clear of malice and wrongdoing, and that is enough. Thornfield Hall: “I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life” Jane’s new employer, Mr. Rochester, is someone she grows close to over her time at Thornfield. They have deep conversations and relate to each other in their social unpopularity; Jane is small and plain and not classically beautiful the way other society women are, and Mr. Rochester is gruff and short-tempered, hiding pain and sadness Jane cannot discern. When Jane believes Mr. Rochester is going to marry Miss Ingram, she tells him she must leave and gives one of her most popular quotes: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.” When it turns out that Mr. Rochester wants to marry Jane instead, she agrees to stay and marry him. But another barrier presents itself in the form of Mr. Rochester’s current wife, a secret named Bertha Antoinette Mason, long kept in the attic. Mentally ill and violent, she is hidden away
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