Chapter 38 — Conclusion: "Reader, I married him"

"Reader, I married him." The grammar is the argument the novel has been making since Chapter 1. I married him. The wedding is small — three days after Jane's arrival at Ferndean, with John the manservant and the parson of a nearby parish as the only witnesses. There is no veil; there is no white silk; there is no Blanche, no third floor, no impediment of any kind. Jane signs the register Jane Eyre. By the end of the morning she is Jane Rochester.

She reports ten years of perfect happiness. They are, she says, "ever together," — "more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh." Rochester's sight, after two years of marriage, returns partially in his good eye — enough to see her face, to write his own letters, to look at his firstborn son, who has inherited the dark Rochester eyes. Adèle, moved from a strict school to a kinder one, grows up well. Diana and Mary, with their share of the inheritance, marry well — Diana a naval captain who becomes an admiral, Mary a clergyman of "the highest worth," both within visiting distance.

St. John remains the novel's open question. He went to India in the autumn that followed Jane's departure from Moor House and worked ferociously in the mission field. He never married. The novel's last paragraph is a letter from him — written to Jane on his deathbed, ten years on, after a life of complete commitment to the work he had chosen. He expects to die soon; he expects "his Master's reward"; he is content. Jane reproduces the letter without ironic distance. She gives him, in his sphere, the dignity she refused him in hers. He goes to a glory he had chosen; she has stayed in the life she had chosen. The novel makes no attempt to reconcile the two endings. The final word, in his sentence, is "Amen."