While at the convent Antoinette was told, an English gentleman was coming to spend the winter in Jamaica. Actually, Mr. Mason planned to marry her into a wealthy family. As her mother was dead she had no other solution but to agree about it. Now, they’re going to Granbois for their honeymoon.
l.1: Rochester alludes to the four weeks “doubts and hesitations” prior to his wedding.
“It was all over” means the wedding has been carried out.
“The advance and retreat” hints at his feelings about this arranged marriage.
He was unwilling to marry this unknown Creole girl. He had no word in the decision because “it had been arranged” (l. 18).
“I was married” (l. 25), a telling passive voice.
Rochester is the second son, so he has no rights. He can’t be an heir.
l. 34: “she has bought me”, so Antoinette is rich, “for 30 000 pounds”.
He has “agreed to everything else”, he had no choice.
He considers his wife as “a stranger” (l. 33), he calls her “the girl” (l. 34).
He married her only to please his father (cf. p.39 l. 26-34).
He was manipulated like a puppet in his father’s hands.
He accepted to marry Antoinette for her dowry.
“Our sweet honeymoon” => a bitter irony (l. 17).
He calls Antoinette “the girl”, as if she were nothing to him (l. 34), as an “alien”, “a stranger” (l. 23).
Symbolically, he says of the house that “it knew it couldn’t last” (l. 59) as if he were talking of his marriage.
Above all the scenery reflects Rochester’s misgivings.
II - The ambiguous environment as a reflection of Rochester’s feelings
Nature foreshadows trouble more than happiness.
The scenery offers a dual vision of their world.
A - The scenery considered as enticing / attractive
It’s a postcard vision of tropical island.
l. 28: “the blue green sea”; “the soft warm wind”.
l. 39: “it was pleasantly cool”.
l. 44-47: “the idyllic, romantic episode of the silver spring”.
B - The scenery considered as both enticing and threatening i.e. ambiguous
l.8: “she sad leaning coconut palms”; “shingly beach”.
l. 31: the “extreme green”.
l.32: “everything is too much”.
l.33: “the flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near”.
l. 36-37: “a bird whistled a long sad note […] shrill and sweet” => oxymoronic sounds.
l.49: “the road goes down then up again”, like Rochester’s feelings.
C - The scenery considered as downright, threatening
l.2: “it’s raining” (+ l.14).
The name of the village – Massacre – is ominous (bad presage).
“Those hills would close in on you” (l. 29), like a trap.
The road climbed upward (l. 27), “soaked with sweet” (l. 40).
The journey is an ordeal rather than honeymoon trip.
They are walking between a “wall of green” and “a ravine” (l. 27).
l. 29: “A wild place, not only wild but menacing”.
Rochester describes the landscape as he perceives it, in a rather negative light. His vision of the environment portends failure and unhappiness. It also shows that he doesn’t consider Antoinette as his wife and the journey as a honeymoon.
The occasional love feeling quickly dissolves / disappears into suspicious.