MovieChat Forums > Jane Eyre (2011) Discussion > 'I'm sure she'd regenerate me with a ven...

'I'm sure she'd regenerate me with a vengeance.'


Can someone explain to me this line ? I'm not sure what Rochester means ...


_______________________________________
If I want a baby inside of me, I'll eat it!

reply

Make him feel like he is 'born again' and give him a new purpose in life

reply

Good answer littlesue,
big Pat

Who's your fat friend?

reply

The line also has sexual innuendo, at least in this film version.

reply

What's odd is that I think he is actually speaking to Jane very directly in this scene, telling her that she is the one who will regenerate him. Each time I watch it, it seems very plain that Rochester is finally telling her the truth here.
-------------------------
"It's better not to know so much about what things mean." David Lynch

reply

I think it makes more sense if you see what Bronte wrote just before he says that.

“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a crime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is error. The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?”

So the book explains what he means by regenerate. And I guess he was trying again to make her jealous by flaunting Blanche in her face yet again...this time pretending he'd marry her and she'd really regenerate him forcibly and assertively because she was so beautiful, sexy, intelligent and clever.

reply