“…it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! Come Jane, come!”—Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
“This part bothers me, he shared. “He says it all right there. He recognizes her independence, freedom of spirit, and then defies his own eyes and understanding. He tries to force what cannot be forced, order what cannot be commanded. It’s futile—demanding obeisance from an independent spirit. It destroys the very independence he identifies and loves; and yet there is where he expends his energy.
If a continuing metaphor for souls is birds, can he not see a better way?”
“And what would that be?” she asked.
“Song. To like-birds, the courting of a life-long mate is in the music of one’s heart. It is expressed, given free to air and world. To the one for whom it’s destined, it draws them nearer to the originating soul. All the while, there are other displays and preparations: a dance for when complimenting soul does arrive, a preparation of nest and home, all done in blind faith that soul-resonance of song will strike and draw another near.
Mr. Rochester makes sweet professions, but then he seeks to keep her caged. Why has he not thought to open the door and let her free? Is he too afraid she will not return to him? Beautiful birds are not to be adored in fixed in cage but to be admired in empowered flight. He misses the purpose and beauty of free spirits granted wings. They are not to be caged and limited to what we imagine them to be, but freed for what they are destined to become and show.
He misses all of this when he tries to force her hand. Without setting her free, he will never have what he desires: truly reciprocated love. Reciprocated love cannot occur without leaving choice free for another to decide. As he tries to compel, he makes his own words true, ‘seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence,’ and so she does, and rightfully so.
All his past failures described, they came from the same fault: seeking to keep caged and concealed instead of freed and open to all the world. He thinks he’s changed, but he hasn’t. It’s the same mistake repeated each time in a slightly different way.”
“What would you do different?” she asked.
“Don’t create cages. Make a nest. He admits to the darkness and confined nature of the place, speaks of an even more remote and isolated residence to which they could go, but he never asks what she wishes, what she would like to do, what she wants of love, marriage, life. I know it’s an archaic story—a different era with different standards—but if they are equals and like-birds, shouldn’t he wonder and at some point ask?”
“And how does one win and hold the spirit of a bird left free?”
“Keep singing. Keep voicing from the soul. For whom it’s meant, it will be found. It will resonate, and they will stay.”
*****
A quail sounded in the distance. Its high-low inflection cut crisp through distance and open space—”bob-white…bob-white.”
Somewhere, unseen, in the cover of thicket or understoried hedge, the bird sang its song to the universe; and somewhere, whether near or far, the song would find for whom his soul sang.
*****
The call of the quail changed his thoughts. The crisp sound focused to something in his mind, or somewhere else. He studied the sight of her beside him: comfortable in his presence, possessing a simple and natural beauty that was unique and hers alone.
“I wrote another song the other day,” he shared. “Would you like to hear?”
She smiled. A hue in her cheeks rosed faint beneath the smoothness of her skin as light shined outward from her eyes. She did not flee but held—content and comforted—in place.
“If you would like to share, I would like to listen,” she answered in a voice expressing its own simple song.
Both were free, and–still–they stayed.