How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child, after a long walk—to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to come back from church to Lowood—to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings were very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried. (2.7.8)
Jane has done plenty of going back to places, but not much actual going home. She’s never felt connected to a place, which is strange because there are only three places she remembers living. Perhaps returning to Thornfield will feel different; it’s possible that Jane has finally found the home she never had. It’s also interesting that she thinks she’ll only be able to tell what feels like home after leaving it and returning. In this novel, being away from home is the thing that makes it possible to know what home is.
Quote #5
"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home,—my only home." (2.7.34)
Given the way Jane doesn’t seem to connect to places, but to people and the way they do or don’t allow her to be herself, it’s not surprising that her "home" is established in terms of companionship.
Quote #6
I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with agony I thought of what I left. (3.1.161)
Jane’s most courageous moral decision takes the form of abandoning the home she has found for herself with Rochester. Her decision to become homeless means that she is physically unmoored—but ethically grounded.