Funny / Jane Eyre

• Small Jane being Literal-Minded and showing her snarky tendencies. She was told she had a wicked heart and to pray to God to change it: to give her a new and clean one: to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. "I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that operation of changing my heart was to be performed." Also of note, when Mr. Brocklehurst asks Jane how she should spare her soul from being thrown into hell, Jane replies that she will be sure to take care of her health and not die.
• Jane and Mr Rochester's first meeting. Mr Rochester's horse slips on ice and falls over, lands on top of his leg, and causes him to go off in a tirade of swearing. A good first impression.^note The horse is fine, but Edward then gets back on and gallops off again at top speed on an icy road.
• Mr. Rochester asking Jane if he's handsome during their first private conversation. Jane's response: "No, sir.". It gets funnier in adaptation versions where most of Mr. Rochester actors are attractive.
  • This question becomes a Call-Back after they reunited in Ferndean.
  Edward Rochester:Am I hideous, Jane?
  Jane Eyre:Yes sir, you were always were, you know.
• While the scene of Edward Rochester almost being burned to death by the Madwoman in the Attic in Jane Eyre is rather serious, you can't help but chuckle at the dialogue:
  Edward Rochester: [after being doused by water] Is there a flood?
  Jane Eyre: No sir, but there has been a fire.
  • Also, the fact that Mr Rochester sleeps through the entire ordeal. One would say smoke inhalation, but the fact that he wakes up immediately after the water's thrown suggests that he's just a really deep sleeper.
• The entire scene with Mr Rochester dressed up as a Romani fortune-teller, especially when he "reads" Blanche's mind and tells her that she's a gold-digger and will likely cheat on him with a wealthier man if they were to be married.
• Proving that irony was already alive and well in the 1840s, as well as the recognition of when something has become a cliche, Bronte writes how no one ever speaks up when Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace is invoked at weddings. Of course, immediately thereafter someone speaks up.
  • Readers familiar with the Bronte kids' paracosm Angria may discern Charlotte writing with the voice of Angrian prince Charles Wellesley right there. Charlotte and her siblings were fans from an early age of Blackwood's Magazine, filled with cynical commentary, irreverent reviews, satirical humor and sarcastic wit. Many Angrian characters were attributed to write or speak in this fashion, and Charles, narrator of most of Charlotte's Angria tales, was a prime example of the type.
• When Jane returns to Rochester, she decides to make him jealous by telling him about St. John. Rochester keeps trying (in vain) to find flaw with St. John.
  “His appearance,—I forget what description you gave of his appearance;—a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white neckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?”
  “St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes, and a Grecian profile.”
  (Aside.) “Damn him!”—(To me.) “Did you like him, Jane?”

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