And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever you are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!
Chapter 37 · Edward Rochester
Context
Still unable to see Jane, Rochester frantically demands she make herself physically present to him or he will die.
Analysis
The escalating bodily images—'heart will stop,' 'brain burst'—are medical and violent, not poetic. Rochester speaks as if his body will literally fail without sensory proof of Jane's presence. The imperative 'be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live' inverts the usual hierarchy of the senses: for a blind man, touch has replaced sight as the gateway to reality, and Jane must pass through it to exist for him at all.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Rochester's blindness forces him into a new epistemology—he must abandon the controlling male gaze and rely on touch, a more mutual and vulnerable sense, which structurally prepares him for a more equal marriage.