Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?
Chapter 27 · Edward Rochester
Context
Rochester, encountering Jane as she emerges from her room, compares his remorse over deceiving her to a man who has accidentally killed his beloved lamb.
Analysis
Rochester borrows the parable of the poor man's ewe lamb from 2 Samuel 12, where the prophet Nathan uses it to condemn King David for taking another man's wife. The allusion casts Rochester as both the rich man who stole and the poor man who lost—he has wronged Jane, yet appeals to the tenderness of the original victim. The domestic intimacy of the lamb 'ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom' reads almost as a marriage vow, which is precisely Rochester's rhetorical move: to frame their bond as already sacred, and his betrayal as an accident rather than a calculated lie.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Rochester manipulates Biblical allusion to reposition himself as victim rather than deceiver—the language of the parable appeals to Jane's sympathy while erasing his own agency in the 'bloody blunder.'