Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.
Chapter 21 · Narrator
Context
Jane opens the chapter with a meditation on supernatural feelings, reflecting on her recent recurring dreams of infants—dreams she associates with impending trouble, based on a superstition she learned in childhood from Bessie.
Analysis
The triadic repetition of 'and so are' hammers out three linked phenomena—presentiments, sympathies, signs—that Jane insists have real weight, despite their 'strangeness.' By calling them collectively 'one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key,' she positions herself as someone willing to credit what rational Victorian society dismisses, quietly claiming authority over her own intuitive experience. This opening gesture prepares us to take her premonitions seriously throughout the novel.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Jane's narrative voice claims epistemic authority outside male Enlightenment rationality—this quote shows her asserting that intuitive, 'feminine' knowledge is real even when culturally dismissed as superstition.