Which is better?—To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle;—but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time—for he would—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while.
Chapter 31 · Jane Eyre
Context
Alone in her cottage, Jane imagines the alternate life she rejected: staying with Rochester as his mistress in France, living in luxury and passion rather than teaching poor children in a Yorkshire village.
Analysis
The lush, drowsy syntax—'sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers'—mimics the seductive ease of the life Jane refused, piling up semicolons as if she's sinking deeper with each phrase. Yet the metaphor of a 'snare' hidden under flowers warns that this beauty is a trap, and the shift to 'delirious' and 'for a while' introduces time as the poison: Rochester's love would have been intense but temporary. The grammar itself makes the choice feel dangerously easy, which is why Jane had to flee.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Brontë makes temptation genuinely tempting—Jane's moral choice only matters because the wrong path is vividly, almost unbearably attractive, not because it's cartoonishly evil.