The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.
Chapter 37 · Narrator
Context
Jane arrives at Ferndean and watches Rochester from a distance as he steps outside. She observes how blindness and injury have changed him, though his physical strength remains.
Analysis
The stacked comparisons—eagle, Samson, both broken by cruelty—compress two Old Testament images of ruined masculine power into one sentence. By naming 'cruelty' as the agent that 'extinguished' the eagle's eyes, Brontë frames Rochester's suffering not as divine punishment but as inflicted harm, preparing the reader to see him as victim rather than villain. The word 'extinguished' evokes both light snuffed out and life destroyed, yoking his blindness to a kind of death.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Brontë recasts Rochester's suffering through biblical language to reposition him as a tragic, sympathetic figure rather than a moral cautionary tale—this metaphor erases his agency in his own downfall and transfers blame to external 'cruelty.'