I listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to discriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester; and when it caught them, which it soon did, it found a further task in framing the tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words.
Chapter 17 · Narrator
Context
Sitting outside the drawing room with Adèle, Jane listens to music and conversation from the party below. She realizes her attention has become focused entirely on detecting Rochester's voice among the others.
Analysis
The sentence structure enacts the very process it describes: it starts with broad listening ('the mingled sounds') and then narrows progressively—first to 'discriminate,' then to 'caught,' then to 'framing'—mimicking how Jane's ear zeroes in with obsessive precision. The admission that this focus was 'sudden' and not deliberate ('I discovered') suggests she catches herself in the act of fixation, revealing a loss of control she had not intended. The near-absurdity of trying to reconstruct 'inarticulate' sounds into words shows desire overriding reason.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Jane's internal life is characterized by involuntary intensity—this sentence shows her rational mind being overtaken by emotional focus she neither planned nor can stop, illustrating how love in the novel operates as a force that disrupts self-governance.