In Chapter 37 of Jane Eyre, Jane travels to Ferndean where she is reunited with Mr Rochester. This large manor house, purchased by Rochester's father, is a building of "considerable antiquity" and is "deep buried within a wood."
In its "ineligible" and "insalubrious" condition, Ferndean is a lonely and isolated place. When Jane arrives there in the evening, she can hardly separate the trees from the house and is not certain if anyone is living there at all. In this condition, Ferndean comes to represent Mr Rochester's current state of being: blind and emotionally scarred, he shuns society while he mourns the fire at Thornfield and his separation from Jane. The thick trees which surround Ferndean represent the barrier that he has created between himself and the outside world; a barrier which only Jane, his true love, can penetrate.
That Ferndean is also the setting of Jane and Rochester's marriage and new life together is also significant. It symbolises a new beginning where the pair can escape the past and build a happy life together.
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