Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG
Jane Eyre is a Victorian novel, and so it does have a kinda-sorta repressed feel. Even though one major strand of the plot is the passionate romance between Jane and Rochester, we don’t get too many steamy, bodice-ripping bedroom scenes.
There are a few moments where the heat gets turned up, such as the time Jane discovers Rochester literally smoldering in his bed and has to throw cold water on him. Okay: that one’s actually about extinguishing the flames, but it’s still about standing in the dark with the man you love while his clothes are clinging to him, right?
We do get some passionate embraces, declarations of love, sudden kisses, and a few indecent proposals. We learn about Rochester’s sleazy past, which involves French, Italian, and German mistresses—he doesn’t even know if Adèle is his daughter or not.
Bertha’s main charm as a young woman was sex appeal. Rochester tries to commit bigamy or get Jane to live with him as his wife without getting married, and at points Jane seems to be teasing him and arguing with him to keep him from losing control and ravishing her. In fact there’s a lot of sex here, even though most of it happens "offstage."