In Chapter 17 of Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester and Blanche Ingram take hold of the party’s attention as they perform three charades. At the end of the third performance, Colonel Dent provides an emphatic “Bridewell!” (Brontë 17), suggesting the answer to the charade is Bridewell Palace. The Palace, built in London, had finished construction in about 1523 where it was intended to provide King Henry VIII with a residence near Westminster/ the capital (Heritage Gateway). The location did not remain a residence for long as “in 1553 Edward VI gave the palace to the City for the reception of vagrants and homeless children and for the punishment of petty offenders and disorderly women” (Heritage Gateway). This is when the location gained its new title, Bridewell Royal Hospital and Bridewell Prison. Brontë’s decision to utilize the historic narrative of Bridewell during this scene when Mr. Rochester and Blanche portray a married couple, supplies the implication that in the case of Mr. Rochester, a married life with Blanche would hold a similar magnificence to the palace on a surface level while functioning simultaneously as a prison sentence. Socially, it is constructed to believe Mr. Rochester would benefit greatly from a partnership with Blanche such as financial gain, popularity, etc. It is later explained in the text by Jane that Mr. Rochester and Blanche are in fact not compatible at all, and that a relationship between the two would result in Mr. Rochester’s eventual unhappiness. The allusion to Bridewell was done so by Brontë to slyly imply a relationship between the two would suffer a similar fate to the building itself(surface level beauty functioning as a prison), only accessible to the reader with a sufficient knowledge of the history of Bridewell. 

“Bridewell Palace.” Heritage Gateway , Historic England, 2012, https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=40499...

Strype, John. “The Prospect of Bridewell.” Wikipedia , 1720, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridewell_Palace. Accessed 12 June 2022.