The Tenth Plague

In chapter 26, just before she is about to marry Rochester, Jane learns of his mad wife and reflects on her feelings, saying, “My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell all the first-born in the land of Egypt.” In EXODUS 11:1-10, the Lord describes what would be the last of the 10 plagues and then, in EXODUS 12:29-30, “it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.”