42. JANE EYRE

Charlotte Bronte 1947

A legendary classic, Jane Eyre, a feisty, headstrong, hard-working, conscientious and passionate heroine narrates to us, 'the reader', about her life: as a young orphan growing up with her cruel Aunt Mrs. Sarah Reed who sends her away to Lowood school, and as a young woman, she is hired as a governess at Thornfield Manor where she meets and falls in love with her master Edward Rochester.

"She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner--something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were--she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children."

"Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present."

"Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words."

"A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done, cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction."

"It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you..."

"What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill usage so brands its records on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tired to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registered wrongs."

"He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding sound and an exclamation of "What the deuce is to do now?" and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse went down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway."

"I perceive these pictures were done by one hand: was that hand yours?...
"Where did you get your copies?"
"Out of my head."
"That head I see now on your shoulders?"
"Yes, sir."
"Has it other furniture of the same kind within?"
"I should think it may have: I should hope--better."

"No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face: I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,--a precious, yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless."

"I will; in few words. You are cold, because you are alone; no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick: because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach; nor will you stir one step to meet is where it waits you."

"Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs: and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life; because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist: (for instance between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives; asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces its origin) whose working baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man."

"True, generous feeling is made small account of by some; but there were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition."

"This was very pleasant: there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort."

"I ventured once more to meet my master's and lover's eye; which most pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on the slave his gold and gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure--"

"I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or maimed me. and yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday?--where was her life?--where were her prospects?"

"My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses, that could never revive."

"Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law-- no man being injured by the breach?"

"I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could:"

Personal Note: What could be lovelier than reading Jane Eyre among the tulips and the bulbfields: May 4, 2010, Keukenhof flower park, South Holland.