To Eyre is … Divine

I have just finished reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I commend it to all who, like me, are tardy in coming to this classic. Of the End Notes, 129 in my edition, the majority are Scriptural references. The dialogues between Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester are a treasure — almost as good as Scarlet & Rhett in that other classic. I’d been wanting to read Jane Eyre for some time when I found it for under $6, Barnes & Noble edition. This blog offering is definitely of the “Etc” category. But for those who appreciate such things, I’ve listed some stand-alone quotes below (B&N; edition pages in parenthesis; words in brackets are my own). Enjoy!

… he was not quick either of vision or conception … (3)

While I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by some one across the lawn; but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were for agitation, I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. (13)

At last both slept; the fire and the candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread; such dread as only children can feel. (16)

Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. (59)

Sometimes, on a sunny day, it began even to be pleasant and genial; and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. (82)

It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for relief … (94) … A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow; for as I lay down it came quietly and naturally to my mind … (95)

It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world; cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens the sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone. I besought myself to ring the bell. (104)

Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. (123)

[In speaking about her pictures, which Eyre had painted on holiday:] “I had nothing else to do, because it was vacation, and I sat at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night; the length of the midsummer days favored my inclination to apply.” (143)

[In answering whether she was satisfied with them:] “Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realize.” (143)

“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”

— “Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.” (155)

When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavored to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s boundless and trackless waste into the safe fold of common sense. (183)

[On “trailing”:] Genius is said to be self-conscious; I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram was a genius, but she was self-conscious — remarkably self-conscious, indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs Dent. It seems Mrs Dent had not studied that science, though as she said, she liked flowers, “especially wild ones”; Miss Ingram had, and she ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was (what is vernacularly termed) trailing Mrs Dent; that is, playing on her ignorance. Her trail might be clever, but it was decidedly not good-natured. (198)

[With jealous eye bent toward observing her love and other ladies:] 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. (200)

[On looking upon her cruel, dying Aunt:] The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously. “One lies here,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit — now struggling to quit its material tenement — flit when at length released?” (275)

And then I strangled a new-born agony — a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear — and ran on. (283)

While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain; there was hope in its aspect and life in its color; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. (298)

[Upon resisting her master’s advances:] “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsubstantiated, I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth, so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane, quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot.” (369)

[Upon setting out for an uncertain destination:] As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection. (375)

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. (395)

I know no medium; I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other … (465)