Jane Eyre

“ "I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil."
"And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket,—a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me." ”

“ Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather not have them.”
“I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead,—which it will become: for nature, at least, has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings.”
“No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in another strain. Don’t address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, Quakerish governess.” ”

“ There is more actuality in the half-French chatter of Adèle than in any of the high utterances of Jane and Rochester.
And yet her sense of the emotion behind the utterance is infallible, so infallible that we accept the utterance. By some miracle, which is her secret, the passion gets through. The illusion of reality is so strong that it covers its own lapses. Jane Eyre exists to prove that truth is higher than actuality. ”

“ Are you Jane Eyre?”
“I am Jane Eyre.”
“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. ”

“ It is such immortal things that make the difference between Jane Eyre and The Professor. So immeasurable is that difference that it almost justifies the theorist in assuming an "experience" to account for it, an experience falling between the dates of The Professor and Jane Eyre. Unfortunately there was none; none in the sense cherished by the researcher. Charlotte's letters are an unbroken record of those two years that followed her return from Brussels. Her life is laid bare in its long and cramped monotony, a life singularly empty of "experience". ”

“ "Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully; without softening one defect: omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'
"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory—you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; ”

“ I enjoyed, besides this, her conversation, which is distinguished by its freshness and originality, its perfectly independent and earnest mode of feeling and judging. I again perceived that imprisoned fire which I had before seen glimmering in her clear, dark-brown eyes, diamond-like and still. It warmed me. We talked about Jane Eyre, and I, for the first time, heard any one openly express my own secret wishes with regard to Jane's behaviour to Rochester. I love that virtue which is above conventional morality, and which knows something better than to be merely—free from blame. ”

“ In fact to return to our advocatus diaboli - '"Jane Eyre" is on the one side a rather poor novel of incident, planned on the conventional pattern, and full of clumsy execution ; on an- other side it is a picture of passion and of ideas, for which in truth the writer had no sufficient equipment ; she moves im- prisoned, to quote Mr. Leslie Stephen, in " a narrow circle of thoughts ;" if you press it, the psychology of the book is really childish ; Rochester is absurd, Jane Eyre, in spite of the stir that she makes, only half-realised and half-conscious. ”

“ Soon afterwards I read Jane Eyre again, and was more than ever astonished at it. It is not to be classed; it is written not by a limited human personality but by Nature herself. The love in it is too great for creatures who are ‘even as the generations of leaves’; the existence of two mortals does not account for it. ”

“ That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.
“You,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. ”

“ Jane Eyre, in spite of some grand things about her, is a being totally uncongenial to our feelings from beginning to end. We acknowledge her firmness—we respect her determination—we feel for her struggles; but, for all that, and setting aside higher considerations, the impression she leaves on our mind is that of a decidedly vulgar-minded woman—one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we should not seek as a friend, whom we should not desire for a relation, and whom we should scrupulously avoid for a governess. ”

“ The ' chainless soul ' was hers no less than Emily's, though she was far saner and sweeter than Emily.
And all three qualities pride, shrinking, endurance are writ large in her books. With passion added, they are Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe. They supply the atmosphere, the peculiar note, of all the stories. A contempt for mean and easy living, for common gains, and common luxuries, breathes in them, and makes them harsh and bracing as the air of her own moors.
And one other Celtic quality there is in Charlotte Bronte and her books, which is responsible perhaps for half their defects. ”

“ To come to Jane Eyre after The Professor is to pass into another world of feeling and of vision.
It is not the difference between reality and unreality. The Professor is real enough, more real in some minor points—dialogue, for instance—than Jane Eyre. The difference is that The Professor is a transcript of reality, a very delicate and faithful transcript, and Jane Eyre is reality itself, pressed on the senses. The pressure is so direct and so tremendous, that it lasts through those moments when the writer's grip has failed. ”

“ “I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”
“How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?”
“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. ”

“ Rochester at last. Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water.
"Is there a flood?" he cried.
"No, sir," I answered; "but there has been a fire: get up, do, you are quenched now; I will fetch you a candle."
"In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" he demanded. "What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?"
"I will fetch you a candle, sir; and in Heaven's name, get up. ”

“ Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as “Jane Eyre:” in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry—that parent of crime—an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths. ”

“ The inconsistencies of Jane's character lie mainly not in her own imperfections, though of course she has her share, but in the author's. There is that confusion in the relations between cause and effect, which is not so much untrue to human nature as to human art. The error in Jane Eyre is, not that her character is this or that, but that she is made one thing in the eyes of her imaginary companions, and another in that of the actual reader. ”

“ I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight years she must be so changed.” I now gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield. ”

“ One feels provoked as Jane Eyre stands before us—for in the wonderful reality of her thoughts and descriptions, she seems accountable for all done in her name—with principles you must approve in the main, and yet with language and manners that offend you in every particular. ”

“ One cannot imagine Jane Eyre saying to Mr. Rochester that he had come back to himself through loving her. It just detracts at the supreme moment from the generosity of the scene; it has the accent of the priestess, not of the true lover; and thus at the moment when one longs to be in the very white-heat of emotion, one is subtly aware of an improving hand that casts water upon the flame. ”

“ Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit, and more dangerous to exhibit from that prestige of principle and self-control which is liable to dazzle the eye too much for it to observe the inefficient and unsound foundation on which it rests. It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her. She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature—the sin of pride. ”

“ Rochester is an original creation. The character of Jane Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author's nature, was distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a homely heroine.
"Why is it," Charlotte had once said, "that heroines must always be beautiful?" The hero of romance was always noble and handsome, the heroine lovely and often insipid, and the scenes set in an atmosphere of exaggerated idealism. ”

“ The opposites of things are alike, and that is why the world ties Jane Eyre and Jane Austen in one bundle. Their methods of work were totally different: their effects gotten in different ways. Charlotte Bronte fascinates by startling situations and highly colored lights that dance and glow, leading you on in a mad chase. There's pain, unrest, tragedy in the air. The pulse always is rapid and the temperature high.
It is not so with Jane Austen. She is an artist in her gentleness, and the world is today recognizing this more and more. ”

“ There is a return to the manner of Jane Eyre, the manner of Charlotte when she is deeply moved; there is at times a relapse to Jane Eyre's worst manner. You get it at once in "The Valley of the Shadow" chapter, in the scene of Caroline's love-sick delirium.
"'But he will not know I am ill till I am gone; and he will come when they have laid me out, and I am senseless, cold and stiff.
"'What can my departed soul feel then? Can it see or know what happens to the clay? Can spirits, through any medium, communicate with living flesh? Can the dead at all revisit those they leave? ”

“ Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave. ”

“ To him the painting of a situation like that, say, in Benjamin Constant's ' Adolphe ' infinitely true, and wholly insoluble where the writer scorns to apply any coercive framework, any rough-and-ready 'plot' to his material, is the admirable and important thing. The true subject of ' Jane Eyre ' is the courage with which a friendless and loving girl confronts her own passion, and, in the interest of some strange social in- stinct which she knows as ' duty,' which she cannot explain and can only obey, tramples her love underfoot, and goes out miserable into the world. ”

“ God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”
“Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre,” was all he said.
“My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I am come back to you.”
“In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?”
“You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?”
“My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now ”