1
" Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you'
Do you think I am an automation?-a machine
without feelings?
and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched
from my lips,
and my drop of living water dashed from my cup?
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, an
little, I am soulless and heartless?
You think wrong!-I have as much soul as you,-and
full of as much heart!
And if G-d had gifted me with some beauty and
much wealth,
I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, a
it is now for me to leave you.
I am not talking to you now through the medium o
custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh:
it is my spirit that addresses your spirit;
just as if both had passed through the grave,
and we stood at G-d's feet, equal,-as we are! "
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Edition With Illustrations (A Classic Illustrated Novel of Charlotte Brontë)
2
" I grieve to leave: I love this place-I love it,
because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,-
momentarily at least.
I have not been trampled on.
I have not been petrified.
I have not been buried with inferior minds,
and excluded from every glimpse of communion with
what is bright and energetic and high.
I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence,
with what I delight in,- with an original, a vigorous, an
expanded mind.
I have known you; and it strikes me with terror and
anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for
ever.
I see the necessity of departure;
and it is like looking in the necessity of death. "
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Edition With Illustrations (A Classic Illustrated Novel of Charlotte Brontë)
3
" Never," said he, as he ground his teeth,
"never was anything at once so frail and so
indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my
hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his
hold.) "I could bend her with my finger and
thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I
uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye:
consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking
out of it, defying me, with more than courage-
with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with it's
cage, I cannot get at it-the savage, beautiful
creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my
outrage will only let the captive loose.
Conquered I might be of the house; but the
inmate would escape to heaven before I could
call myself possessor of its clay-dwelling
place. And it is you, spirit, with will and
energy, and virtue and purity-that I want: not
alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could
come with soft flight and nestle against my
heart, if you would: seized against your will,
you will elide the grasp like an essence-you
will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. "
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Edition With Illustrations (A Classic Illustrated Novel of Charlotte Brontë)
4
" He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is
not of their kind. I believe he is of mine; -I am sure he
is-I feel akin to him-| understand the language of
his countenance and movements: though rank and
wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain
and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates
me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days since, that I
had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary
at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any
other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against
nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have
gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal
my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must
remember that he cannot care much for me. For
when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I
have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I
mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in
common with him. I must, then "repeat continually
that we are for ever sundered:-and yet, while I
breathe and think, I must love him. "
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Edition With Illustrations (A Classic Illustrated Novel of Charlotte Brontë)
