Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt and later attends a charity school with a harsh regime, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at... read more
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through distinct stages in Jane's life: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
“I sometimes have a quire feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me as now. It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of you little frame. . . if it should snap I have the nervous notion that I should take to bleeding inwardly”Mr. Rochester
“I am not talking to you through the medium of custom, conversationalities or even of mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit”Jane
“Do you think I can stay and become nothing to you? do you think I am an automaton, a machine without feeling. . .do you think that because I am poor, obscure, plain and little I'm soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you and full as much heart and if God had gifted me with some beauty and wealth I should made made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you.”Jane
“I am no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with and independent will.”Jane
“Pity from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it. But that is the sort of pity native to callous selfish hearts”Mr. Rochester
“You, you strange, you almost unearthly thing I love as my own flesh”Mr. Rochester
“a solom passion is conceived in my heart, it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you and kindling in pure powerful flame fuses you and me in one”Mr. Rochester
“Never was anything at once so frail and so indominable. A mere reed she feels in my hand. . . I could bend her with my finger and what good would it do if I bent, if I up tore, 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 its cage I cannot get at it, the savage, beautiful creature! If I tare, if I rend the slight prison my out rage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dueling place and it is your spirit that I want, not alone your brittle frame.”Mr. Rochester
“all my heart is yours, It belongs to you and with you. It would remain were fate to exile the rest from you presence forever”Jane
“If you were mad do you think I would hate you?. . . You know nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of you flesh is as dear to me as my own. In pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure and if it were broken it would be my treasure still. If you raved my arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat. Your grasp, even in furry, would have a charm for me.”Mr. Rochester
“it is your spirit, with will and energy and virtue and purity that I want, not alone your brittle frame”Mr. Rochester
“If I ever did a good deed in my life-if ever I thought a good thought-if ever I wished a righteous wish-I am rewarded now! To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.”Jane
“If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust; the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse.”Jane Eyre
“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”Helen Burns
“My bride is here... because my equal is here, and my likeness.”Mr. Rochester
“'I knew,' he continued, 'you would do me good in some way, at some time; - I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not ... strike delight to my inmost heart so for nothing.'”Mr. Rochester
“You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example: if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weight well her words, scrutinize her actions, punish her body to saver her soul; if indeed, such salvation be possible for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut - this girl is - a liar!”Mr. Brocklehurst
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.”Jane Eyre
“I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.”Helen Burns
“I could not help it; the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement . . . and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.”Jane Eyre
“'Shall I?' I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his brow, commanding, but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied myself in idea his wife. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour: accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his ineradicable ambition. . . . I should suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under a rather stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness.”Jane Eyre
“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 visit 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. . . . 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. I shall remember how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions this exact tale. People think you are a good woman, but you are bad; hard-hearted. YOU are deceitful!”Jane Eyre
“Beauty is in the eye of the gazer”Jane Eyre
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”Mr. Rochester
“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine! May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love!”Jane Eyre
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”Jane Eyre
“But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now”Mr. Rochester
“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth.”Jane Eyre
“There is a thought that for strength should avail me, Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled; Heaven is a home, and rest will not fail me; God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”Bessie
“t was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue—where blue was visible—was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it—it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.”Jane Eyre
““And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot? Yes—just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?””Mr. Rochester
“How people feel when they are coming home from an absence ling or short, I did not know. I had never experienced the sensation. . . no magnet drew me to a given point”Jane
“I am strangely glad to get back to you and wherever you are is my home, my only home.”Jane
“I greive to leave Thornfeild! I love Thornfield. I love it because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentary at least, that I have not been trablpled on. I have not been petrified, I have not been burried with inferior minds and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high”Jane
“I have talked face to face with what I delight in, what I reverence, and original, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester, and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure and it is like looking on the necessity of death”Jane
“I ask you to pass through life at my side, to be my second self and my best earthly companion.”Mr. Rochester
“Make my happiness, I will make yours...”Mr. Rochester
“I was prepared for the hot rain of tears, only I wanted them to be shed on my breast. Now a senseless floor received them or your drenched handkerchief...”Mr. Rochester
“If I could go out of life now without too sharp a pang it would be well for me. . . then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart strings rendering them from among Mr. Rochester's.”Jane
“I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. . . I had no presentiment of what it would be to me, on inward warning that the arbratress of my life, my genius for good or evil waited there in humble guise.”Mr. Rochester
“Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved.”Jane
“You see now how the case stands - do you not?" he continued. "After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love - I have found you. You are my sympathy- my better self - my food angel - I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you - and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you.”Mr. Rochester
Illustrations
(from the 1984 Reader's Digest Edition)
Page: Title
1: The Ruins of Thornfield
14: A Reflection in the Looking-Glass
41: The New Girl at Lowood
105: A Horseman at Twilight
151: An Evening of Festivity
177: The Gipsy Tells a Fortune
228-229: The First Embrace
256: An Apparition in the Night
302: At the Doorstep of Providence
329: The New Schoolmistress
368: A Parting of the Ways
388: The Prisoner of Ferndean
There are 37 untitled chapters and chapter 38 is entitled "Conclusion".
Classic, uses some vocabulary that is hard for kids. Includes a mad woman.
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