Jane Eyre is hands down my favorite book--I read it every year. Thomas Hardy may be my favorite author, but there is something about Bronte's novel that keeps it at its lofty top o' the list. Not the least of which is the connection between the hero (antihero?), Mr. Rochester, and Jane. Among my many literary crushes (Holden Caulfield, Daniel Deronda, John Galt, etc) Rochester will always be the first. I think this is something that only English majors can understand, haha. But there you are.
The passage that stuck out to me this time around is when Rochester is just about to tell Jane he loves her. He says:
"Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane? Because I sometimes have a queer 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 your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of and come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."
2 comments:
This doesn't have anything to do with this blog but I just read this as I was doing my English homework and I thought of you so I wanted to post it on your blog, if that's ok. "The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas resposes, and must respose, the general practice of the world. . .The rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to dram him into its vortex." Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"
I like that a lot, ma cherie. But how did it remind you of me? Haha...
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