Quotes – Jane Eyre Chap 1

Quotes – Jane Eyre
Chap 1 :
Me, she had dispensed from joining the group (hyperbaton)
All the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years (John à J).
[…] a picture of passion
Chap 2 :
you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep (Abbot to J)
Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?
[…] never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.
If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.
… unconsciousness closed the scene.
Chap 3 :
But I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did (J dit ça en pensées à Mrs Reed, suivant
l’ex de la dernière prière du Christ sur la croix)
Bessie dit à J de ne pas pleurer; elle répond en pensées: She might as well have said to the fire,
‘don’t burn!’
… I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman (J à Lloyd)
[school] implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.
Chap 4 :
John dit de J qu’elle s’est jetée sur lui comme ‘a mad cat’
They are not fit to associate with me
… human beings must love something (en parlant de sa poupée)
Br = ‘I looked up at—a black pillar!’
What a great nose! And what a mouth! And what large prominent teeth!
I must keep in good health and not die.
Speak I must; I had been trodden on severely… (Hyperbaton)
Chap 6 :
I wished the wind to howl more wildly (wildness as her ally)
… they call Mrs Reed my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing (J se dit à elle
meme).
… the Bible bids us return good for evil (Helen).
… I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes.
Chap 7:
My first quarter at Loowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either. (PUN)
… the bitter winter wind … almost flayed the skin from our faces (gothique).
Les petites filles sont propped up with the monitors’ high stools.
Yes, but we are not to conform to nature (Julia’s hair curls naturally).
Living medals
My mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh
They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were
splendidly attired.
A false front of French curls
A pedestal of infamy
Chap 8:
If others don’t love me, I would rather die than live
Chap 10:
But this is not to be a regular autobiography…
I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence.
I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer.
She wants ‘a new servitude’
This scheme I went over twice, thrice (hyperbaton stressing empowerment)
Chap 11:
A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play: and when I draw up the curtain
…
… the eerie impression made by that wide hall
… but quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not
expected…
… you cannot always be sure whether he is in jest or earnest.
… one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.
(Fairfax to Jane, in the third story)
… looking … like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle (le couloir du 3ème étage)
Chap 12: (manifesto – rencontre Rochester)
the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel … they suffer
from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation…
What the deuce is to do now? (Rochester, tombé de cheval).
… it was an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense; yet it marked with change
one single hour of a monotonous life.
Chap 13:
You must be tenacious of life (R à Jane, 1ère conversation, rapport à Lowood)
I thought unaccountably of fairy tales + se demande whether you had bewitched my horse
R demande à J si elle attendait ses gens, the men in green; elle répond: The men in green all
forsook England a hundred years ago.
… yet the drawings are, for a schoolgirl, peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. (examining J’s
drawings).
Chap 14:
You examine me, Miss Eyre … do you think me handsome? — No, sir. — Ah! By my word ! — Sir,
I was too plain: I beg your pardon.
Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre … The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat; controlling
your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your limbs…
Chap 15:
What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? (après qu’elle l’ait sauvé du feu)
R wonders why he has sympathies for J: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable.
Chap 16:
It is good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her;
Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain vs Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.
Chap 17:
… there was a mystery at Thornfield.
You think too much of your “toilette,” Adèle.
R “is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine.”
I perceived my sandal was loose.
Chap 18:
Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling.
Chap 19:
The Gypsy reads Jane: I can live alone, if self-respect and circumstances require me so to do.
R dit qu’il ne l’a pas laissé sans precautions so near a wolf’s den.
Chap 22:
… wherever you are is my home—my only home (J to R when meeting him on her way back from
GH)
Chap 23:
… a string somewhere under my left ribs
I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior
minds… (happy at Thornfield for those reasons)
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?
I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!
… it is my spirit that addresses your spirit … just as if … we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!
Don’t struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
I stood erect before him.
You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.
I summon you as my wife.
Your bride stands between us.
Do you doubt me, Jane.
Entirely.
You have no faith in me?
Not a whit.
Chap 24:
Mademoiselle is a fairy (to Adèle)
You will give up your governessing slavery at once. (answers no).
I’ll wear nothing but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter
I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment (J narrator refuses romanticism)
Chap 25:
What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! And how strangely your eyes glitter! (R to J,
after her dream and Bertha’s visit)
Chap 26:
A Christmas frost had come at midsummer (after failed wedding)
Chap 27:
Hiring a mistress is the next worst thing to buying a slave (when telling about his past life)
Jane! Will you hear reason? … because if you don’t, I’ll try violence.
The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm
I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of
struggle, blackness, burning!
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will
respect myself. (individualism)
(Paradoxical Jane -->) R says: so frail and so indomitable.
And it is you, spirit… that I want (R).
[The moon] whispered in my heart—‘My daughter, flee temptation!’ ‘Mother, I will.’
Chap 28:
I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature.
Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was.
Chap 29:
If you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.
Chap 30:
I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness.
Chap 31:
I must not forget … that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are
as likely to exist in their hearts as those of the best born (about her peasants pupils).
Jane se dit qu’elle est mieux en maitresse d’école humble en Angleterre que to be a slave in a fool’s
paradise at Marseilles
St J dit qu’il y a un an, I burnt for the more active life of the world.
Chap 32:
In her dreams: I still again and again met Mr Rochester, always at some exciting crisis
Chap 34:
… he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind.
But I did not love my servitude. (elle aurait préféré que St J ne s’occupe pas d’elle).
I could not resist him (St J)
If I join St John, I abandon half myself.
I cannot marry you and become part of you.
I scorn your idea of love.
Chap 35:
If I were to marry you, you would kill me.
Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue.
I had thought I recognized in you one of the chosen.
Would it not be strange, Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?
I … longed to to what was right … ‘Show me, show me the path!’ I entreated of Heaven.
Chap 37:
No, sir; I am an independent woman now.
I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.
You mocking changeling—fairy-born and human-bred!
About St J: He does not love me: I do not love him.
I wanted to tease you a little to make you less sad.
Never mind fine clothes and jewels now.
Chap 38:
Reader, I married him.
About Adèle: … a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects.
My Edward and I, then, are happy.