Prelims 3 key quotes prose

Mr Brocklehurst, nature

‘we are not to conform to nature, I wish these girls to be the children of grace’

Jane - love v loneliness

‘if others don’t love me i would rather die than live’

Helen and Jane - God

‘I believe, I have faith, I am going to god’… ‘where is god? what is god?’

Jane - women and emotions

‘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, precisely as men would suffer’

Jane - re-entering Thornfield

‘I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation… to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still an existence’

Rochester - remorse

‘Remorse is the poison of life’ (to Jane)

Jane - Bertha’s laugh

‘There was a demoniac laugh’

Jane - her secret love for Rochester

‘it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown must devour the life that feeds it

Jane - connection to Rochester in spite of wealth

‘I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though wealth and rank sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him’

Jane to the fortune teller - soul and bliss

‘I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me… reason sits firm and holds the reigns and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms’

Jane on Mrs Reed’s feelings towards her

‘I felt at once that her opinion of me - her feeling towards me - was unchanged and unchangeable’

Eliza to Georgiana - use of life

‘you had no right to be born for you make no use of life. instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength’

Rochester to Jane THE quote

‘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’

Jane - declaration to Rochester about her soul

“Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am heartless and soulless?” / “it is my spirit that addresses your spirit… stood before god equal – as we are”

Jane to Rochester - the bird quote

‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will which I now exert to leave you’

what jane is told about her and Rochester’s marriage

‘Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses’

Jane - Rochester v religion

‘He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not in those days, see God for his creature of whom I had made an idol’

Rochester - on Bertha and her family

‘Bertha Mason is mad; and she came from a mad family; idiots and maniacs for three generations’

Jane on her hope after Bertha reveal

‘i looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive’

Rochester on why bertha wanted to marry him

‘her family wished to secure me because i was of good race’

Rochester and Jane on what her leaving will do to him

“Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed? His voice rose. / “I advise you to live sinless and wish you to die tranquil.”

Rochester - biblical allusion - reed - about Jane

‘never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!… I could bend her with my finger and thumb: what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her?’

Jane on who will care for her if she leaves Rochester

‘I care for myself. the more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the laws given by God, sanctioned by man.

Jane on nature’s attitude to her

‘nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as i was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness’

Jane on when God is felt the most

We know that god is everywhere; but certainly we feel his presence most when his works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night sky, when his worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest his infinitude, his omnipotence his omnipresence

Jane reflecting on what her life would be should she have gone with Rochester

Which is better? – to have surrendered to temptation; listened to assign; made no painful effort – no struggle; but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen aslee on the flowers covering it, wakened in a southern clime

Jane - Marseilles

Whether it is better to be a slave in a fool’s paradise in Marseilles – fevered with delusional bliss one hour – suffocating with bitterest tears of recourse and shame the next – or to be a village school mistress, free and honest

St John on what religion has done for her

“So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature. But still she could not eradicate nature nor shall it be eradicated “till this mortal shall put on immortality””

Jane on marrying St John

such martyrdom would be monstrous

jane on what would happen to her should she marry St John

All this was torture to me, refined lingering torture… if I were his wife, this good man, pure as he deep sunless source, could soon kill me without drawing from my own veins a single drop of blood or receiving upon his own conscience the faintest stain of crime

Jane on St John after she refused him

He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people in pursuing his own large views

Jane final direct address to the reader

Reader I married him

The Moonstone personified

The moonstone will have itv vengeance yet on you and yours!”

Description of the Quivering Sands in The Moonstone

It looks as if it had hundreds of suffocating people under it – all struggling to get to the surface and sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, mr betteredge! Throw a stone in and let’s see the sand suck it down!” Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an unquiet mind

The Moonstone invasion into quiet English house

If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian diamond – bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man

Description of the Moonstone under harvest moon

The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It seemed unfathomable; this jewel that you could hold between your finger and thumb seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves

The Moonstone - men bound to improve women (Betteredge)

It’s a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women – if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn’t matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn’t their fault (poor wretches) that they act first and think afterwards; it is the fault of the fools who humour them

Betteredge - rich people can indulge feelings

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves – among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity which spares out betters, has no pity on as. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be. I don’t complain of this – I only notice it

class divisions in The Moonstone

Ha, mr betteredge, the day is not far off when the poor will rise against the rich. I pray heaven they may begin with him.

The Moonstone - Christianity weak

I am to re-open wounds that time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful remembrances – and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of mr Blake’s cheque. My nature is weak. It cost me a hard struggle before Christian humility conquered sinful rapid and self-denial accepted the cheque

The Moonstone - Gender of account author

Is it written by a man or a woman, miss? If it’s written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If its written by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about it

The Moonstone - Christian hero

When the Christian hero of a hundred charitable victories plunges into a pitfall that has been dug for him by mistake, oh, what a warning it is to rest of us to be unceasingly on our guard! How soon may our own evil passions prove to be oriental noblemen who pounce on us unawares

Mr Betteredge - detective fever

Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? And a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! Not yet? It will lay hold of you at Cobb’s Hole, mr franklin. I call it the detective-fever

The Moonstone - reveal that Franklin stole the stone

My heart’s darling you are a thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under the cover of night and stolen my diamond!’ that is what I ought to have said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty diamonds rather than see your face lying to me as I see it lying now!

The Moonstone - mixed race

He had suffered as few men suffer; and there was the mixture of some foreign race in his English blood.

The Moonstone - malicious compliance

Speaking as a servant, I am deeply indebted to you. Peaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of maggots and I take up my testimony against your experiment as a delusion and a snare. Don’t be afraid on that account of my feelings as a man getting in the way of my duty as a servant. You shall be obeyed, the maggots not withstanding sir you shall be obeyed. If it ends in your setting the house of fire, damme if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first

The Moonstone - closing image

The curtain between the trees was drawn aside and the shrine was disclosed to view. There raised high on a throne – seated on his typical antelope, with his four arms stretching towards the four corners of the earth p there, stored above us, dark and awful in the mystic light of heaven, the god of the moon. And there, in the fore heard of the deity, dreamed the yellow diamond… after the lapse of eight centuries, the moonstone looks forth once more, over the walls of the sacred city in which its story first began… so the years pass and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time.

Dracula - castle description

The castle was on the very edge of a terrible precipice… but I am not in the heart o describe beauty, flow hen I had seen the view I explored further; doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted… the castle is a veritable prison and I am a prisoner

Dracula - voluptuous

There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal

Dracula - possession of girls

Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine

Dracula - God’s ministers

Thus are we ministers of God’s own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He has allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel toward sunrise; and like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause

Dracula - science trying to explain everything

Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young. . . “

Dracula - lucy showing independence

Why can’t a girl marry three men, or as many as she wants to?

Dracula - human vanity

The god created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow

Dracula - destruction of innocence

And that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death robe

Dracula - fear of the other entering everyday life (Van Helsing)

And so the circle goes on ever widening like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water

Dracula - Van helsing describing Mina

she has a man’s brain… and a woman’s heart

Dracula - Seward describing the interaction between Mina and Dracula

A child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink

Dracula - female sexuality as a threat to men

“.. the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss – and man is weak’

Dracula - threat of the outsider remains

the castle stood as before

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - alec, master

I was your master once… I will be your master again

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Narrator describing Tess

Beautiful feminine tissue… a course pattern as it was doomed to receive”

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - narrator on the milkmaids

They were simple and innocent girls… they’ve deserved better at the hands of fate

Tess of the d’Ubervulles - Angel’s nicknames for Tess

He called her Artemis, Demeter… teasingly

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Tess, haunting innocence

She looked upon herself as a figure of guilt intruding into the haunts of innocence

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Tess’ intentions

never in her life… had she intended to do wrong

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Narrator on Alec’s house

everything looked like money

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Tess describing Angel’s soul

his soul, the soul of a saint

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Angel to Tess, property

I should carry you off then as my property

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Tess’ true name

Had she any moral right to the name? Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d’uberville?

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - Tess to her mother

why didn’t you tell me there was danger?

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - alec, dangerous ignorance

I say in all earnest that it is a shame for parents to bring up their girls in such dangerous ignorance

Tess of the d’Ubervilles - angel to tess after learning her past

the woman i have been loving is not you

The Time Machine - protagonist’s name

never named - only called ‘the time traveller’

The Time Machine - too clever

The time traveller was one of those men who was too clever to be believed

The Time Traveller - developments of humanity

What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advancements on our rudimentary civilisation, I thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes?

the time machine - old-world savage

What might have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, had developed something inhuman, unsympathetic and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal

The time machine - describing the eloi

I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children” page 35 – describes the eloi as “like children” several times (twice in page 36)

The Time Machine - institution of the family

For the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force. Where population is balanced and abundant, much child-bearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the state; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity – for an efficient family and their specialisation of the sexes with reference to their children’s needs disappear

The Time Machine - weema

Weema “was exactly like a child” 57 but he describes this relationship as a “miniature flirtation

The Time Machine - descriptions of the murlocks

“Saw a queer little ape like figure its he’d held down in a perculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me” 61 – “it ran on all fours” -> “it was so like a human spider”

The Time Machine - gradual widening

“The gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social differnce between the capitalist and the labourer, was the key to the whole position”

The Time Machine - haves v have-nots

So in the end, above ground, you must have the haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty and below ground the have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour

The Time Machine - tradition destroyed

All the tradition, the complex organisations, the nations, languages, literature, aspirations, even the mere memory of man as I knew him had been swept out of existence

The Time Machine - cows

the eloi were mere fattened cattle

The Time Machine - futility

The eloi, like the carvingolian king, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility

The Time Machine - human selfishness

Regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in fullness of time necessity has come to home him

The Time Machine - destroyed books

Decaying vestiges of books” … “had I been a literary man i might, perhaps have moralised upon the futility of all ambition… the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified

The Time Machine - pleasant day

Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew no enemies and provided against no needs and their end was the same.

The Time Machine - intelligence and change

there is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change

The Yellow Wallpaper - john and writing

there comes john, and i must put this away - he hates to have me write a word

The Yellow Wallpaper - john’s emotions

he loves me so dearly / he is so wise and he loves me so

The Yellow Wallpaper - suffering and satisfaction

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him

The Yellow Wallpaper - the bed

I lie here on this great immovable bed - it is nailed down

The Yellow Wallpaper - nursery

It was a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children and there are rings and things in the walls

The Yellow Wallpaper - nickname

‘little girl’

The Yellow Wallpaper - stains

She said that paper stained everything it touches, the she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and Johns”

The Yellow Wallpaper - keys

I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don’t want to go out and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till john comes

Cranford - money and status

‘we, none of us, spoke of money… though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic’

Cranford - kindness

‘what a town Cranford is for kindness’