Jane Eyre Quotes

Development: 

CH2 - ‘a strange child she could not love [...] and uncongenial alien,’

CH3 - ‘I would not like to belong to poor people’ - Jane CONTRASTS WITH CH33 - ‘It seemed I had found a brother; one I could be proud of—one I could love’

CH3 - (talking about Reed shutting her in the red room) ‘so cruel i think i shall never forget about it’ C sONTRASTS WITH

Ch4 - somethinf       Seof vengeance……………..i had been poisoned

CH4 - ‘I will never call you aunt again as long as I live’ CONTRASTS WITH  ‘kiss me, aunt!’ in CH22 

CH21 - ‘ “Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last’, Jane to Reed

CH22 - ‘But what is so headstrong as youth?’,  retrospective

CH37 - (when J sees R blind for the first time) ‘I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation,’

CH31 - ‘My home, then [...], is a cottage.’CONTRASTS WITH CH22 - ‘Wherever you are is my home, my only home’

CH9 - ‘Where is God? What is God?’ (time of hardship she questions existence) CONTRASTS WITH CH28 - ‘We know that God is everywhere;’ (time of hardship she has faith and finds comfort)

Jane’s Self Worth:

Ch1 - ‘Was I fit to die?’

CH12 - ‘There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures’ and also she would ‘have the bone of her arm broken, or let a bull toss (her), or stand behind a kicking horse’ for the love of others - contrasts with how she grows to be content with the love of herself. 

CH27 - I care for myself. The more solitary, the, more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself’

CH24 - ‘I am not an angel. And I will not be one until I die - I will be myself’

CH27 - ‘I have an inward treasure born in me’

CH14 - I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have’ 

CH19 - I can live alone if self-respect and circumstances require me to do so. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss 

Identity:

“The strange little figure there gazing at me” – Jane Eyre, Chapter 2

“I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger” – Jane Eyre, Chapter 26

CH?? - ‘Wherever you are is my home. My only home’ - This is bad. Janet does not have her own home and identity. All she has is

Entrapment: 

CH14 - ‘my acquaintance with him was confined’

CH23 - ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’

CH23 - (rochester after j says yes) ‘enclosing me in his arms.’

Plainness vs extravagance: 

‘Georgiana…interweaving her hair with artificial flowers’

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!” - Janet 

“Reader, though I look very comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil in my mind” 

CH17 - ‘Fluttering veils and waving plumes’ - veils also has marriage vibes suggesting that they’re using their looks/beauty to try to get married rather than having a brain. Also avion imagery with the plumes xxx

CH17 - ‘ “What beautiful ladies” cried she in English” ‘, Adele, this is the first time she speaks in Anglaise

CH17 - ‘Mrs Colonel Dent was less showy, but I thought, more ladylike’

Appearance is of little consequence, it is the person within. 

Wealth vs povs:

“I am independent sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.”

“If you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.’ (J to incest boi)

CH3 - ‘I would not like to belong to poor people’ (development as well)

CH31 - ‘these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy’ (extravagance as well)

CH28 - ‘“Poor folk mun get on as they can.”’ (bakery lady)

Extreme vs balanced religion: 

CH4 - ‘You must pray for God to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh’

CH6 - ‘Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to the human eye’

CH6 - ‘I live in calm, looking to the end’

CH7 ‘We are not to conform to nature’

CH38 - (about St J) “Firm, faithful, and devoted: full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race’

CH38 - ‘St J is unmarried: he never will marry now.’

Ch6 [Helen burns] - “Revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low”

Freedom:

CH2 - ‘rebel slave’ 🤘

CH2 - ‘My blood was still warm; my mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour;’ (freedom, self-worth, slavery)

CH10 - (about Lowood) ‘An inmate of its walls’ - entrapped vibes 

CH10 - ‘I desired liberty, for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer’

CH38 - ‘Reader, I married him.’

CH38 - ‘I am my own mistress’ CONTRAST WITH constantly calling Rochester ‘master’ earlier in the novel

Patriarchy and equality:

CH1 - ‘accustomed to John Reed’s abuse’

CH1 - ‘You are like a murderer, you are like a slave driver - you are like the roman emperors!’

CH2 - ‘I was oppressed, suffocated’ 

Ch12 -“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”

‘Does my nose not please you? ‘

Ch23 - “Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? [...] Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! [...] we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”

Avian imagery:

CH37 - (R to J) ‘my sky-lark! Come to me.’

CH36 - ‘I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.’ (J about returning to TF)

CH28 - ‘as impotent as a bird with both wings broken’

CH14 - ‘I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there;’

CH24 - ‘a jay in borrowed plumes’

Love and Marriage:

CH14 - ‘Little girl. A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure’

CH15 - celine describes rochers as her ‘Beaute male’, Jane admits that she does not think him handsome

CH15 - ‘ as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you!’ pg135 roche about janet

C16 - ‘Dressed in pure white’ (Blanche)

CH24 - “Is he really going to marry you for love?”, Fairfax about J+R

CH24 - ‘Rochester’s girl-bride’

CH37 - (R to J) ‘my very soul demands you: it will be satisfied’

CH17 - ‘I could imagine that most observers would call them attractive while they would pronounce Mr Rochester at once harsh featured’, p161

Ch17 - i believe his is not of their kind, he is of mine [jane about rochester] . 

CH18 - ‘she could not charm him’, about Blanche

CH20 - ‘ “don’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me?” ‘,about roche and blanche p161

Supernatural:

CH11 - (about the laugh) - ‘An echo in every lonely chamber’

CH12 - ‘The man, the human being, broke the spell at once’

CH13 - ‘whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure’, roche about janet

Passion and control:

CH1 - ‘Did anybody ever see such a picture of passion!’

CH4 - ‘As aromatic wine it seemed… gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned’

CH4 - ‘Ridge black and blasted after the flames are dead’

CH?? - Conscience turned tyrant, held passion by the throat with the arm of an iron’

Ch27 - “i am insane, quite insane: with my veins running fire.”

CH37 - (R to J) I have [...] felt the comfort of your presence - the sweetness of your consolidation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself - I must have you.’

CH36 - (about St J) ‘He controlled his passion perfectly’

CH35 - (about St J) ‘Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger?’ FIRE + ICE imagery

Morality:

CH36 - ‘My spirit [...] is willing to do what is right;’

CH35 - (about St J) ‘I fear the corrupt man within him’

Nature:

CH28 - ‘a kindly star twinkled above the chasm ridge’ (after j leaves tf)

CH28 - ‘Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from a man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.’

ROCHEBOI:

CH12 - ‘incarnate in masculine shape’

CH14 - ‘Remorse is the poison of life’

CH14 - ‘I don’t wish to treat you like an inferior’

CH 24 - ‘My pale little elf, my mustard seed’

CH18 - performs as BRIDEwell, ‘To his wrists attached fetters’ → trapped in marriage to berthybabel, like cuffs, being chained/restrained, imprisoned

CH13 - Semantic field of weirdo ‘freak’ ‘eccentricity’

CH18 - "fierce falcon"CONTRASTS WITH CH37 - ‘The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished;”

CH37 - “in his countenance, I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding – that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird,”

CH27 - ‘You will give up your governessing slavery at once.”

BERTHYBABE:

‘Like a mad cat’ 

‘Like some strange, wild animal’

‘the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.’

HELEN ++ (christian crosses)

CH9 - ‘I believe, I have faith, I am going to God’

‘Not a tear rose to Burns’ eye’ vs ‘My fingers quivered’

INCESTBOI (SINNYJINNY):

CH36 - (about St J) ‘He controlled his passion perfectly’

CH35 - (about St J) ‘Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger?’ FIRE + ICE imagery

CH30 - ‘compressed, condensed, controlled’

CH30 - ‘St John Rivers -  pure-lives, conscientious, zealous as he was - had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding’

HEAD OF A GATE

• J lives with aunt and cousins

• Jane and John argue, jan chucks a novel

• Mrs Reed locks Jane in the Red Room

• Bessie ia a mother figure to J

• Brocklehurst comes to GH

EL ROOM DE ROJO

• ‘All seemed colder inside that visionary hollow than in reality’

• A womb

• Jane's feelings are repressed there 

• Parallel to THE THIRD FLOOR where Bertha is locked up

A WOOD THAT IS LO

• Meets Helen

• Helen imparts stoicism and wisdom

• Brockle is a dick about hair and J drops her slate + is punished and sad

• Temple is a nice lad

• Helen dies

• Jane makes a new friend! Xx because her only other one is literally dead.

• J becomes a teacher at LW

• Ad in paper to become governess

A FIELD OF THORNS

• ‘Great plague house’

• Creepy vibes, uncertain ‘slippery steps’

• Meets Mrs Faifax and Adèle

• On a walk, helps Rochester after he falls off a horse

• She discovers that he is the owner of the house

• They talk and are intellectually matched

• Grace’s giggles

• R tells J about Celine

• J saves R from burning bed

• J simps for R, who has left mysteriously

• R comes back with a group of party people, including Blanche (who’s fit)

• Fancy party where R disguises himself as a fortune teller for some reason

• R’s feelings for J are alluded to

• Bertha attacks Mason when all the guests are there

• Guests leave.

• R is engaged to Blanche

• J has to leave TF

HEAD OF A GATE

• Reed is dying

• J is forgiving to her

• They're not very sad when she dies

• Eliza <3 is boring while georgie has curly hair

A FIELD OF THORNS

• In the garden, R and J talk and get engaged (massive womaniser)

• Fairfax judges them (quite rightly)

• R attempts to shower her in jewels but she is ugly

• Bertha sneaks into J’s room at night and rips her veil

• As they are getting married, MASON STOP CENSORING HIM reveals Bertha’s existence

• J sees Bertha for the first time

• J wants to leave TF because she doesn't want to live as his mistress

• R threatens to beat and rape her (what a dreamboat!)

• She leaves TF with no money (thick)

HOUSE ON A MOOR (such a boring name I couldn’t do anything with it)

• She is destitute and about to die ( if I’m ever starving to death because I’ve left a really rich guy with loads of money and not brought ANY money, genuinely have no mercy on me leave me outside to die)

• Rivers family takes her in 

• Hannah (the cook) doesn’t respect J

• J works at a school

• St J places duty over feeling, denying his passion for Rosamund Oliver

• Jane discovers they are cousins and splits her big inheritance

• St J incest engagemnet(incest boi) 

• Jane rejects St John and he gets mad (what a ray of sunshine!)

• Jane the stoner thinks she hears roche shouting at her so goes to a field of thorns

FIELD OF THORNS / A DEAN MADE OF FERNS

• No more thornfield 

• J learns of fire at TF

• Bertha kills self

• Jane pretends to be mary and gives him water (he bounds towards her) - what

• J+R reunite at FD

• J realises that R did, in fact, break the laws of physics cos Brontë’s thick

• They get married and have a kid

• R isn’t blind anymore

• Incest boi dies fulfilled and happy and alone 😀

Things I care to note.

• Blanche performs as Rebekah (wife of isaac) → seems like shes DRESSING UP/PERFORMING as the ‘perfect ideal victorian woman’ 

• J saves R from the fire → religious image, baptism vibes ‘tongues of flame darted around the bed’

• JANE AND BERTHA AS A DUO → Bertha is seen pacing back and forth in her room in the third floor. But also, when Jane gets restless she also ‘walks the corridor of the third floor backwards and forwards’