60 ratings (4.22 avg)
28 reviews

Isha Singh

Add friend

Isha’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (397)

currently-reading‎ (3)

read‎ (141)

Stats | More…

Isha is Currently Reading

Isha Singh is currently reading

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 3rd time

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Isha Singh said: " Jane Eyre, as a child or a grown up, was always intelligent. The story begins when she is just 10 but she knows that the treatment she is being met with is injustice. When she is sent away to school she has already made up her mind about being alone Jane Eyre, as a child or a grown up, was always intelligent. The story begins when she is just 10 but she knows that the treatment she is being met with is injustice. When she is sent away to school she has already made up her mind about being alone for an indefinite time in her life but finds friendship in a fellow student and the loss of it too. She knows that having a permanent vocation and an appropriate use of her faculties is how she can escape monotony and gain independence. She goes on to become a governess and later a school mistress. She finds love in Mr. Rochester but acknowledges the fact that this union is unequal. She goes on to find friends in Diana, Mary and St. John and later a family. She had to learn to truly respect and love herself fiercely to stand up to St. John's proposal of throwing away her life in service and to see that it's not her life path to be be with him. She returns to Thornfield to maybe say a last goodbye or to stay on her own terms. All of these things make the story of a simple, plain girl look so interesting. The way the weather always represents Jane's state of mind and elements of fantasy and horror also add to the charm of the story. The virtues of friendship, love, education, independence experienced from a woman's gaze are made all the more intimate because of the first person narrative.

‘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.’

It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it;

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; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.

That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar. It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and 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; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘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 land 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. As for you,—you’d forget me.’

The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and to speak.

‘Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? 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! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!’

‘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.’

I loved him very much—more than I could trust myself to say—more than words had power to express.

The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, ‘the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.’

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

It would probably, be a parting for years: it might be a parting for life.

‘It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get—when our will strains after a path we may not follow—we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste—and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.

‘I love you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it. But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed.’

‘With all his firmness and self-control,’ thought I, ‘he tasks himself too far: locks every feeling and pang within—expresses, confesses, imparts nothing.

Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest- seeming stoic is human after all; and to ‘burst’ with boldness and good-will into ‘the silent sea’ of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.

‘My heart is mute,—my heart is mute,’

I—who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him—was hurt

To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. ...more "

progress:

(page 11 of 532)
"Re-reading this classic because when it rains there is no possibility of taking a walk that day." — Jul 27, 2025 03:06PM

Jul 27, 2025 03:06PM · see review