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"A man finds his place on earth only by becoming a given object for other men." Wow that is crazy. What in the reifiication. Wow.

"He is himself not enough for himself since he is always infinitely more than he would be if he were only that."

Wow. Damn. She's out here throwing bombs of truth and it's really quite incredible because how is she doing this. "And what's next?" is the question that I hear asked of so many people. Is this perpetual movement/looking beyond what is already there the sheer essence of what keeps us moving?

this is why i never watched merlin.

(someone's head has been chopped off. the severed head was then carried out of the room. in twelve months' time, gawain will be dealt the same blow. wow. who is making this up.)

i always gasp when i get to the part where charlotte bronte changed tenses in the middle of the parlour scene (i.e. when all the ladies and dudes, invited by mr rochester, show up after dinner)

like there's something so beautiful about being thrown into the past with jane and reliving a memory with her idk man. maybe i'm sentimental.

local governess decides to demean herself through portraiture in order to escape the throes of a crush on her employer

the role of fairytales within the wider structure of the narrative is actually fairly prominent and i find that funny. jane and rochester really do match each other's freaks (jane loving fairytales as a kid *handshake* mr rochester asking if she's an elf or sprite or some sort)
and yes i acknowledge that mr rochester calling her an elf is patronising however it's interesting that it's an elf and not another creature

i could go on and on and on about how jane's relationship with helen shapes much of her later understanding/perception of faith and christianity but for now i will just be sad. every time i read this book i feel a wave of sadness wash over me when helen dies. sad. hurb.

every year i reread this and every year my maternal instinct for young jane eyre grows stronger.

ANNUAL REREAD!!!

gabriel oak: yearning final boss

in all honesty, if i were gabriel, i would've simply left weatherbury and never gone back. holy crap

In all honesty, I'm quite fascinated by Bathsheba. There's something dangerous in her constitution. Her pride is immense, and she reminds me of Emma Woodhouse in the sense that she holds herself in high regard and disregards any opinion that wars with her own. Also, the "winning smile" that she gives Gabriel at the end of the chapter could very well be a manipulative ploy... I'm both repulsed and intrigued 3

the pacing of this book is wild

gabriel reminds me of gwan-sik from when life gives you tangerines... he's so obsessed with bathsheba! he's so in love! he's such a defender! wow! yearner #1

bathsheba i don't think that's a great idea

bathsheba just lowkey bodied a hall full of men by being like "ok just because i'm a woman and just because i only got this job by accidentally breaking the glass ceiling due to a thieving bailiff i will NOT tolerate disrespect" and everyone just nodded along. i love women in male fields.

sometimes a book is so painfully obviously written by a man...

this is good, and the premise is interesting, but the pacing is so terribly off, and bathsheba doesn't feel like a character yet. maybe the last point has something to do with the fact that we're seeing everything from gabriel's perspective at the moment, but bathsheba feels underdeveloped and stagnant despite her supposed ascendancy to wealth.

a proposal and a rejection within 30 pages. whatever happened to slow burn, gabriel oak?

me when the book involves the heroine saving a man !!!! yippee.

"manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly by the woman" is such a wonderful line. what the situation calls for does not often align with what is expected of you.

you know the pen on fire gif. or the gif of penelope featherington serving face while she's writing a whistledown article. well, that's how i felt annotating "vanity" next to "woman's prescriptive infirmity" only to have my annotation affirmed at the end of the first chapter #womeninpropheticfields

Everything just fell into place. This is excellent.

This isn't simply a novel about a reclusive woman discovering herself and her capacity to love. This is a novel about a historical wrong that was never righted. This is a novel about the inerasable marks that our predecessors leave, and how time merely reveals certain scars. Time reveals; it does not bury.

Wait. Wait a second. Oh. Oh my god. OHHHHH my god. Okay if Eva's here to claim reparations, I'm honestly not even going to be mad. Go girl.

WHAT IN THE REVERSE FINGERSMITH IS GOING ON WHY CAN'T I JUST HAVE SAPPHIC FICTION WHERE EVERYONE JUST GENUINELY FALLS IN LOVE WITH NO STRINGS PRE-ATTACHED

kissing your brother's girlfriend who you swear you hate (but not really because it's just internalised homophobia) and then pretending like nothing happened the next morning is absolutely insane, 10/10

"I'm nothing like my brother" SO. NOTHING LIKE LOUIS (EVA'S BOYFRIEND) OR HENDRIK (THE GAY ONE). LIKE. HELLO.