Top 2 Jane Eyre quotes
"I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to visit you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty."
Jane, Chapter 4
This is one of Jane's first true outbursts and it occurs after she is forced to silently watch her aunt present Mr. Brocklehurst a maliciously inaccurate description of her character. The vehemence of Jane's words leaves her aunt stunned, and they demonstrate that Jane is an exceptional child who cannot be suppressed by the societal barriers that dictated feminine behavior in Victorian England.
"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result."
Jane, Chapter 38
This is Jane's description of her relationship with Edward Rochester after they have been married for ten years. In this quote, it is evident that Jane Eyre has finally found a love in which she feels both valued and required. The kind of love that she has sought since she first confessed to Mr. Lloyd, the apothecary, that Gateshead wasn't her home.
