‘I am not your dear; I cannot lie down. Send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.’

‘I will indeed send her to school soon,’ murmured Mrs. Reed, sotto voce; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.

I was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained. I stood awhile on the rug where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror’s solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done—cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine—without experience afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a great emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed; the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half an hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time. An aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.

Good Paragraphs (continued)

P51

‘She has been unkind to you, no doubt, because, you see, she dislikes your cast of chatacter, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotion it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain—the impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature; whence it came it sill return, perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No, I cannot believe that: I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity arrest—a mighty home – not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime, I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low; I live in calm, looking to the end.’

P52

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age, and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties habituating myself to new roles and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot, though these were no trifles. During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows and after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church, but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold; we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes, and melted there; our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet. I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw and stiff toes into my shies in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity whey would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at teatime, and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of m mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.

P62

‘Hush, Jane! You think too much of the love of human beings you are too impulsive, too vehement: the sovereign Hand that created your frame, and put life into it has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirit: that world is round us,, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our torture, recognize our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at secondhand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only a separation of spirit from flexh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness—to glory?’

P61

‘Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: not is he even a great and admired man:; he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favorite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would offer ou sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much the more evidently for the temporary suppression. Besides, Jane --’ She paused.

‘Well Helen?’ said I, putting my hand into hers. She chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went in—

‘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.’

P63

‘I resolved in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate—most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told herr all the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative for less of gall and wormwood thant ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me.’

P66

Next morning Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuious characters on a piece of pasteboard the word ‘Slattern,’ and bound it like a phylactery round Helen’s large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew, after afternoon school, I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire. The fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart.

P67

But the privation, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened. Spring drew on – she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted, itss cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched fe3et, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the playhour passed in the garden; sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out among the leaves: snowdrops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and and golden-eyed pansies. On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks, and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside under the hedges.

P77

I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks. It was those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two. How I longed to follow it father! I recalled the time when I had traveled that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at twilight. An age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all been spent at school. Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter, or message with the outer world. School rules, school duties, school gabits and notions, and boices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies: such was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough. I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I pgasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned iiit and framed a humbler supplication. For change, stimulus. That petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space. ‘Then,’ I cried, half desperate, ‘grant me at least a new servitude!’

Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.

I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime; even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her! It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief.

P78

‘A new servitude! There is something in that, ’ I soliloquized (mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud). ‘I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet. It is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly, but no more than sounds for me, and so hollow and fleeting  that it is mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be a matter of fact. Any one may serve. I have served here eight years; now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will! Is not the thing feasible! Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult, if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.’

‘What do I want? A new place, in a new house amongst new faces, under new circumstances. I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I suppose. I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what is their resource?’

I could not tell: nothing answered me. I then ordered my brain to find a response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster. I felt the pulse throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos, and no result came of its efforts. Feverish, with vain labour, I got up and took a turn in the room, undrew the curtain, noted a star to two, shivered with cold, and gain crept to bed.

A kind fairy in my absence had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow, for as I lay down it came quietly and naturally to my mind: ‘Those who want situations advertise: you must advertise in the –shire Herald.’

‘How? I know nothing about advertising.’

Replies rose smooth and prompt now—

‘You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a cover directed to the editor of the Herald. You must put it , the first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton. Answers must be addressed to J.E. at the post office there. You can go and inquire, in about a week after you send the letter, if an are come, and act accordingly.’

This scheme I went over twice, thrice; it ws then digested in my mind: I had it in clear, practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep.

P85

It is very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connexion, 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, and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed and still I was alone. I bethought myself to ring the bell.

P97