Jane Eyre Quotes

“I mean now to open a second school, for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’ house…Will you be this mistress?”…In truth it was humble – but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum; it was plodding – but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron; it was not ignoble – not unworthy – not mentally degrading. I made my decision.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 30. When St. John Rivers arranges a school teacher’s position for Jane, she has a home of her own for the first time in her life.

My home, then, when I at last find a home, – is a cottage; a little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes, and a set of tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such things as are necessary.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. Jane has moved to her new home, the schoolroom cottage at the town of Morton. Having accepted the position of running a charity school for poor girls at Morton, the cottage comes with the job. Having been a homeless beggar just weeks earlier, Jane is happy with her new home.

This morning, the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But three of the number can read: none write or cipher. Several knit, and a few sew a little. They speak with the broadest accent of the district. At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other’s language. Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. Jane begins her teaching job in Morton. She has twenty students with little education between them. Although they are rough and badly dressed peasants, she believes that they are as good and deserving as the children of the noblest families. She commits to giving them a good education and developing the metaphorical germs of native excellence and intelligence in their hearts.

I felt desolate to a degree. I felt – yes, idiot that I am – I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings: I know them to be wrong – that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them…In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing process, and a change for the better in my scholars, may substitute gratification for disgust.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. After her first day teaching at the school in Morton, Jane feels conflicted in her feelings about trying to bring learning to a class of poor, uneducated girls. She is dismayed at the scale of their ignorance and roughness. The task seems more than what she bargained for. But she pledges to remain positive and looks forward to seeing progress in a few months.

Which is better? – To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort – no struggle; but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time…But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and, above all, feeling? Whether it is better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles – fevered with delusive bliss one hour – suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next – or to be a village school-mistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. Jane is speaking metaphorically about her relationship with Rochester and her decision not to stay as his mistress. Describing it as a “silken snare,” she believes that it would have brought her down the path of shame and slavery. It would have been wrong to surrender to temptation and passion, she feels. Better to be a free and honest village school teacher, she tells herself. But Jane isn’t completely happy and doesn’t exactly love her new teaching job.

My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing – I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. After a long series of ups and downs, including being homeless and reduced to beggary, Jane is happy with her new home at Morton. God has been good to her, he believes. Home is a very important theme in Jane Eyre. It isn’t just a place to rest your head at night, but somewhere you can feel safe and comfortable and in a loving relationship with other people. That has been Jane’s lifelong quest. In this passage she is speaking to St. John Rivers.

A year ago, I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry; its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burned for the more active life of the world – for the more exciting toils of a literary career – for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest…After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell; my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds – my powers heard a call from Heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. St. John explains to Jane how he decided to become a missionary. He went through a period of struggle and misery as a bored priest. During that time he “burned for the more active life of the world.” Then he received the summons from God to spread his wings and follow the missionary road.

A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side. There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white – a youthful,
graceful form: full, yet fine in contour…What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. St. John and Jane’s conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful young woman dressed in white. Rosamond Oliver is one of the benefactors of the school in Morton. When she appears at St. John’s side, Jane wonders what he thinks of her.

I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion…His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 31. An “earthly angel” in white suddenly appears at the side of St. John Rivers. Jane notices that St. John is in love with Rosamond Oliver, but he supresses his feelings for her. Using simile images Jane describes how his chest heaves as if his heart is trying to break free, but he curbs it like a rider restrains a steed. St. John believes that God has called him to be a missionary to serve the people of India. He is sacrificing his love for Rosamond for his vocation.

I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working-people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray…my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sunk with dejection.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. Jane is reflecting on her life as a teacher in Morton. Quoting from an epic fantasy and romance poem by Irish writer Thomas Moore, she compares it to “sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet.” But when she speaks of feeling valued in the Morton community, she betrays a certain prejudice towards its working class.

I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy – dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him – the hope of passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the burst of passion. By nine o’clock the next morning I was punctually opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties of the day.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. Life in Morton has its compensations for Jane – independence, a teaching job, a house and educating her young scholars. But she is troubled at night by unsettling dreams about Rochester. While St. John Rivers can surpress his true feelings for Rosamond, Jane is unable do the same for her love for Rochester. Jane’s dreams are a window into her emotional mind.

St. John, no doubt, would have given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John refuses to marry Rosamond even though they love each other. He simply cannot envisage her settling down to missionery life with him in India, a path he intends to follow. For him the love he will experience serving God is more important than human love.

“It is strange,” pursued he, “that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly – with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating – I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’ rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John Rivers displays his cold and unemotional side in this speech. Describing his mixed feelings about Rosamond, he speaks in a calm, almost disinterested way about his intense love for her, and how unsuitable she is as a missioner’s wife.

“While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects; they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to; cooperate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No!”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John Rivers may have received the missionary call from God, but he doesn’t believe Rosamond Oliver has. He is responding here to Jane’s suggestion that he should marry Rosamond. While he admits being attracted by Rosamond’s charms, he rules her out as a missionary’s wife. Rivers is not looking for love, but a wife who will benefit his work.

He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. St. John is surprised by how direct and outspoken Jane is about his repressed feelings for Miss Oliver. She has told St. John how he is “wasting away” and trembles and becomes flushed whenever Rosamond enters the schoolroom. He was not used to a woman speaking to him so frankly, but Jane continues to defy the expectations of women in Victorian society.

“You are original,” said he, “and not timid. There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions…When I colour and when I shake before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble – a mere fever of the flesh; not, I declare, a convulsion of the soul…Know me to be what I am – a cold, hard man.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 32. There you have it! St. John admits to Jane to being emotionally cold and hard. When it comes to duty to serving God versus passion for a woman, duty comes first. The affairs of the soul take precedence to the desires of the flesh, which St. John dismisses as weakness. So for the unfortunate Miss Oliver there is no place in St. John’s scheme of things. However, he appears to be taking an interest in Jane, admiring her for her brave spirit.

“Well, what did he want?”
“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich – merely that – nothing more.”
“I! – rich?”
“Yes, you, rich – quite an heiress.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. Jane is astonished to learn from St. John that she has inherited a fortune of twenty thousand pounds from her late uncle John Eyre. There is a certain irony here, as the despised impoverished orphan child Jane becomes an heiress and more successful than her spoiled Reed cousins.

It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in moment from indigence to wealth – a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once…One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares – and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. Poor orphan Jane is not one to let her new-found wealth go to her head or change her. After inheriting twenty thousand pounds from her uncle, she takes time to reflect and consider her responsibilites.

“I am cold: no fervour infects me.”
“Whereas I am hot and fire dissolves ice.”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. This is the first instance of Jane standing up to St. John. Ice and fire are recurring symbols in the novel. He is compared metaphorically to ice, while the rebellious and passionate Jane retorts that she is made of fire. This foreshadows the moment when Jane will confront St. John and his anger, assert her independence and leave him. Jane is not a woman who allows a man dicate the course of her life.

I had found a brother: one I could be proud of, – one I could love; and two sisters whose qualities were such that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed…were my near kinswomen, and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed! – wealth to the heart! – a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing…not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. Jane speaks of her joy of discovering a family and home at last. She has learned that the Rivers family are her blood relatives and cousins. While she has inherited a fortune from her uncle, finding a brother and sisters like St. John, Diana and Mary means more to her than wealth. Using metaphor and simile, Jane speaks of discovering a “mine” of pure affections, not like the “ponderous gift of gold” of her inheritance.

I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars; – every one lighted me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit. They were under a yoke; – I could free them: they were scattered; – I could reunite them: the independence, the affluence, which was mine, might be theirs too…Now the wealth did not weigh on me: now it was not a mere bequest of coin, – it was a legacy of life, hope, enjoyment.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. A big-hearted woman, Jane is extraordinarily generous and quite unique for a wealthy woman of her era. She decides to share her “ponderous gift of gold” – her inheritance – with her new-found family. Her cousins St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers had cared for her and shown her love, saving her life. She could now help free the Rivers from their “yoke,” having herself known what it is to struggle in life. She hopes that money will make them financially independent, allowing them to live together without working.

“And you,” I interrupted, “cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?”

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 33. This passage emphasizes the importance of a sense of home and family to Jane, who as a child did not have the benefit of a loving family. She is speaking here to St. John about her joy in finding a family with him and his sisters Diana and Mary. She desires to share her twenty thousand pounds legacy with the family that saved her and live with them at Moor House.

St. John was a good man; but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him…he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone – at his fine lineaments fixed in study – I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 34. While Jane accepts that St. John is a good man, she believes that he is not good husband material. She speaks of how hard and cold he is, using a a simile to compare his forehead to white stone. For St. John, the pleasures of life have no attraction, she observes. He never rests not does he wish others to rest. Jane’s reflections come after St. John shows a disappointing lack of interest in her improvements to Moor House.

I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master; he expected me to do a great deal, and when I fulfilled his expectations he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind…I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by…When he said “go,” I went! “come,” I came; “do this,” I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 34. St. John insists that Jane become his student and learn the Hindostenee language. While she concedes that he is patient, she finds him extremely demanding. Jane goes on to describe a form of mental imprisonment imposed on her. It is done by a man who clearly likes to exert a domineering and controlling influence over a woman. Jane doesn’t like her “servitude” one bit. Her cousin St. John behaves as her “master,” takes away her mental freedom and prevents her from being able to talk or laugh freely. St. John doesn’t see Jane as an independent person with free will and her own personal inclinations.
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