I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it 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!”
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 10. Jane has spent six years as a student at Lowood and two years a teacher, and her mentor Miss Temple has married and moved away to a distant country. The routine of Lowood is no longer enough for Jane and she believes that is time for a change in her life. She feels that her liberty is being metaphorically scattered on the wind. She prays to God to grant her freedom, or at least a “new servitude.”