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Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre

ISBN: 0140620117

'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? - You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and as much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: - it is my spirit that addresses your spirit...

If anyone ever needs to test the passion potential of a would be lover, then read them this speech of Jane Eyre to Edward Rochester. If they remain luke-warm dump them!

For like Cathy's famous exclamation 'I am Heathcliff!' in Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte's lonely heroine articulates her profound love for Rochester in one of the most compelling declarations of love ever written. Jane is courageously and unnervingly direct throughout this remarkably intense novel. . She is 'antisocial' in her daring transcendence of her sex., and it is the very 'anti-sociality' of her address that vindicates her speech as being utterly self-presencing and authentic. Angry-Jane? Damn right she is!

Never listened to as a child and being accustomed only to truly 'read as if for life', Jane speaks as only a lonely person could .And in her solitary quest for truth, she finds her spirit's reward; she is longer 'buried with inferior minds'; or 'trampled upon'. She speaks and is heard in her entirety- she masters her 'masters' soul!

Reviewed By: Tusitala

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