I was giddy like a schoolgirl all night.
Dear Reader, (that's YOU, dear LJer)
I am sorry that I quit your presence yesterday. I was not online in the least. At all, even. I do not regret telling you that, from precisely (almost) 3PM to 3AM, a young woman was occupying my time.
That 18-year old girl that had me holed up in my room for 12 hours was none other than... Jane Eyre. HAHA! I had you going, didn't I? I'm such a tease! But not really.
For those of you who are still lost, I was reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It clocks in at a mere 596 pages, in 2 volumes. It is probably easily one of the best books I have ever read. Going in with knowledge of her sister's tragic tales like Wuthering Heights, I was very pleased to discover that this tale did not, in fact, end in woe.
Ah! I LOVE reading old books. They make me think more inteligently. I feel smarter after I read them. It's really incredible. I am tackling Lolita next, dear friend, and no-- I do not mean literally.
So. Jane Eyre. Read it. Love it. Love her. Love him. (It's so easy.)
Some of my favorite passages/quotes:
-A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to sleep in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.
-I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very much--more than I could trust myself to say--more than words had power to express.
-I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum, but I dare not.
-(THIS is where Miss Brontë tore out my heart, and I loved her all the more for it):
-"Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?"
-"I do."
-"Jane" (bending towards and embracing me), "do you mean it now?"
-"I do."
-"And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
-"I do--"
-I would have got past Mr Rochester's chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven--a temporary heaven--in this room for me, if I had chose: I had but to go in and to say--"Mr Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips.
-(Rochester) "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similiar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly" Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww *squee*
Mmmmm. love love love.
I am sorry that I quit your presence yesterday. I was not online in the least. At all, even. I do not regret telling you that, from precisely (almost) 3PM to 3AM, a young woman was occupying my time.
That 18-year old girl that had me holed up in my room for 12 hours was none other than... Jane Eyre. HAHA! I had you going, didn't I? I'm such a tease! But not really.
For those of you who are still lost, I was reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It clocks in at a mere 596 pages, in 2 volumes. It is probably easily one of the best books I have ever read. Going in with knowledge of her sister's tragic tales like Wuthering Heights, I was very pleased to discover that this tale did not, in fact, end in woe.
Ah! I LOVE reading old books. They make me think more inteligently. I feel smarter after I read them. It's really incredible. I am tackling Lolita next, dear friend, and no-- I do not mean literally.
So. Jane Eyre. Read it. Love it. Love her. Love him. (It's so easy.)
Some of my favorite passages/quotes:
-A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to sleep in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.
-I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very much--more than I could trust myself to say--more than words had power to express.
-I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum, but I dare not.
-(THIS is where Miss Brontë tore out my heart, and I loved her all the more for it):
-"Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?"
-"I do."
-"Jane" (bending towards and embracing me), "do you mean it now?"
-"I do."
-"And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
-"I do--"
-I would have got past Mr Rochester's chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven--a temporary heaven--in this room for me, if I had chose: I had but to go in and to say--"Mr Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips.
-(Rochester) "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similiar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly" Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww *squee*
Mmmmm. love love love.