Monday, May 23, 2011

Jane Eyre

I have always loved this story. I remember checking out the video (VHS) from the Library with Orson Wells as Rochester and thinking it was so romantic. I always said I'd read it one day. Then last summer I watched the 2006 Masterpiece Theater version (thanks Megan Long) and I had to watch it again six months later. I loved it more than I remembered.

Last month, some friends got together and went to see the 2011 version. It was really good but unlike the 2006 version it left something to be desired so I finally committed myself to read the book. It was beautiful. I just want to share one of the last quotes in the book. Usually books end with that faint hope of happily ever after but Jane tells the reader about what happens ten years down the road. I know I feel this way about Adam five years into our marriage, a perfectly eloquent way to express how I feel about my husband. I only hope in another five years (and a few more kids) down the road I will feel the same way :)

"I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result."

2 comments:

Georgia said...

Oh, I love Jane Eyre and with all the film and TV versions, nothing can compare to reading the book and feeling of Jane's sincere goodness and her absolute devotion and love. I just read it for the third time, this time on my Kindle. It is a book, I can finish and turn to the first page and start over again and constantly be enjoying somewhere in the work.

Have you read Wuthering Heights by sister, Emily, or any of Anne Bronte's works. They are also worth reading; although, I don't think either of them is the master that Charlotte is. I've just ordered Villette and I'll let you know how it is compared to J.E.

Dani said...

I love Jane Eyre, too. It is one of my all-time favorites. But I don't think Charlotte's sisters were anywhere near as talented as she was. Wuthering Heights was downright painful to read.