Vessey’s Reviews > Jane Eyre > Status Update

You are no ruin, - no lightning-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.

You must not go. No - I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence - the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself - I must have you. The world may laugh - may call me absurd, selfish - but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.

Never will, says the vision? I always woke and found it an empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned - my life dark, lonely, hopeless - my soul athirst and forbidden to drink - my heart famished and never to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go - embrace me.

The inquiry was put in gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force! I could resist his wrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness.

I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were forgotten - my fears overcome - my wrestlings paralysed. The Impossible was fast becoming the Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Life rolled together like a scroll - death’s gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second. The dim room was full of visions.

All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him - to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own.

What struggle there was in him between Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face. He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down

It was torture - refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how - if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime.

To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument - nothing more.

I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow - his hold on my limbs…How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could not heretofore tell…