“Oh I dreadful is the check—intense the agony—

“He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,

With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,

And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

 

“Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,

When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.

When, if my spirit’s sky was full of flashes warm,

I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

“But, first, a hush of peace—a soundless calm descends;

The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;

Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony,

That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

“Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:

Its wings are almost free—its home, its harbour found,

Measuring the gulph, it stoops and dares the final bound,

“Oh I dreadful is the check—intense the agony—

When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;

When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;

The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

“Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;

The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;

And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,

If it but herald death, the vision is divine!”

Emily Bronte

Bronte Poems

Reader, I married him

Reader, I married him,

is Jane Eyre's most famous line,

and though many people

 misremember it

 as the novel's last line,

 it is actually the beginning of the last chapter.

Charlotte Brontë Quotes

"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow."

"Better to be without logic than without feeling."

"Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us."

"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties."

"Conventionality is not morality."

"Give him enough rope and he will hang himself."

"I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me."

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

"I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me."

"I feel monotony and death to be almost the same."

"I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward."

"I'm just going to write because I cannot help it."

"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."

"If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own."

"If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it."

"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it."

"It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it."

"Let your performance do the thinking."

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs."

"Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation."

"Look twice before you leap."

"Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves."

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones."

"The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed."

"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter - in the eye."

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."

"True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it."

"Who has words at the right moment?"

"You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength."

"You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world."
http://www.paperbackswap.com/Charlotte-Bronte/author/

I am just going to write because I cannot help it.quotation 

Quotes from your Favorite Bronte Sisters-novels forum.quoteland

The tone of Jane Eyre is in fact a very feminist one

There is an ample amount of evidence to suggest that the tone of Jane Eyre is in fact a very feminist one and may well be thought as relevant to the women of today who feel they have been discriminated against because of there gender. At the beginning of the 19th century, little opportunity existed for women, and thus many of them felt uncomfortable when attempting to enter many parts of society. The absence of advanced educational opportunities for women and their alienation from almost all fields of work gave them little option in life: either become a house wife or a governess. Although today a tutor may be considered a fairly high class and intellectual job, in the Victorian era a governess was little more than a servant who was paid to share her scarce amount of knowledge in limited fields to a child. With little respect, security, or class one may certainly feel that an intelligent, passionate and opinionated young woman such as Jane Eyre should deserve and be capable of so much more. The insecurity of this position, being tossed around with complete disregard for her feelings or preferences, is only one of many grueling characteristics of this occupation. However for Jane to even emerge into society, becoming a governess seemed the only reasonable path for her.


onlineessaysfeminism-in-charlotte-brontes-jane-eyre

June in Haworth and Yorkshire - an overview

June heralds the start of summer and is a month where nature really gets going. Parent birds can be seen feeding their young who will soon be leaving the nest, wildflowers are abundant. Most trees will be in full leaf Hawthorn also known as May hedge will still be flowering in early June dependent on how cold spring has been. June 21st is the Midsummer Solstice and our longest hours of daylight, you can take a 24 hour time-lapse of the day here...haworth-village time-lapse it also marks the official arrival of summer/
flickr.com/photos/ wildflowers and Hawthorn Yorkshire Dales UK

Feminist Ideals and the Women of "Jane Eyre"

 

In order to understand Jane's role as a feminist, a definition of this term must be established. The word "feminist" is defined as "one who advocates equal rights for women" ("Feminist" 1). Yet a "feminist" does not necessarily protest in the streets; any woman who wishes to be equal with men and expresses this viewpoint in word and action can be considered to possess ideals on which the feminist movement is based. Though women had been writing feminist texts since the late 18th century, an actual feminist movement did not form in Britain until the late 19th century under leaders such as Emily Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett.

 

Emily Pankhurst

 

Millicent Fawcett

 Charlotte Bronte was publishing Jane Eyre just as First Wave Feminism was beginning to develop, with writers such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte proving their worth as writers and incorporating feminist ideals into their work. Jane Eyre was one of many post-Civil War novels "aimed at young female readers in which an adolescent woman attempts to gain maturity and ascendency over the terms of her world".

Read on: Feminist-Ideals-and-the-Women-of-Jane-Eyre

essays/Jane-Eyre-Novel-FemInism-

edu.Feminism_in_Jane_Eyre.doc
Emmeline Pankhurst.
History that puts woman in her place

Details of some of the district’s most famous sons and daughters can be accessed via the internet as part of a new online archive. More than eight million Yorkshire parish records, spanning almost 500 years, have been digitised by family history website Ancestry.co.uk and the West Yorkshire Archive Service and are available online from today. The records detail baptisms, marriages and burials which took place in hundreds of West Yorkshire parishes between 1538 and 1980. They include the baptisms of Charlotte Bronte and her siblings, who were born in the parish of Thornton between 1816 and 1820. The famous author’s burial record is also listed following her premature death

the Telegraph and Argus

Beautiful pictures op Haworth, the Bronte Falls.

picturesofengland.com//Haworth/pictures/

An American Heir - A review

Despite the fact that we have seen and read a few retellings of Jane Eyre of late, we are still amazed at the versatility of the story and how well it lends itself to the writer's imagination and the story they want to tell their audience. Some of them follow a more rigid pattern while others are freer. An American Heir(1): A Modern Retelling of Jane Eyre by Chrissy Breen Keffer would find its place among the former, despite its contemporary setting.

Read more An American Heir - A review

The governess

The governess in the nineteenth century personified a life of intense misery. She was also that most unfortunate individual; the single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of culture and means. . . . The psychological situation of the governess made her position unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the social level of the family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants.

Beth Newman suggests the emergence of two "'separate spheres' of domesticity and paid labor" attendant upon the industrialization of labors formerly allotted to women such as 'spinning, weaving, dairy work" ("Introduction" to Jane Eyre, Bedford Edition, 8). Notice how Newman's gendering of these spheres corresponds to the passages above. Consider how Rochester's employment of Jane colors their relationship. As Armstrong argues, "only when she no longer needs his money can she become the mistress of his heart, and it is in this role, not as a governess, that she takes her rightful place of dominion over his home."
Read more: www.victorianweb

Further improvements to Haworth’s historic Main Street.

Further improvements to Haworth’s historic Main Street are expected to be completed this summer.
They will include new seating, plant containers and bins, which will enhance ongoing efforts to restore the road’s surface. Contractors have been removing and relaying large parts of the steep street.
Many of its setts had become damaged and the material in the gaps between the stones had eroded away, leaving hazardous potholes.
The re-surfacing followed fears, raised by members of Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council in early 2007, for the future of the setts.
The work on the setts is still to be completed. But Worth Valley district councillors have given the go-ahead to the accompanying part of the programme, which mostly relates to street furniture.
Coun Russell Brown said: “After many sometimes heated meetings between various groups within Haworth, a general consensus has been reached and I am pleased with the final plan.
“These meetings have been about listening to and collating everyone’s views on the various street furniture options for the Main Street project. The improvements will mean new seats, placed to highlight the vistas across the valley and up Main Street.
“They will also mean new planters to be used by the Haworth in Bloom group, build-out features, new refuse bins and bollards. “The work should hopefully be finished within the next eight to ten weeks.”
the Telegraph and Argus

Jane Eyre 1944 Costumes Auction

For over 50 years screen legend Debbie Reynolds has been collecting and preserving Hollywood costumes and props from Academy Award winning films.
-----------------------------
Orson Welles “Edward Rochester” Gray blue wool top coat, pants and shirt from Jane Eyre
SOLD

20,000.00USD+ (4,600.00) buyer's premium + taxes, fees, etc...

Gray blue wool period topcoat with velvet collar and buttons worn by Orson Welles as “Edward Rochester” when he confides in Jane early in the morning in Jane Eyre. Red Western costume handwritten “Orson Welles 46 1” and stamped “A-4-4” and “Western Costume.” Fabric and velvet are faded. The ivory cotton shirt and blue wool pants were worn in the scene where Jane leaves. Shirt has red Western costume label handwritten “17999 Welles SET-2” and Western Costume stamp. Pants have red Western Costume label handwritten “Orson Welles 37 ½ 34 ½” and stamped 25192 and A-3-2.

Sara Allgood “Bessie” purple dress from Jane Eyre
NOT SOLD

Purple wool crepe period dress with buttons down front. Handwritten label “39401 SARAH ALLGOOD 32” and stamped “1-27-7-2286” and 20th Century Fox. Lace at collar has been added. Worn by Sara Allgood as “Bessie” when Jane returns to her Aunt’s house in Jane Eyre.

Margaret O’Brien “Adèle Varens” plaid dress from Jane Eyre

SOLD

1,400.00USD+ (322.00) buyer's premium + taxes, fees, etc...

debbie-reynolds-auction/event-and-catalog-information

Saucy Pat

Cenarth ‘Ken’ Fox www.labyrinth.net.au sent me an e-mail.

Greetings from Australia
I have written a play about Patrick the father and hopefully it will tour in a couple of months.

I have attached a poster of the play for your information.

Patrick Brunty was an impoverished Irish blacksmith.

He changed his station, location and vocation to become

The Rev. Patrick Bronté

His wife called him Saucy Pat and you'll be amazed at what he did.

Perusal script of this new one-man or one-woman play now available

I love to have reactions!!!!!!

I see in my statistics that more and more people are reading my weblog.

I really like that

if you are a Bronte lover

and you want to write to me

please do!!!!!

Why did so many contemporary critics think Jane Eyre a shocking book?

After its publication, Jane Eyre soon drew the attention of London literary society and from within critics’
circles because of its unconventionality, and distinctiveness from the mainstream of contemporary fiction. Many reviews about the sensation that Jane Eyre had created appeared in various magazines and journals. The wellknown Victorian critic of literature George Henry Lews said in the Westminster Review that Jane Eyre was “the best novel of the season” with “the originality and freshness of its style” (as cited in Barker, 2002, p.170).

An anonymous reviewer in Christian Remembrancer praised it, writing “no novel has created so much sensation as Jane Eyre” with “the remarkable power” that it displayed. This reviewer also found “masculine power, breadth and shrewdness” throughout Jane Eyre (as cited in O’Neill, 1968, p.14).

However, there were not just enthusiastic comments voiced about Jane Eyre in the early reviews. The reviewers also pointed out the defects in Jane Eyre such as the “improbability” and the “coarseness”.
Another well-known but very caustic early review was from Elizabeth Rigby (Lady Eastlake) in the famous journal Quarterly Review. Apart from the “coarseness” with which Mrs. Rigby was uncomfortable, she said the novel was an “anti-Christian composition”, which might cause the discontent among the working class, and thereby political upheaval.
She denounced Jane Eyre arguing that “the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home, is the same which has also written Jane Eyre” (as cited in O’Neill, 1968, p.15).
From: Jane Eyre
read also: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/mayer1.html
How does bronte reveal her reactions