When I was in highschool I couldn't wait to be an English teacher. The experience of reading was so transformative and liberating for me that I wanted to share that with students everyday for the rest of my life.
Well, I am actually not an English teacher, but I have decided that there is something profoundly grounding about literature, especially those books that played such a large role in my adolescence. I find it fitting that I am now returning to one of my first favorite books; one that first sparked a fire of feminism inside my growing brain and heart.
Yes, I am reading that classic from 1847, Jane Eyre, our favorite heroine from Currer Bell (aka Charlotte Bronte). Jane Eyre was the first heroine I fell in love with-- so in this season of love and transition in my own life, I am returning to her and Mr. Rochester and that pesky insane wife of his.
"Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present . . . . "
Jane Eyre gives a beautiful vision at the end of her tale: "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 . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a 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." -- Jane Eyre
Well, I am actually not an English teacher, but I have decided that there is something profoundly grounding about literature, especially those books that played such a large role in my adolescence. I find it fitting that I am now returning to one of my first favorite books; one that first sparked a fire of feminism inside my growing brain and heart.
Yes, I am reading that classic from 1847, Jane Eyre, our favorite heroine from Currer Bell (aka Charlotte Bronte). Jane Eyre was the first heroine I fell in love with-- so in this season of love and transition in my own life, I am returning to her and Mr. Rochester and that pesky insane wife of his.
"Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present . . . . "
Jane Eyre gives a beautiful vision at the end of her tale: "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 . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a 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." -- Jane Eyre
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