21 September 2018: "No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless." --Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Working my way through the pre-attic-revelation section of the book again. Continually awed by Brontë's ability to capture so perfectly what this kind of longing and love can feel like. The scene a chapter or so earlier, where Jane tears into herself over ever imagining that Rochester could love her? Brutal.
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