英文名著《简爱》精选经典阅读

1) "I resisted all the way: a new thing for me." (Chapter 2).

Jane says this as Bessie is taking her to be locked in the red-room after she had fought back when John Reed struck her. For the first time Jane is asserting her rights, and this action leads to her eventually being sent to Lowood School.

2) "That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper, of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings. I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark - all the work of my own hands." (Chapter 8).

Jane writes of this after she has become comfortable and has excelled at Lowood. She is no longer dwelling on the lack of food or other material things, but is more concerned with her expanding mind and what she can do.

3) "While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ears. It was a curious laugh - distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped" (Chapter 11).

Jane hears this laugh on her first full day at Thornfield Hall. It is her first indication that something is going on there that she does not know about.

4) "Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags" (Chapter 12).

Jane thinks this as she looks out of the third story at the view from Thornfield, wishing she could see and interact with more of the world.