Quotation: “And now I felt that it was not enough: I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing…” (151)
Comment: I picked this quote because for some reason it struck me as almost feminist in nature. Overall, I know Jane is saying that she is just sick of doing the same thing everyday in a place that she was sent to when she was 10, but something about the way Brontë describes Jane wanting liberty really reminds me of Jo March’s speech in Little Women (2019)
Question: So, with the feminist aspect in mind, did Brontë intend to make a comment on how women’s lives always lead to them being trapped in routine in some way? Or is this just a quote from a girl who is finding agency as she comes an adult?
I think this is a really interesting quote. I think Brontë did intend to mark almost a snark at how women always end up in this way of becoming trapped. I also talked a variation of this and I think that it is most likely due to the fact that she does agree with this but in that time period there was no way of expressing these feeling because you were simply your husband’s wife. This is really interesting and I like this point of view.
I really like the quote that you chose for this. I think that this quote is playing at both of the questions you ask, being both intended towards the monotony of the lives women had and also a girl starting to become a women. It’s interesting to see all of the quotations within the novel that can be interpreted in this way.