"It is not violence that best overcomes hate, nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury."

I'm not going to review Jane Eyre but I have a lot to say about my first experience with Charlotte so let me get straight to the point: Jane's character is a dose of healing medicine for everything that is wrong in this world. I did not know I needed this book and I am forever changed.

"I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste."

Religious undertones (let alone overtones) annoy me, I find morally upright characters obnoxious, and few things are worse than when everything wraps up in a neat little bow. Why did I love this book?

Wow can Charlotte Brontë freaking write.

"You must really make an effort to tranquilize your feelings."

Her conversations are fascinating. Her stylistic choices are gripping. Her characters are unbelievably complex. No matter what you feel about Rochester, pretty sure you feel something. How did she give me St John and keep a purity about his intentions? Not turn him into the creepy old man vying for the young girl.

"A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment."

I put Jane in the same class as Anna, Emma and Tess. But she's the only one who gets a happy ending. The only one written by a woman. The only one who achieves the agency she fights for, and the only one who is allowed to choose her own life in the end.

"For not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction was passed in a second."

Yes, I am one of those who love him.

It's so incredibly refreshing to not watch the woman go down in classic literature.