Heading out is not going home: Jane Eyre
M Monahan - Studies in English literature, 1500-1900, 1988 - JSTOR
M Monahan
Studies in English literature, 1500-1900, 1988•JSTORThis book I had again and again perused with delight; I considered it a narrative of facts, and
discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves... I
had at length made up my mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England...
whereas, Lilliput and Brobdingnag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I
doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little
fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one …
discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves... I
had at length made up my mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England...
whereas, Lilliput and Brobdingnag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I
doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little
fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one …
This book I had again and again perused with delight; I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves... I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England... whereas, Lilliput and Brobdingnag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand-when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvelous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find-all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pygmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse.'
Jane's earlier response asserted the authority of Gulliver and its relevance to her own experience: if not in England, then at least somewhere and someday she believed she could replicate its quest model. But now, subjugated by the Reeds, Jane finds both the world of the text and her own reality darkened. In the same scene she notes how the painted plate is strangely faded: and how Bessie's once lively tune now resounds like a" funeral hymn"
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