英文版讀書筆記

　　p66

　　next morning miss scatcherd wrote in conspicuious characters on a piece of pasteboard the word ‘slattern’ and bound it like a phylactery round helen’s large mild intelligent and benign-looking forehead. she wore it till evening patient unresentful regarding it as a deserved punishment. the moment miss scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school i ran to helen tore it off and thrust it into the fire. the fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day and tears hot and large had continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart.

　　p67

　　but the privation or rather the hardships of lowood lessened. spring drew on – she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted itss cutting winds ameliorated. my wretched fe3et flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of january began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of april; the nights and mornings no longer by their canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the playhour passed in the garden; sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial and a greenness grew over those brown beds which freshening daily suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. flowers peeped out among the leaves: snowdrops crocuses purple auriculas and and golden-eyed pansies. on thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside under the hedges.

　　p77

　　i went to my window opened it and looked out. there were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of lowood; there was the hilly horizon. my eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote the blue peaks. it was those i longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground exile limits. i traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain and vanishing in a gorge between two. how i longed to follow it father! i recalled the time when i had traveled that very road in a coach; i remembered descending that hill at twilight. an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to lowood and i had never quitted it since. my vacations had all been spent at school. mrs. reed had never sent for me to gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. i had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world. school rules school duties school gabits and notions and boices and faces and phrases and costumes and preferences and antipathies: such was what i knew of existence. 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 pgasped; for liberty i uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. i abandoned iiit and framed a humbler supplication. for change stimulus. that petition too seemed swept off into vague space. ‘then’ i cried half desperate ‘grant me at least a new servitude!’

　　here a bell ringing the hour of supper called me downstairs.

　　i was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime; even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which i longed to recur by a prolonged effusion of small talk. how i wished sleep would silence her! it seemed as if could i but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as i stood at the window some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief.

　　p78

　　‘a new servitude! there is something in that ’ i soliloquized (mentally be it understood; i did not talk aloud). ‘i know there is because it does not sound too sweet. it is not like such words as liberty excitement enjoyment: delightful sounds truly but no more than sounds for me and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them. but servitude! that must be a matter of fact. any one may serve. i have served here eight years; now all i want is to serve elsewhere. can i not get so much of my own will! is not the thing feasible! yes—yes—the end is not so difficult if i had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.’