Name: Jane Eyre by Charlotte BRONTË Chapter 10
Uploaded: 2023-07-26T00:47:16.000Z
Duration: 26 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

CHAPTER TEN of Jane Eyre This is a Librivox recording.

All Librivox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org

Recording by Elizabeth Klett Jane Eyre by Charlotte BRONTË Chapter Ten

Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant

existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many

But this is not to be a regular autobiography.

I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses

will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a

space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to

When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood,

it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the

number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school.

Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and

by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation

The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity

and quality of the children's food; the brackish, fetid water used in its

preparation; the pupils' wretched clothing and accommodations--all

these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying

to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution.

Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed

largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better

situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing

introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of a

Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family

connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of

treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen

of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of inspector,

too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with strictness,

comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness.

The school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and

I remained an inmate of its walls, after its

regeneration, for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both

capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.

During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it

I had the means of an excellent education placed

within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel

in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially

such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages

In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class; then

I was invested with the office of teacher; which I discharged with zeal

for two years: but at the end of that time I altered.

Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent

of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my

acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace;

she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly,

At this period she married, removed with her husband (a

clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant

From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every

settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a

I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of

her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated

feelings had become the inmates of my mind.

I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I

was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared

But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and

Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise,

shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill

and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and there

spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour

I walked about the chamber most of the time.

I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to

repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up

and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another

discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone

a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of

Miss Temple--or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere

I had been breathing in her vicinity--and that now I was left in my natural

element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions.

It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were

gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason

My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been

of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide,

and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and

excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse,

to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.

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

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 farther!

I recalled the time when I had travelled 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

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Jane Eyre by Charlotte BRONTË Chapter 10

situation

character

desire

occasion