… celebrating Jane Eyre.

For so many reasons, this book has become the closest thing to an inspirational text I have. My first copy, purloined 23 years ago from a ninth-grade English class set, is worn to the point of dissolution. I keep it, but no longer read from it – a newer copy does actual duty. That first, cheap, crumbling paperback has gone with me all over the world.

I told a friend that someday I would get all emo and post the actual quote that has been the touchstone of my interior life; here it is.

Jane has learned that Rochester is already married; divorce laws prevent him from leaving his mad wife; she must decide whether to live with him as his mistress or leave him forever. I do not share her religious beliefs or social mores, but I believe completely in her sincerity. After an interview in which he uses every tactic of desperate love to make her stay, she retires to her room. Alone. To think.

“Who in the world cares for YOU? or who will be injured by what you do?”

Still indomitable was the reply–”I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad–as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

As someone who “under stress may fall prey to various forms of immediate gratification,” I go back again and again to Jane’s struggle and resolve. Right isn’t easy. But it’s worth it in the end.