"It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation..."
When I first read Jane Eyre a little over two years, I stopped at this exact moment, to underline the passage. I had just graduated from college. It was an illumination of the phase in my life I had entered. I was young, cut adrift, but with adventurous charms, my life would be sweetened and enriched.
I left out the end of the quote. The last line reads:
"...the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone.”
It truly is amazing how the last line of a quote can then prove its truth after years of reading the first.
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