a reading from the book of jane

I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I’d take to bleeding inwardly.
— Jane Eyre

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.— Mr. Rochester

On of my all-time favorite books is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Jane is my kindred spirit: moody, passionate, headstrong, and fiercely independent. All the things that a woman wasn’t supposed to be Georgian England. Rochester is a brute, stern, cynical, angry. A hard man to get to know and harder still to love. Yet they love each other in spite of everything. They love the difficult places in each other, the rough parts that are ugly and mean and complicated. Is there anything more beautiful and more crucial?