The
following is a description of Helen, a fourteen-year-old girl and a moment of inspiration
that overtakes her conversation and the impact it had on Jane Eyre, a girl of
eleven, as she listened and watched her.
"The refreshing meal, the brilliant
fire, the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more
than all these, something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within
her. They woke, they kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her
cheek, which till this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they
shone in the liquid luster of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty
more singular than that of Miss Temple's -- a beauty neither of fine color nor
long eyelash, nor penciled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then
her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell:
has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough, to hold the
swelling spring of pure, full fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of
Helen's discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed
hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a
protracted existence." Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
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