Life Lines
A Shared Reading activity pack
to read wherever you are
Issue 97

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

For more Shared Reading, poems and texts, email us at: support@thereader.or
 ‘And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday? – where was her life? – where were her
prospects?’ (Jane Eyre, Ch.26)

Dear Fellow Reader, 

 
I have been reading Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, where ‘the lunatic’ Bertha
Mason in Bronte’s Jane Eyre is given back her voice and imagined history. It’s a
novel I love and it took me back to Jane Eyre, particularly the extract where, after
an eventful chapter where Rochester and Jane’s marriage is interrupted by the
news of Rochester’s previous marriage to Bertha, everyone has gone and Jane is
left alone. I wonder what you will make of it? Feel free to make notes on your
own thoughts and feelings as you go, perhaps marking words or sentences that
particularly stand out to you … 
 
Jane Eyre (extract from Chapter 26) by Charlotte Bronte. 
 
I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which I had now withdrawn.
The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude,
and proceeded – not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but –
mechanically to take off the wedding-dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had
worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and
tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I
thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved – followed up and down where I
was led or dragged – watched event rushed on event, disclosure open beyond
disclosure: but now, I thought. 
   The morning had been a quiet morning enough – all except the brief scene
with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no
explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge,
no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection
to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr Rochester;
answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth
had been uttered by my mater; then the living proof had been seen; the intruders
were gone, and all was over. 
   I was in my own room as usual – just myself, without obvious change: nothing
had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was the Jane Eyre
of yesterday? – where was her life? – where were her prospects? 
 
Pause for Thought …  

This passage makes me think of the phrase ‘the quiet after the storm’ – I know
I’ve had moments in the afterwards of some event where I can catch up with
myself – my thoughts and feelings, or they catch up with me. What do you make
of the way Jane begins ‘mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace
it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time?’ Her
description of her day, ‘heard, seen, moved – followed up and down where I was
led or dragged’ seems relentless doesn’t it? And what of her position in all the
day’s events? Or has there even been any chance to position herself in it all? I’m
struck by that end to the first paragraph, ‘but now, I thought’ – it seems to land a
real punch coming at the end there doesn’t it?  
As she thinks about the morning, as things come back to her, she lists what didn’t
happen, the lack of drama – I wonder what you make of this? I wonder if perhaps
she’s trying to control something and I have a sense of her trying to find
something but finding nothing to show for what’s happened – ‘I was in my own
room as usual – just myself, without obvious change’. That ‘just’ I find so
moving and that ‘as usual’ when things are far from usual! She has no obvious
scars but I feel inside a scream coming from far off which erupts with her three
questions at the end, where she talks of herself suddenly in the third person. I
wonder why she shifts to ‘Jane Eyre, and ‘her’ here? They are hard and pain-full
questions to ask aren’t they, as if she’s disappeared or been erased somehow? 
 
 Let’s carry on … 
 
   Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent expectant woman – almost a bride – was a
cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A
Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled
over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on
hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of
flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve
hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread,
waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead
– struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first born in the
land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and
growing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at
my love: that feeling which was my master’s – which he had created; it shivered
in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle: sickness and anguish had
seized it; it could not seek Mr Rochester’s arms – it could not derive warmth
from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted –
confidence destroyed! Mr Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was
not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he
had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and
from his presence I must go: that I perceived well. When – how – whither, I
could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from
Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had only been
fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even to
cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my
eyes! How weak my conduct! 
 
Pause for more thought . . .  

We stay in the third person for a while don’t we here, until that admission, ‘My
hopes were all dead – after which she then is able, so courageously it seems to
me, to go on to say ‘I looked on my cherished wishes….I looked at my love….’
If we put ourselves in Jane’s shoes and feel the amount of loss she is feeling, I
can see why she might protect herself, as well as she can, readying herself step
by step to confront what has happened, only at the last to be able to think about
the love between her and Rochester, now ‘like a suffering child in a cold cradle’.
I wonder what you feel about this? Will it survive, this love? Will she survive?
Jane, ‘almost a bride – was a cold, solitary girl again’ – it’s like she’s gone
backwards somehow, been returned to being a girl in a moment! What do you
make of all those pictures of nature blighted by ‘ice’ and ‘white storm’? It feels
traumatic being Jane at this moment and she is so alone I really worry for her.
And she seems to blame herself and imagine that ‘my view must be hateful to
him’ – I wonder why she does this? 
 
Let’s continue . . . 
  
My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me,
and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed,
and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great
river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and I felt the torrent come:
to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One
idea only still throbbed lifelike within me – a remembrance of God: it begot an
unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind,
as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express
them. 
   ‘Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.’ 
    It was near; and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it – as I had
neither joined my hands, nor bent me knees, nor moved my lips – it came: in full
heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life
lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and
mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in
truth, ‘the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I
came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.’ 
 
A final pause for thought . . . 
 
This feels perilous now doesn’t it? I’m struck by this, ‘Self-abandoned, relaxed
and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great
river’. In great despair, it’s easy and somehow huge to let go, to give up – is this
what Jane is doing here? And that it’s somehow beyond her control – ‘I seemed
to have laid me down’? And what do you make of the ‘one idea’ that has life, her
‘remembrance of God’ – I wonder what ‘one idea’ would stay alive in me in such
a desperate state, if not God? We do reach for religious language in extreme
states sometimes don’t we, as Jane does here? When feelings are so huge, it’s
sometimes hard to find the language to express them isn’t it? – I remember after
my elder son was born I used to listen to opera a lot as it was the only expression
big enough to fit around what I was feeling. Here as Jane says, ‘that bitter hour
cannot be described’ and then she uses religious language instead – I’m very
struck by ‘I felt no standing’ – as though she can’t stand and that no-one is
standing for her or supporting her? Maybe ‘the torrent’ pouring over her here
comes as a relief? That ‘whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost’
sounds too much for one person to bear.  
 
Time for a poem…

We’ll pick up with another story again in our next issue, but now a pause for
some poetry. Poetry isn’t always easy for everyone to get going with. In our
Shared Reading groups, we read a poem out loud a few times, to give ourselves a
bit of time to hear it aloud. Give this a go yourself and see if it helps you to feel
comfortable with the words, even if you’re still not sure what it’s all about!

We aren’t looking to find an answer here, or what the person writing it might
have meant when they wrote it. We’re just looking to see if any feelings or ideas
come up when we read it – and often we find that the more time you allow
yourself to simply be with the poem, the more thoughts and feelings will come
through.

One of the keys is to enjoy yourself: take your time, read it out loud, have a think
about any bits you like, or that puzzle you, then… have another read!

This week’s Featured Poem is After Dark Vapours by John Keats.

Try reading the poem aloud slowly to yourself a couple of times first – really
take your time. Does anything surprise you or sing to you?
 

After Dark Vapours by John Keats. 

 
After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains 
    For a long dreary season, comes a day 
    Born of the gentle South, and clears away 
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains. 
The anxious month, relieving from its pains, 
    Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May, 
    The eyelids with the passing coolness play, 
Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains. 
The calmest thoughts come round us – as of leaves 
    Budding, - fruit ripening in stillness, - autumn suns 
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves, - 
Sweet Sappho’s cheek, - a sleeping infant’s breath, - 
    The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs, - 
A woodland rivulet, - a Poet’s death. 
 
We’ve had plenty of ‘dark vapours’ with our extract from Jane Eyre, so this
poem felt like it would provide the necessary balm! And we’re all living under
‘sick heavens’ and enduring ‘anxious month(s)’ with the war in Ukraine, energy
prices rocketing and Covid still making its presence felt. When we had the recent
spell of good weather, I could really feel the line, ‘Takes as a long-lost right the
feel of May’ even though we were still in March. I imagine you have your own
examples of ‘calmest thoughts’ to add to Keats’ list? Mine might be something to
do with my cat! I love the way the dashes in the second half of the poem slow us
down, so we can savour each of those examples of calm thoughts and that these
thoughts ‘come round us’, which makes me think, for some reason, of slightly
shy animals. Is the Poet’s death a shock to you at the end? Or just included,
sanely, in the list? The line, ‘fruit ripening in stillness’ makes me think back to
poor Jane and what her future seemed to promise – such silence and promise
there. I’m struck by ‘the gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs’ especially
the word ‘gradual’ when all about us time seems to rush and rush. This is a poem
I come back to – I used to know it by heart, maybe I will learn it again! Until
next time, happy reading! 
 We’ve left this page blank for you to make notes, draw a picture, have a go at
writing yourself or jot down something you’d like to tell us…
  
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