Often a thing must be loved before it is lovable

Still thinking about contrast between Jane Eyre and the second Mrs de Winter. I think Rebecca is clearly a retelling of Jane Eyre as psychological horror, the main characters all villainized (even the narrator) to a heightened degree. And I think the main thing that people forget about Jane Eyre is that it is not just a romance (though that is central to the story), but also a bildungsroman. We see Jane's unhappy childhood home and her persecutions at school, but also her friendships, her joy in art, her steady progress with her pupil, before Mr. Rochester ever steps onto the page. She is a whole and complete person, and can live (with some trials!) without him. Not so for Mrs. de Winter. Like Jane, she has no money and no connections, but we learn virtually nothing about her life before Maxim. Both she and Jane sketch, but it's a cruel joke for our narrator--she is lugging around her pencils and her art books, but the beauty of Manderley only oppresses her. The second Mrs. de Winter's only possession is raw nerves. All of this is to heighten the contrast with her and Rebecca. Bertha Mason is a physical reality but a specter in Jane Eyre, her personality barely more than a footnote. While Rebecca shapes the entire eponymous book. Mrs. de Winter is a void. The horror of being only a wife, only the mistress of the house, fills that space.

Ruth Wilson as Jane from "Jane Eyre" 2006 version.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day.

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, today were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant 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,

Incorrect Quotes: Jane Eyre (70/?)

Source

Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

Jane Austen (Emma)

(…) bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples;

April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty and pleasure there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to advert.

-Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.