Donde los niños son confinados a la casa por el frío
exterior y Jane no recibe el mismo trato que sus primos. Del clásico de Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.
There was no possibility of taking a walk that
day. We had been wandering, indeed, in
the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed,
when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with
it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise
was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially
on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me
was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a
heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the
consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered
round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the
fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor
crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she
had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the
necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie,
and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good
earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive
and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were—she
really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy,
little children.”
“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides,
there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that
manner. Be seated somewhere; and until
you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped
in there. It contained a bookcase: I
soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored
with pictures. I mounted into the
window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having
drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right
hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating
me from the drear November day. At
intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of
that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered
a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub,
with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British
Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet
there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass
quite as a blank. They were those which
treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by
them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its
southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”… (Jane Eyre, chapter 1, by Charlotte
Bronte)
Personajes
Jane Eyre, sus primos: Eliza, John, y Georgiana Reed;
y su tía: la señora Reed.
La novela
Jane
Eyre sigue las emociones y experiencias de esta heroína,
desde su niñez hasta su adultez, incluyendo su amor por el señor Rochester, en
Thornfield Hall. Pertenece al género Bildungsroman,
sobre el crecimiento moral y psicológico del personaje. La novela contiene
elementos de crítica social, con una fuerte carga de moralidad. Algunos la
consideran adelantada a su tiempo dado el carácter individualista de Jane y la exploración de clasismo,
sexualidad, y religión.
Vocabulario
Chilly: cool,
breezy, fresh, sharp, penetrating. It was a chilly
afternoon.
Artículos
relacionados
Recursos
Jane Eyre,
para leer en inglés desde Internet.
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