JANE (15-25 years)

Jane Eyre

by Robert Johanson

(to Rochester)

I grieve to leave Thornfield! I love Thornfield!

I have lived in it a full and delightful life.

I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified.

I have not been buried with inferior minds, but have talked face-to-face with a vigorous expanded mind.

Yours, Mr. Rochester, I am so grateful to you for your great kindness and it strikes me with terror to feel I must be torn from you forever.

 It is like looking on the necessity of death…

I tell you I must go!

Do you think I can stay and become nothing to you?

Do you think I am an automaton? A machine without feelings?

Do you think because I am plain and poor, I am soulless and heartless?

You think wrong!

If God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you.

That you can wed one inferior to you- one I know you do not love and who does not truly love you.

Let me go!

To Ireland; anywhere.

I am no bird. No net ensnares me!

I am a free human being with an independent will which I now use to leave you.

Please watch the play, TV episode or film that this monologue appears in to support the artist and understand the context.

Please note that while all care is taken, typos may appear. Please let me know if this occurs.

YOUNG JANE (8-12 years)

Jane Eyre

by Robert Johanson 

(to Mrs. Reed)

I am not deceitful; if I were I should say I loved you; but I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except for your son, John Reed. And as to this book, you may give it to him, for it is he who tells lies, not I. I will never come to see you when I am grow up; and if anyone asks me how I liked you, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick and that you treated me with miserable cruelty. How dare I, Aunt Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings and that I can do without one bit of love; but I cannot live so. People think you are a good woman, but you are bad; hard-hearted. You are deceitful to tell Mr. Brocklehurst I have a bad character.

Please watch the play, TV episode or film that this monologue appears in to support the artist and understand the context.

Please note that while all care is taken, typos may appear. Please let me know if this occurs.