Jane Eyre Quote Analysis

Approaching Mrs. Reed's deathbed, Jane reflects on how time has softened her desire for revenge and allowed her to feel compassion instead of hatred.

Brontë personifies time as an agent that 'quells' and 'hushes,' two verbs that suggest gentle but firm suppression—not erasure, but containment. The parallelism of 'longings of vengeance' and 'promptings of rage and aversion' gives equal weight to violent feeling and its gradual subsiding, acknowledging that Jane once wanted revenge and no longer does. The sentence opens with 'It is a happy thing,' a moral evaluation that frames forgiveness as fortunate rather than obligatory, suggesting it benefits the forgiver more than the forgiven.

Use this to argue that Brontë's model of forgiveness is psychological rather than purely Christian—Jane credits time, not grace, with her emotional healing, positioning forgiveness as a developmental achievement rather than a divine command.