"Jane Eyre," Vocabulary from Chapters 11-18 30 words

Charlotte Bronte's heroine "Jane Eyre" defies the stereotype of the docile Victorian woman and shines as a fully realized person who jumps off the page at a time when women were often portrayed as one-dimensional characters (etext found here).

Learn this word list that focuses on thorns and roses. Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1-5, Chapters 6-10, Chapters 11-18, Chapters 19-25, Chapters 26-30, Chapters 31-38
  1. exult
    feel extreme happiness or elation
  2. stately
    refined or imposing in manner or appearance; befitting a royal court
  3. toil
    productive work (especially physical work done for wages)
  4. vivacious
    vigorous and animated
  5. solicitude
    a feeling of excessive concern
  6. repine
    express discontent
  7. quiescence
    a state of quiet (but possibly temporary) inaction
    The quiescence does not signify Jane's acquiescence ("acceptance without protest"). Instead, it gives Jane time to observe, wonder, and figure out how to respond. Similar to how "the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease" (before she knew the traveller was her employer), Mr. Rochester's deliberate ignoring of her presence intrigues her.
  8. genial
    diffusing warmth and friendliness
  9. repartee
    adroitness and cleverness in reply
    Jane is not entirely truthful here, because she enjoys repartee, as Mr. Rochester observes: "when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque" ("repartee" and "rejoinder" are synonymous in the two sentences, but usually, "repartee" refers to an entire witty conversation while "rejoinder" is a specific reply).
  10. adventitious
    associated by chance and not an integral part
  11. palliate
    lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of
    “Yes, yes, you are right,” said he; “I have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don’t wish to palliate them, I assure you.
  12. salubrious
    favorable to health of mind or body
  13. bane
    something causing misery or death
  14. fallible
    The verb "arrogate" means "seize and take control without authority" or "make undue claims to having" and it has the same Latin root as "arrogant" ("rogare" means "to ask" which neither word does)--Jane deliberately uses this verb to imply that Mr. Rochester is being arrogant in assuming that he can declare that his actions, strange as they may be, are right. Only God, who is infallible, can make that judgment.
  15. lurid
    shining with an unnatural red glow as of fire seen through smoke
    The example sentence uses "lurid" to describe the physical appearance of Mr. Rochester's imagined hieroglyphics about his destiny, but the adjective also means "horrible in fierceness or savagery" (which alludes to the nature of Mr. Rochester's secret) and "glaringly vivid and graphic; marked by sensationalism" (which, along with the chosen definition, foreshadows discovery and destruction).
    ‘You like Thornfield?’ she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!’
  16. undulate
    move in a wavy pattern or with a rising and falling motion
  17. sardonic
    disdainfully or ironically humorous; scornful and mocking
  18. morose
    showing a brooding ill humor
  19. assuage
    provide physical relief, as from pain
  20. lugubrious
    excessively mournful
  21. fulminate
    cause to explode violently and with loud noise
    The Latin "fulminare" means "to strike with lightning"--this doesn't quite fit the image of Mr. Rochester's anathemas ("curse" or "vehement denunciation"), which are harmlessly spouted at no one in particular. Ironically, Mr. Rochester fulminates at the moment that an actual fire on him is quenched; and later, he sadly declares that "I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree."
  22. vindictive
    disposed to seek revenge or intended for revenge
  23. vex
  24. surfeit
    indulge (one's appetite) to satiety
  25. ineffable
    defying expression or description
  26. poignant
    keenly distressing to the mind or feelings
  27. extirpate
    pull up by or as if by the roots
  28. sagacity
    the trait of forming opinions by distinguishing and evaluating
  29. meretricious
    based on pretense; deceptively pleasing
    I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.
  30. insipid
    lacking taste or flavor or tang
    The example sentence compares Mr. Rochester's sarcasm and harshness to pungent spices for food, so the chosen definition fits the analogy, while the alternative definition ("lacking interest or significance or impact") both describes what a different man would seem like to Jane and what her life would feel like if she were to lose Mr. Rochester.