MERLE OBERON as CATHERINE EARNSHAW and LAURENCE OLIVIER as HEATHCLIFF in WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939) dir. WILLIAM WYLER

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest — blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character — perfect concord is the result.

— Jane Eyre, Chapter XXXVIII. Charlotte Brontë

RUTH WILSON and TOBY STEPHENS as JANE EYRE and EDWARD FAIRFAX ROCHESTER in JANE EYRE (2006) dir. SUSANNA WHITE

CHARLOTTE RILEY as CATHERINE EARNSHAW in WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2009)

“Am I hideous, Jane?”
“Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
“Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned.”
“Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted.”

— Jane Eyre, Chapt. XXXVII. Charlotte Brontë

RUTH WILSON and TOBY STEPHENS as JANE EYRE and EDWARD FAIRFAX ROCHESTER in JANE EYRE (2006) dir. SUSANNA WHITE

KATE WINSLET as ROSE DEWITT BUKATER in TITANIC (1997) dir. JAMES CAMERON

Adele, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.

— Jane Eyre, Chapt. XXIII. Charlotte Brontë

NICOLE KIDMAN as SATINE in MOULIN ROUGE! (2001) dir. BAZ LUHRMANN

I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy — dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him — the hope of passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and fire.

— Jane Eyre, Chapt. XXXII

It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus — and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.

— Jane Eyre, Chapt. XXXVII

pale september by fiona apple / salvation by gabrielle aplin / pink in the night by mitski / melt away by mariah carey / if you asked me to by celine dion / eternal flame by the bangles / baby don’t you break my heart slow by vonda shepard / open arms by journey / set fire to the rain by adele / arms by christina perri

isabelle huppert, isabelle adjani, pascal greggory, and marie france pisier behind the scenes as anne, emily, branwell and charlotte brontë for les soeurs brontë (1979)

The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds, and into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room. I did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was lit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.
“Hasten to take off your wet things,” said he; “and before you go, good- night — good-night, my darling!”
He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed.

— Jane Eyre, Chapter XXIII. Charlotte Brontë

RUTH WILSON and TOBY STEPHENS as JANE EYRE and EDWARD FAIRFAX ROCHESTER in JANE EYRE (2006) dir. SUSANNA WHITE