Hello and welcome to Storytime for grownups.

I'm Faith Moore, and this season we're reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Each episode, I'll read one chapter from the book,

pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along.

It's like an audiobook with built-in notes.

So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair,

and settle in. It's story time. I have to tell you something.

I was shocked this time around to discover that I think I like chapter 27, the last chapter,

even more than chapter 23, which was the proposal. You know, I told you after chapter 23 that that is my favorite chapter. And I think I read Jane Eyre for the first time

when I was about 14. I think I told you that before. And I am now 41. Someone recently wrote to me

and in discussing something else mentioned that something that happened in 2000, the year 2000, was probably before I was born.

So bless you, that person, bless you for that. I was born in 1982. I'm 41. So for approximately 27 years, the proposal scene has been my absolute favorite scene in the book.

That chapter has been my favorite chapter.

And it was my favorite because of the ways in which Rochester finally professes his love to Jane.

You know, when he says, like, you, you strange, you almost unearthly thing I love is my own flesh.

I mean, swoon, right?

But since delving more deeply with you into this book through this podcast,

I've actually come to feel that the full depth of Rochester's love for Jane isn't put on display until Chapter 27.

I am not going to try to convince you in this episode that what Rochester did to Jane was okay,

or that she should stay with him now, or anything like that. But that passage where he says

that he could kill her, but it wouldn't matter because he still wouldn't get to the her of her,

the essence of her, I can't get over it. It's so beautiful. And I know that many of

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