All 4 Uses of
intractable
in
Jane Eyre
- To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts — when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break — at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent — I am ever tender and true.†
p. 300.9tractable = easily managed
- We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability.†
p. 390.7tractability = the trait of being easily managed
- Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me.†
p. 413.6 *intractable = difficult
- In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it — in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties — I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek.†
p. 465.6tractability = the trait of being easily managed
Definition:
difficult
in various senses, including:
- of problems or disease -- difficult to solve or cure
- of people or animals -- difficult to manage or control
- of materials -- difficult to manipulate