All 17 Uses of
despair
in
Jane Eyre
- Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible.†
p. 148.1
- There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair.†
p. 215.8
- If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers — jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her — acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration — the more truly tranquil my quiescence.†
p. 216.8
- Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.†
p. 335.6
- Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf.†
p. 354.3
- I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.†
p. 355.6
- Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach?†
p. 365.0
- Think of his misery; think of his danger — look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair — soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his.†
p. 365.3
- Despair added, "Farewell for ever!"†
p. 367.5 *
- A pang of exquisite suffering — a throe of true despair — rent and heaved my heart.†
p. 385.8
- I slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food; and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your roof.†
p. 399.6
- God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get — when our will strains after a path we may not follow — we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste — and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.†
p. 416.7
- Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the burst of passion.†
p. 423.8
- It is not despair of success that keeps me dumb.†
p. 424.5
- The two girls, on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation.†
p. 444.6
- I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair.†
p. 488.1
- Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world.†
p. 507.8
Definitions:
-
(1)
(despair as in: she felt despair) hopelessness; or distress (such as extreme worry or sadness from feeling powerless to change a bad situation)
-
(2)
(despair as in: do not despair) lose hope or feel distress
-
(3)
(despair as in: she was the despair of the team) something that causes hopelessness or great distress
- (4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)