#iii

I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield - I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, -momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, -with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#death

Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#woman

I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we? ↗

— Philippa Gregory

#henry-viii #historical-fiction #mary-boleyn #historical

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim. ↗

— Philippa Gregory

#fiction #henry-viii #historical-fiction #katherine #historical