Some of My Favorite Romantic Moments in Fiction
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
“‘Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature: and for the sake of giving relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be wounding yours. I can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my poor sister. Ever since I have known it, I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest of my family, I should not have merely my own gratitude to express.’....
‘If you will thank me,’ he replied, ‘let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you.’
Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short pause, her companion added, ‘You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.’
Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do.”
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
“‘Why, Gabriel,’ she said, with a slight laugh, as they went to the door, ‘it seems exactly as if I had come courting you—how dreadful!’
“‘And quite right, too,’ said Oak. ‘I’ve danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long day and it is hard to begrudge me this one visit.’”
Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne Du Maurier
“Then he smiled, as though in secret, and it seemed to her that his smile was the personification of himself; it was the thing in him that she had first loved, and would always cherish, and it conjured the picture in her mind of La Mouette, and the sun, and the wind upon the sea, and with it too the dark shadows of the creek, the wood fire and the silence. She went out of the cell without looking at him, her head in the air, and her drawing in her hand, and "‘He will never know,’ she thought, ‘at what moment I have loved him best.’”
Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne Du Maurier
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
“Whether the kiss convinced Hareton, I cannot tell: he was very careful, for some minutes, that his face should not be seen, and when he did raise it, he was sadly puzzled where to turn his eyes.
Catherine employed herself in wrapping a handsome book neatly in white paper, and having tied it with a bit of ribbon, and addressed it to `Mr. Hareton Earnshow,’ she desired me to be her ambassadress….
Hareton would not open his fingers, so I laid it on his knee. He did not strike it off, either. I returned to my work. Catherine leaned her head and arms on the table, till she heard the slight rustle of the covering being removed; then she stole away, and quietly seated herself beside her cousin. He trembled, and his face glowed: all his rudeness and all his surly harshness had deserted him: he could not summon courage, at first, to utter a syllable in reply to her questioning look, and her murmured petition.
`Say you forgive me, Hareton, do? You can make me so happy by speaking that little word.’
He muttered something inaudible.
`And you’ll be my friend?’ added Catherine interrogatively.
`Nay, you’ll be ashamed of me every day of your life,’ he answered; `and the more ashamed, the more you know me; and I cannot bide it.’
`So you won’t be my friend?’ she said, smiling as sweet as honey, and creeping close up.
I overheard no further distinguishable talk, but, on looking round again, I perceived two such radiant countenances bent over the page of the accepted book, that I did not doubt the treaty had been ratified on both sides; and the enemies were, thenceforth, sworn allies.”
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
“`My bride! What bride? I have no bride!’
‘But you will have.’
‘Yes:––I will!––I will!’ He set his teeth.
‘Then I must go:––you have said it yourself.’
‘No: you must stay! I swear it––and the oath shall be kept.’
‘I tell you I must go!’ I retorted, roused to something like passion. ‘Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?––a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!––I have as much soul as you,––and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh:––it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,––as we are!’
‘As we are!’ repeated Mr. Rochester––`so,’ he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: `so, Jane.’”