These fine-minded sisters come into an inheritance adequate to free them from having to face the economic implications of remaining unmarried.  Now their spirits can expand to fill the space they were born to.  I liked the combination of ingredients in their ‘life-giving elixir’: good air, their own home, and freedom from want.

May you and your conversations be witty, pithy and original.

‘The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary’s spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me.’

Source: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London: Bounty Books, 2012 (1847)), p. 517-18