Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte

But, strange grief! when that heavy and overcast dawn began at last to
yield to day; when my faculties began to struggle themselves, free,
and my time of energy and fulfilment came; when I voluntarily doubled,
trebled, quadrupled the tasks he set, to please him as I thought, his
kindness became sternness; the light changed in his eyes from a beam
to a spark; he fretted, he opposed, he curbed me imperiously; the more
I did, the harder I worked, the less he seemed content. Sarcasms of
which the severity amazed and puzzled me, harassed my ears; then
flowed out the bitterest inuendoes against the "pride of intellect." I
was vaguely threatened with I know not what doom, if I ever trespassed
the limits proper to my sex, and conceived a contraband appetite for
unfeminine knowledge. Alas! I had no such appetite. What I loved, it
joyed me by any effort to content; but the noble hunger for science in
the abstract--the godlike thirst after discovery--these feelings were
known to me but by briefest flashes.