loaded with general opprobrium.

"Unjust! -- unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising
stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and Resolve,
equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve
escape from insupportable oppression -- as running away, or, if that
could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting
myself die.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How
all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection!
Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle
fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question -- WHY I
thus suffered; now, at the distance of -- I will not say how many
years, I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had
nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen
vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love
them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that
could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing,
opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a
useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to
their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation
at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I know that
had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child -- though equally dependent and friendless -- Mrs. Reed
would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would
have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling;
the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat