After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this – if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. The Reed family is disintegrating. As Mrs. Reed lies in bed dying, Eliza tells her sister Georgiana how much she despises her. She says that she would rather die than be with Georgiana.