Rather than go into a spiel detailing each chapter of Jane Eyre and critiquing Charlotte Bronte’s way of illustrating something as so specific as why Helen Burns was a red-head instead of a brunette, I am going to divide the book into four distinct chapters of Jane Eyre’s life:
- Life at Gateshead
- Life at Lowood
- Life at Thornfield
- Life Without Thornfield
As I take a step back and look at Jane Eyre’s life, I realize that her life isn’t just her childhood and her adulthood. Although she didn’t have much of a life that a typical girl her age would have, her life was much more complex then being an orphan.
In this post, I choose to discuss the first and second stages of Jane Eyre’s life.
- Life at Gateshead
Our first contact with Jane Eyre when she is living with her Aunt Reed and her cousins, Georgiana, Eliza and John. Her relationship with all four of her family members reflects her personality. Living with her cold hearted and rotten Aunt Reed has influenced the way Jane is portrayed throughout the rest of the book: closed and harsh. For example, when Jane is condemned to the red room, where her Uncle Reed died years prior, she blows into an extreme temper tantrum, feeling a sense of loss, abandonment, and cruel punishment. All of those emotions in one little girl is too much for even an adult to handle. The outrage that Jane Eyre exemplified in the red room is one of the repercussions of being raised by the wealthy elite of the Victorian age when you yourself are poor with money and love. “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” (Bronte, 13). Sitting in the deadly red room, Jane realizes that when the lights go out, it’s all the same darkness. Either in the red room or in the nursery, the battle between Jane and Aunt Reed will be never-ending. She knows that throughout her life at Gateshead, she has and will always be treated as nothing to them. Jane can’t stand the thought of being secluded to the “red room”, where her only way to having a happy family died. Her Uncle Reed could have been someone who cared for her, but was unluckily taken away. When reading about the “red room”, its interesting to note the color choice that Bronte used. Red is known to be a symbol of passion and aggression. As I visualize the “red room”, I see all four walls painted with a deep, fiery red, with dark furniture and decor placed all around, but keeping the room open, for Jane’s thoughts to roam around. It’s a back and forth game for Jane, because in a sense of being “locked in” the red room, she is also “locked out”, as in isolated from the pain and cruelty that her Aunt forces towards Jane. Although Bessie and Abbot could be Jane’s one saving grace, they are blinded by Aunt Reed’s torturous actions.
When Jane is finally given an ultimatum, to enter this school for girls called Lowood, she wonders if her Uncle Reed is sending her an angel, that maybe he is watching over her as she has spent days in the “red room”. Little does she know, that maybe the things that are handed to us on a silver platter are not always the best things for us, or are they?
- Life at Lowood
After Jane was saved from the “gates of hell”, she was taken to her second dosage of hell, at Lowood. At least that is how Bronte describes Jane’s beginning experiences at Lowood. Even though she spent 9 years of her life there, in the beginning, I felt she hadn’t even left her Aunt Reed. Mr. Brocklehurst, the man that liberated Jane from Gateshead, resembles a chicken pot pie. On the outside, the potatoes and gravy are just delicious, but when you cut your fork down the middle, you have the green peas and all these vegetables that do not seem appetizing. Now that Jane is in a new environment, she needs time to adapt to the different surroundings. Think about it: she has never been around girls her age, let alone, children other than Georgiana, Eliza, and John. How hard do you think it was for Jane to get up the nerve to speak to another girl? Miraculously, Helen Burns arrives in her life, the one person that Jane was comfortable around and able to open up and find herself with. At this point of the story, Bronte illustrated the irony there is between Gateshead and Lowood. Jane leaves the only place that she ever known in life to start a new chapter in her depressing life. Once she gets to Lowood, it does not take long for her to realize that Lowood is the same as Gateshead, just more children, and her Aunt Reed is an older man with a beard named Mr. Brocklehurst. However, at both Gateshead and Lowood, Jane is viewed and feels like an outcast, not being able to blend with the rest of society because of the circumstances that embody her life. As her life at Lowood proceeds, she gets to know Helen Burns a little better than the others. The saying “opposites attract” fits nicely with the relationship between Helen and Jane. Helen is faithful to the Bible and everything written in it, she does not like to bend the rules because they are there to teach her what she needs to be taught. I see Helen Burns as very black and white, while I see Jane as seeing the gray areas. Also, Jane believes that you should stick up for what you believe in, and strongly disagrees with the idea of injustice. “Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear” (Bronte, 67). Here, Bronte is showing the distinct difference between Jane and Helen. Helen believes in fate and the power of love, and how it is impossible to change your fate because that makes you weak and powerless. Jane could not believe this because what Helen has seen in her life is entirely different from what Jane has endured in her lifetime. Jane remembers the events that happened at Gateshead so vividly that she can not put aside what she felt then, even though it is different from what she feels now. When Helen’s life moves on, Jane does not have a hard time dealing with the death. She now understands where Helen was coming from when she said all those things about accepting your fate.
One character that I have not mentioned yet is Miss Temple, who was one of the teachers at Lowood school. Although she did not play a big role, she was still an important person in Jane’s life. Ever since the beginning, Miss Temple has been there for Jane like Bessie and Abbot was there for her at Gateshead. While reading, I found this symbolic of someone always watching over Jane, somewhat as a motherly figure in her life. “...with her gone every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me” (Bronte, 106). When her time at Lowood came to an end, so did her time with Miss Temple. This seems like a theme throughout the whole story. Once Jane finds some stability in her life, it is soon taken away from her like Helen was taken away from her years past. However, she does not weep for the ones that she lost, she accepts her fate and moves on to a new chapter of her life.
After the death of her dear friend, Lowood began changing for the good. It was almost like Helen sending a message down to Earth, insisting that Lowood change for her good friend, Jane. Mr. Brocklehurst was has no more ties to the school and is now run by a new organization that influences Jane to stay for another 6 years and teach for 2 years. That experience led her to her new job as a governess at Thornfield manor.
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