Jane Eyre at Gateshead
The Importance of Jane's Childhood at Aunt Reed's.
Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman in which Bronte uses different settings to represent the different stages of Jane's life: the first of these is Gateshead.
Jane's early life is spent unhappily with her aunt and her cousins at their home, Gateshead. She is treated cruelly by her family, who resent her presence: her aunt had promised her dying husband that she would take care of Jane, but she does so begrudgingly, and encourages her own children - John, Eliza and Georgiana - to look down upon their cousin as being socially inferior to themselves.
The Red Room
One of the most famous incidents in the novel occurs at Gateshead, when Jane is unfairly locked in the Red Room by her Aunt Reed as a punishment for speaking back to John. The room is intimidating in itself: "a bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded" (chapter 2), but it is the history of the room that proves so alarming to an imaginative girl like Jane: "Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion" (chapter 2).
The darkness of the room is punctuated by ghostly shapes: "out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane" (chapter 2), and it is not long before Jane works herself into a state of anxiety. She begins to think about her dead uncle, and when she sees a light cross the wall and ceiling of the room, she "thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world".
Mr Brocklehurst
This incident is important to the novel as it demonstrates not only Jane's active imagination and belief in the supernatural, but also her family's great cruelty to her. However, in her dislike of her niece, Mrs Reed unwittingly provides Jane with her greatest start in life - sending her to school to receive an education. Jane's encounter with the odious Mr Brocklehurst in her Aunt's breakfast room, and the conversation with Mrs Reed that follows, clearly show her strength of character, and a spirit of self-worth that will serve her well later in life:
“'I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty' ” (chapter 4).
Jane is sent to Lowood school, a harsh and unforgiving environment, but an undeniable opportunity: some critics surmise, therefore, that Gateshead is so-called because it forms the gateway into Jane's future life.
Jane's Return to Gateshead
Jane does make one friend at Gateshead: the servant Bessie, who is the first person to really show any kindness to the young Jane. Bessie is the first of a number of important female role-models who show Jane that she is worthy of love and respect, and pre-empts the role of Miss Temple at Lowood.
When Jane returns to Gateshead as an adult to visit her dying aunt, we see how she has developed and grown in maturity - " 'How are you, dear aunt?' I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now" (chapter 21). Returning to the scene of her childhood unhappiness with such kindness and dignity is an effective reminder of the woman she has become.
Read about the life of Charlotte Bronte, Mr Rochester as a Byronic hero, and the use of Gothic and Supernatural in Jane Eyre.
