While you’re welcome to discuss anything you’d like in the first 15 chapters of Jane Eyre, here are some prompts to get you started thinking:
- Critical discussion of Jane Eyre often revolves around the 5 main houses Jane lives in over the course of the novel: Gateshead Hall, Lowood School, Thornfield Manor, Moor House, and Ferndean. In the reading for today, you’ve already been introduced to three of these houses. Choose one and discuss it. What does Jane learn there? What are her struggles? How does the house seem to fit with the Gothic format?
- Discuss the events and possible symbolism of the Red Room at Gateshead
- Examine the significance of Helen Burns or Miss Temple in the novel
- How are religious beliefs important in this opening third of the novel?
- Talk about Jane’s initial relationship with Mr. Rochester
From the first few pages of the book, I can see how it fits into or resembles the female gothic form through the detailed description of nature, the main, female protagonist’s love of reading, Jane being an orphan, the threat of a more powerful male presence on Jane, and Jane being imprisoned in a house by people who seek to limit her autonomy. I think it’s interesting to see how religious beliefs and the effect of anxiety on a child contribute to the paranormal aspect in the Red Room, as Bessie and Miss Abbott say Jane will be “punished by God.” Jane narrates that, logically, looking back on the Red Room, she did not see the light of a ghost but probably the reflection of a light carried by someone on the lawn. She says her mind was “prepared for horror” and her nerves were “shaken by agitation.” The stress of her circumstances leads to her break at this light which she would normally disregard. I feel this episode is triggered by her seeing her reflection in the mirror and being forced to see herself as something that resembles the villains in the stories she’s been told because of the bad state she’s in. This reminds me of Frankenstein’s creature, turned into a monster because of how badly he’s been treated. One of the main themes of Frankenstein, as discussed in presentations last class, is the horror of how Romanticism contradicts itself in that love is limited. In Jane’s case, alike to the creature’s, she is treated badly because she is different and othered by her aunt and family and is told over and over again that she is wicked, despite her actions being more honorable than her cousins. It’s interesting that this theme of being treated like a monster despite your actions is shared in Frankenstein.
In the book, the Red Room is where Jane would be sent by her aunt after misbehaving and getting into a fight with her cousin. The room, as described, is almost entirely red with only specs of white. This gives the room an almost suffocating effect, and naturally makes Jane feel trapped and swallowed by the atmosphere. Jane describes the room as ‘chill, silent and solemn,’ and it can also be argued that this is how she feels around masculine patriarchal figures. She knows her place in society as a woman is imprisoning, as is the room. This is further exemplified since the reason she was originally sent to the room was due to a ‘powerful man’ being believed over her.
I have done a lot of research on this book, and I know that many critics argue that the red room also can symbolize female anatomy (the womb) which precedes and foreshadows the general theme of coming into womanhood, growing up through a feminine lens, and what that means. Her being alone in the red suffocating room could be viewed as Jane in-utero, as if she were inside the womb. Once Jane leaves Gateshead, this could represent her being ‘born’ into the world and beginning her journey of adolescence into adulthood.
How Jane Eyre was raised and treated at Gateshead Hall is extremely importance and can be connected to later themes/aspects of the novel. Jane is verbally and physically abused by the Reed’s and therefore has no real example of what love should look like. She does not even know how to receive love which in turn reinforces the ideal that she is undeserving and unworthy of love. However, Jane does learn how to stand up for herself before she leaves Gateshead. She confronts Mrs. Reed for how she treated Jane and the falsities in her depiction of Jane to Mr. Brocklehurst. This abusive treatment by the Reeds adds to Jane’s longing for a companion and to be rid of the hypocritical character of those who surround her. In conversation with gothic themes, Gateshead hall can be seen with Gothic attributes but in a different way. Both of Jane’s parents have died which is not an uncommon theme for the Gothic but what is interesting in the next household that Jane is apart of as an absent father figure, not mother. Additionally, the usual abusive father figure role goes to the son of Mrs. Reed who is only four years older than Jane.
It is evident that all the places Jane Eyre lives throughout the story have meaning and represent her journey. Gateshead hall is the first stop in that journey, and the name reflects that; the “gate” to the rest of the story. However, this is a place in which Jane does not have a pleasant experience and is pretty much bullied by every member of the household in some manner. This is also where she is imprisoned in the red room, which could also suggest a different meaning to “Gateshead”, giving it a more negative connotation. Jane obviously experiences a lot of trauma at Gateshead, which sets up a lot of other events in the story. An example of this trauma is when Jane is locked in the red room; “My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated…” (17). Jane is clearly terrified here, and this shows how cruelly she was treated. Gateshead is also where Jane begins to learn rebellion and resistance, and begins to harbor anger. This is important for her development, especially when she goes to Lowood school and has to unlearn her hate and rebellious nature, and where Helen Burns tries to reach her the right way to act.
While I have been enjoying a lot of aspects of reading Jane Eyre so far, I think one of the elements of the novel that has interested me the most is the way that Jane navigates the world and how that is impacted by her very limited and harsh experiences. I feel like with Catherine Morland and Emily St. Aubert and even Victor Frankenstein, none of them had lived through any long-term extenuating circumstances in the way that Jane has, even though Emily and Victor lost one or both of their parents, besides that their lives were generally pleasant up until the later parts of their respective novels. Jane, however, has only known abuse and neglect and monotony from the world, and it is interesting to see how, especially in her interactions with Mr Rochester in the early stages of her tenure as governess, her actions and thoughts and manners of speech are informed by her lived experience in a way that we haven’t really seen with the Gothic protagonists so far
In Jane Eyre, the Red Room at Gateshead in my eyes is one of the more crucial moments that take place in the novel. To me it symbolizes Jane’s oppression, isolation, and conflicting emotions. The scene occurs right after ten year old Jane fights back against her cruel cousin, John Reed. Jane at this time is living with her nasty aunt, Mrs. Reed, and it is she who unjustly punishes Jane by locking her up in the Red Room where her uncle, Mr. Reed, had died years prior. This moment marks Jane’s first intense experience with fear, injustice, and the supernatural.
The Red Room’s imagery is rich with symbolism. The dominant red tones—crimson curtains, a plush red carpet, and a deep red chair—evoke themes of passion, anger, and entrapment. Red can also symbolize Jane’s fiery spirit, which society seeks to repress. The room’s association with death and ghosts reflects Jane’s internal struggle with abandonment and powerlessness. The idea that Mr. Reed’s spirit might haunt the room suggests Jane’s subconscious yearning for protection and justice, as he was the only family member who treated her kindly.
Ultimately, the Red Room foreshadows Jane’s lifelong battle against oppression. It highlights the rigid class and gender structures that we can safely assume she’ll challenge throughout the novel. Her suffering in the Red Room becomes a defining moment, shaping her deep sense of justice.
Jane is sent to the red room at the beginning of the book after her cousin John had attacked her. When he went to attack her again, she tried to defend herself when two maids pulled her away and sent her to the room. While in the room she sees a light flickering and determines that it must be a lantern that someone is holding in the yard. She then looks to the window and sees a figure, describing eyes and a face. She believes this to be her uncles ghost and faints from fear. The red room symbolizes confinement and enhances her fears of the room while being locked away. The red room scene is important because this is the beginning of her coming to age and story and realizing how wicked the Reed family is to her. This room also symbolizes the power Jane holds and how she has very little of it in this house but also the power that women had in this time period. They are expected to be gentle and complacent. When Jane “acts out”, what little power she had, if any, is taken away from her. Jane is also sent to this room because Mrs Reed knows she fears it, as does everyone in the house, so by sending Jane there it shows how she is not respected and is essentially tortured in the house.
The second house that Jane lives in is Lowood School. The school is a charity school mainly for orphans or children with at least one dead parent. She is sent away here by the Reed’s for being perceived as difficult and naughty.
During her time at Lowood, Jane begins to formulate her understanding of justice and what she believes to be right and wrong. She accidentally drops a slate and is humiliated in front of the entire school by Mr. Brocklehurst. He accuses her of being a liar and condemns her to stand alone and have no one talk to her. Jane is irate over the matter and feels a strong sense of justice. Her friend Helen lets her know that she will not be unliked and that she is on her side.Later, Jane is given the chance to clear her name by Miss Temple. For seemingly the first time in her life, Jane is able to explain herself and is met with empathy rather than punishment.
As for the physical attributes of the house, it is often described by Jane as being dreary and unkept. At one point, the bedroom shared by all the girls is so cold that the water for washing freezes up. Jane never feels fed quite enough and is often cold. Later on during her stay, many girls catch typhus and die – including her closest friend Helen. The dreary architecture, the dark masculine presence of Mr. Brocklehurst, and all of the deaths help paint the typical archetype of the Female Gothic.
For my discussion today, I would like to examine the first house that we encounter in Jane Eyre, Gateshead Hall. The way I would characterize this house is summed up in the word “absence.” In many ways, although it is a large and stately residence, it is empty. It is devoid of the less tangible things that made a house a home. This is seen initially through the idea of emptiness we get in the presence of vacant rooms in the house, particularly the red room. With red, we can infer a connection to the concept of love, a further important absence in the house. It is empty of any of the joys stemming from love and affection for Jane that should characterize a home. Thus, the building becomes simply a shell and further a place of torment. Absence is further finally seen, and the absence of the parental figures that Jane so desires. While her parents are dead, she does have a surrogate mother. However, she is of course further absent in her affection or desire to be a motherly figure for Jane. Jane pines, after the loss of her uncle, in whom she maintains a belief in a better father figure, but one who is certainly absent. This connects cleanly with the Gothic format in its display of the absence of parental figures for Jane and the portrayal of a domestic space as a hostile environment.
For my discussion today, I actually want to discuss something that is not part of the prompts. To begin, I had read this book previously in my sophomore year of high school and never paid much mind to what I’m about to talk about. Anyway, upon reading the first section of the novel, I cannot help but notice the parallels between Jane and the fairytale princess Cinderella. Jane is an orphan, just like Cinderella, and was raised in a house by an “evil” woman; in Jane’s case being, her aunt. Jane was not made to be a servant within the house, as Cinderella was, yet faced similar levels of abuse as Cinderella did, because she was seen as useless in the eyes of the Reeds, not a part of the family even, and was consistently both physically and mentally abused by them. Another parallel to Cinderella is the fact that Jane finds a sort of maternal comfort wherever she can find it, in Bessie at the beginning and Ms. Temple later on in the volume, similar to how Cinderella looked to her fairy godmother for guidance. A line that I found to stand out to me was when Jane said, “…human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection… It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation” (Brontë 28). I think it’s interesting to see how despite the situation she was living in, she still found it important to at least care for something, which can be another similarity to Cinderella. Even though Jane proves to be more outspoken and rebellious than the princess, the similarities between the two are interesting to reflect upon.
The beginning of the story is a cliche to gothic literature. I found it to share common elements with other novels of its kind. Jane’s first home, Gateshead, holds characteristics of the common gothic classics: a seemingly large estate, a backyard garden area that is spacious from the rest of the property, and above all else a red room that held Jane’s deceased uncle in his final days, which Jane finds daunting.
As for Jane’s situation inside the household, it is not pleasant but rather indignant. Her aunt, Mrs. Reed, is an objectively vile woman who favors her children as pure and angelic, incapable of inflicting any harm. Her son is Jane’s primary aggressor, clouting her at the beginning of the story for any minute reasons. The daughters Eliza and Georgiana are capacious. These three siblings all share a characteristic of artifice and directing blame onto poor Jane.
Finally we get to our heroine. Jane is described as a caviler, who is dishonest and indolent and everything else unpleasant to be referred to as. She is mistreated by her inherited family, and is often alone doing chores or something other, and is at times in an apoplectic bitterness, and only learns to resent authoritative figures. She is trapped, which is another shared characteristic in the female gothic.
One of the first things that comes to mind in terms of the symbolism present in the red room is that of Jane’s rebellious spirit. The bright, dramatic colors present in the room seem to reflect the blossoming emotional rebellion that she experiences when locked inside in retaliation for speaking against the Reeds, as well as the bright red blood of the injury she sustains before she is sent there. These events are a catalyst of Jane understanding and coming to terms with her alienation from the Reed family, and the red room feels as if it holds the culmination of her resentment towards them. She even believes that the only member of the Reed family that would have treated her kindly is the late Mr. Reed, whose spirit she imagines rising up in anger for her mistreatment and enacting vengeance upon those who had wronged her. I think of the overbearing red decor of the room to represent this anger and oppression as well as her suffering, while the small pieces of white are the indomitable spirit and willpower that resist it. Jane feels suffocated by the room and its energy, much like how the Reed family is suffocating her and her spirit– however, she refuses to be suffocated for good, soon fainting and finding herself returned to her own bed.