Red Room In Jane Eyre

We first see Jane; vulnerable and lonely at Gateshead, where the orphaned little girl resides with her bitter widowed aunt and her children. Jane is sent to the ‘Red Room’ for retaliating when her

First, he uses an example when Jane Eyre is situated in Gateshead. In this particular conflict, Aunt Reed is the harsh oppressor, as she consistently punishes Jane Eyre, yet Jane is able to resist this brutal punishment. Aunt Reed continues to punish Jane when she exiles Jane into Lowood Institution, the school for poor and orphaned children. Although this first example demonstrates the struggle Jane faces between ‘fire’ and ‘water,’ a more powerful situation would be when Jane is thrown into the red-room at Gateshead. This example not only shows Jane’s ‘fire’ symbolically, but most importantly, literally. The red-room in Gateshead is where Mr. Reed died, and all of the furnishings in the room are decorated red, including the carpet. It is apparent that red symbolizes fire in this situation. In addition, Jane acts aggressive when she is locked in the red-room, “…you thrust me back – roughly and violently thrust me back into the red-room, and locked me up there…” (Brontë 45). Jane panics when she realizes she is trapped in the room, so she first demonstrates her ‘fire’ when she screams and bangs violently on the door. She continues to yell when Bessie and Abbot enter, pleading them to allow her to exit. In the end, Jane demonstrates the ‘water’ aspect. After a sever punishment, Jane is submissive and remains quiet.

In 1866, the press continued to provide coverage of the event and defended the former Governor because he protected the colonial order. One June 23, 1866, the Spectator defended the governor because “he threw himself into crushing the rising, and crushed it… to prevent injustices to the negroes, as he was to prevent injustice by the negroes.” Conservative sentiment sided with Eyre because he suppressed a rebellion that hurt British men and women. It was the Governor’s duty to protect the interest of the people because he worked through a struggle of “race, he was as much bounded to control the cruelty of the power in the ascendant, as to punish the violence of the wretched people who had tried in vain to get the upper hand.” The issue of race remained central to defending the Governor because it helped the masses understand why the politician acted in such a harsh manner. Additionally, the Jamaica Committee continued to press the public about their beliefs and this created further sympathy for Eyre. While the committee centered their arguments on the notion of law and colonial dependencies, Carlyle utilized the public’s fear of another race rebellion that would hurt the colonial order. Meanwhile, Mills firmly believed that “equality among the races” came before that of the law, because the law needed to protect blacks within the system. This also correlated with Mill’s notion of civilization

Throughout the book Jane Eyre, the protagonist Jane goes through a variety of stages in her life where the setting/environment of where she lives in forms a part of her character and who she becomes as a person. The first setting in the novel is the Reed family’s home in Gateshead, England. As an orphan with no parents, she is taken in by Mrs. Reed who promised the late Mr.Reed to take care of Jane. Playing the role of the “mean stepmother”, Mrs. Reed as well as all of her cousins John, Eliza and Georgiana treat her as if she was a lowly, undeserving girl. At the fragile age of ten, Jane develops an almost rebellious character and has a lot of anger built inside of her because of feeling wronged by the unfortunate deeds of the Reed family that drives her to become lonely and miserable as a child. Being locked up in the red room also gave her a superstitious side that also proves as a part of the prejudices that form around her when people don’t

Through a close reading of the selected passage of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, a reader can see that Jane attempts to separate herself from her decisions by personifying her emotions and giving them a specific voice, which strongly reflects the societal views of the time. At this point in the story, Jane has discovered, on her wedding day, that Mr. Rochester is still married to a woman named Bertha, and that woman still lives in his house. Distraught, Jane locks herself in her room and tries to decide what she should do. When she wakes up the next day, she is again confronted with what she needs to do in the wake of her discovery.

Throughout Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre is afflicted with the feud between her moral values, and the way society perceives these notions. Jane ultimately obtains her happy ending, and Brontë’s shrewd denouement of St. John’s fate juxtaposes Jane’s blissful future with St. John’s tragic course of action. When Jane ends up at the Moor House, she is able to discover a nexus of love and family, and by doing so, she no longer feels fettered to Rochester. Moreover, Rochester is no longer Jane’s only form of psychological escape, and thus Jane is in a position to return to him without an aura of discontent. At the end of the novel, Jane is finally able to be irrevocably “blest beyond what language can express” (Brontë 459) because she is “absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh” (459).

Once Jane is locked in the red room in chapter two, she is able to reflect on everything that just happened. The red room is the chamber where Jane’s kind uncle died; he took her to Gateshead when her parents died. This shows Jane’s strength of character. Most children would be frightened and would be screaming with fear to be let out of this cold, haunted and dark chamber that they had been locked in. But Jane thinks about it rationally, ‘’superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory’’. This also proves that Jane believes in superstition and clings onto a magical world. But after a while in the red room Jane does become terrified and begins to convince herself that something is going to

Although the isolation that defines much of Jane Eyre’s life seems only alienating, it also proves to be enriching, for Jane uses that isolation as a basis to truly appreciate the love she discovers when her family is revealed to her after she gains a large inheritance from a distant relative. She would not have been able to truly find and value the love in her family if not for the despair experienced early in life, as that despair led her to her family. She uses her loneliness to gather strength when it is most needed, allowing her to totally heal from the trauma of the red-room and enjoy the eternal warmth her new loving life

Jane endured a harsh life in the home of her guardian, her cruel aunt Mrs. Reed. One of the punishments that Jane remembers immensely is her internment in the isolated and abandoned red-room, formerly belonging to Jane’s deceased uncle. Jane is forced to inhabit the chamber on her own while she is in a state of pain and fury. As the night begins to fall, the red-room begins to have an effect on Jane as the lonesome aspect of the room and its supernatural qualities begin to take their toll on Jane’s imagination. Jane begin to recall on the red-room, “I had heard what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr.

Jane has visions and day dreams since she was a child. The ‘Red Room’ is the place where Jane starts having visions, she has one of a strange figure when she had been locked in the red room by her Aunt Reed; “…the strange

Jane would not like to be poor as poverty is looked down upon and equivalent to being an immoral and degraded human being. For Jane to be a respectable woman in society she must remain with the Reeds. John acknowledges Jane’s dependency: “You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, momma says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg and not to live here with gentleman's children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at out mamma’s expense (14).” Jane is continuously reminded of her inferior position at Gateshead and powerless dependency to people that do not even love her. At this early age Jane has already been integrated into Victorian society as negative notions about the poor have been internalized. Born the daughter of a poor clergyman, Jane is believed to be of lesser value than the Reeds; however, she has passionate tendencies and is unable to control her emotions when necessary.When being abused by John and accusing him of being “like a murderer” (14) she is described as being a “picture of passion (15).” Jane must learn to temper her “fire” because untamed emotions have consequences. Her consequence comes when she is imprisoned in the red room, a visual representation of the intense emotions that have manifested in

Although Bertha’s seclusion is a result of her insanity and unacceptable behaviour, Jane’s isolation seems to be the cause of some mental illness, throwing her into a panic attack in the red room where she believes her Uncle Reed’s ghost dwells. It must be noted, though, that Jane is a child at this point in the novel, with an active imagination. Bronte may be making a point then, that children should not be shunned for their inventiveness and imagination, as was so common in her day. However, there is a fine line, and socially acceptable age, that separates a healthy imagination from madness. There is a clear lack of this knowledge in Bertha, whom does not appear to have a firm grip on reality. Madness, however, does not merely deal with concepts of reality in “Jane Eyre.” Jane has bouts of uncontrollable speech, in which she must say what comes to her mind. Jane first loses control of her tongue in chapter IV, in which she accuses Mrs. Reed of wishing her dead, and later exclaims “I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare, I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed,” and goes on to evaluate the terrible treatment Mrs. Reed has given her, and the lack of love and compassion she has been shown while at Gateshead. In this instance, madness works in Jane’s favour. This temporary bout of mania allows Jane to finally express the

Some very distinct symbols in Jane Eyre were the red-room, and in relation to that, the character Bertha Mason

The pivotal moment that affected Jane Eyre’s outlook on life was due to her harsh upbringing by her aunt and her cousins. It is first introduced to the reader that Jane was adopted by her kind Uncle Reed, and his family, while Jane was sent to the red room as punishment and she was pondering about the past in order to pass time. The red room was a chamber, with décor that was almost all red, which could be locked from outside. The reason Jane was sent to the red room was because she had lashed out at her snobby and obnoxious cousin John Reed that on a regular basis would torment Jane. After years of pent up anger and frustration Jane couldn’t take it any longer. On regular occasion, she was outcast by her own family, although only she was only blood related to her deceased Uncle Reed and partly to his children. Before he had passed, Jane’s uncle had made a promise with his wife that she would raise Jane as if she were one of her own children. But, as time went on the Reed family’s

"red room" she is told by Miss Abbot: "No; you are less than a servant