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重新安装浏览器，或使用别的浏览器国芳多语对照文库：[英汉对照]《简爱》（夏洛蒂·勃朗特） Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
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普通版（General
CHAPTER I&&&&&&&&&&
There was no possibility of
taking a walk that day.& We had been wandering,
indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the
but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was
no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had
brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so
penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now
out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked
long walks, especially on chilly afternoons:
dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw
twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart
saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and
humbled by the consciousness of my physical
inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and
Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the
drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the
fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the
time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked
perfectly happy.& Me, she had dispensed from
saying, “She regretted to be
under the necessity of keep but
that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover
by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in
good earnest to acquire a more sociable and
childlike disposition, a more attractive and
sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more
natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from
privileges intended only for contented, happy,
little children.”
“What does Bessie say I have
done?” I asked.
“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or
besides, there is something truly
forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that
manner.& B and until you can
speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the
drawing-room, I slipped in there.& It contained
a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume,
taking care that it should be one stored with
pictures.& I mounted into the window-seat:
gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a
T and, having drawn the red moreen curtain
nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in
my vi to the left were the
clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating
me from the drear November day.& At intervals,
while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied
the aspect of that winter afternoon.& Afar, it
offered a pale bla near a scene
of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless
rain sweeping away wildly before a long and
lamentable blast.
I returned to my book—Bewick’s
History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I
cared little for, and yet there
were certain introductory pages that, child as I
was, I could not pass quite as a blank.& They
were those which treat of the haunts of sea- of
“the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only
of the coast of Norway, studded with
isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or
Naze, to the North Cape—
“Where the Northern Ocean,
in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest T and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
Nor could I pass unnoticed the
suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia,
Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with
“the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those
forlorn regions of dreary space,—that reservoir of
frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the
accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in
Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and
concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.”&
Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my
own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions
that float dim through children’s brains, but
strangely impressive.& The words in these
introductory pages connected themselves with the
succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the
rock standing up alone in a sea
to the broken boat stranded to
the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of
cloud at a wreck just sinking.
I cannot tell what sentiment
haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its
its gate, its two trees, its
low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its
newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of
The two ships becalmed on a
torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.
The fiend pinning down the
thief’s pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it
was an object of terror.
So was the black horned thing
seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd
surrounding a gallows.
mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and
imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:
as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes
narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be
and when, having brought her
ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us
to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s
lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed
our eager attention with passages of love and
adventure taken from old fairy tales and other
or (as at a later period I discovered) from
the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.
With Bewick on my knee, I was
then happy: happy at least in my way.& I feared
nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.&
The breakfast-room door opened.
“Boh!& Madam Mope!” cried
the voice of John R then he paused: he found the
room apparently empty.
“Where the dickens is she!” he
continued.& “Lizzy!& Georgy! (calling to
his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run
out into the rain—bad animal!”
“It is well I drew the curtain,”
thought I; and I wished fervently he might not
discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have
he was not quick either of
but Eliza just put her head in
at the door, and said at once—
“She is in the window-seat, to
be sure, Jack.”
And I came out immediately, for
I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the
said Jack.
“What do you want?” I asked,
with awkward diffidence.
“Say, ‘What do you want, Master
Reed?’” was the answer.& “I want you to come
” and seating himself in an arm-chair, he
intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and
stand before him.
John Reed was a schoolboy of
four years older than I, for I
was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a
thick lineaments in a
spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities.&
He gorged himself habitually at table, which made
him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and
flabby cheeks.& He ought now to have been at
but his mama had taken him home for a month
or two, “on account of his delicate health.”&
Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do
very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent
but the mother’s heart turned from an
opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more
refined idea that John’s sallowness was owing to
over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.
John had not much affection for
his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me.&
He bul not two or three times
in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but
continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every
morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came
near.& There were moments when I was bewildered
by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal
whatever against either his menaces or his
the servants did not like to offend
their young master by taking my part against him,
and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she
never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though
he did both now and then in her very presence, more
frequently, however, behind her back.
Habitually obedient to John, I
came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in
thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could
without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon
strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the
disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would
presently deal it.& I wonder if he read that
for, all at once, without
speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly.& I
tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired
back a step or two from his chair.
“That is for your impudence in
answering mama awhile since,” said he, “and for your
sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the
look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you
Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse,
I never had an id my care was
how to endure the blow which would certainly follow
the insult.
“What were you doing behind the
curtain?” he asked.
“I was reading.”
“Show the book.”
I returned to the window and
fetched it thence.
“You have no business to take
you are a dependent, you have
you ought to
beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children
like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear
clothes at our mama’s expense.& Now, I’ll teach
you to rummage my bookshelves: for they are
all the house belongs to me, or will do in a
few years.& Go and stand by the door, out of
the way of the mirror and the windows.”
I did so, not at first aware
wh but when I saw him lift and
poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I
instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not
soon enough, the volume was flung, it hit
me, and I fell, striking my head against the door
and cutting it.& The cut bled, the pain was
sharp: my terror h other
feelings succeeded.
“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said.&
“You are like a murderer—you are like a
slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors!”
I had read Goldsmith’s History
of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero,
Caligula, &c.& Also I had drawn parallels in
silence, which I never thought thus to have declared
“What! what!” he cried.&
“Did she say that to me?& Did you hear her,
Eliza and Georgiana?& Won’t I tell mama? but
He ran headlong at me: I felt
him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed
with a desperate thing.& I really saw in him a
tyrant, a murderer.& I felt a drop or two of
blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was
sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these
sensations for the time predominated over fear, and
I received him in frantic sort.& I don’t very
well know what I did with my hands, but he called me
“Rat!& Rat!” and bellowed out aloud.& Aid
was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs.
Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came upon the
scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot.&
We were parted: I heard the words—
“Dear! dear!& What a fury
to fly at Master John!”
“Did ever anybody see such a
picture of passion!”
Then Mrs. Reed subjoined—
“Take her away to the red-room,
and lock her in there.”& Four hands were
immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.
CHAPTER II
I resisted all the way: a new
thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly
strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot
were disposed to entertain of me.& The fact is,
or rather out
of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious
that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me
liable to strange penalties, and, like any other
rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to
go all lengths.
“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot:
she’s like a mad cat.”
“For shame! for shame!” cried
the lady’s-maid.& “What shocking conduct, Miss
Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your
benefactress’s son!& Your young master.”
“Master!& How is he my
master?& Am I a servant?”
“No; you are less than a
servant, for you do nothing for your keep.&
There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”
They had got me by this time
into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed, and had
thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from
their two pair of hands arrested
me instantly.
“If you don’t sit still, you
must be tied down,” said Bessie.& “Miss Abbot,
she would break mine
directly.”
Miss Abbot turned to divest a
stout leg of the necessary ligature.& This
preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy
it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of
“Don’t take them off,” I
“I will not stir.”
In guarantee whereof, I attached
myself to my seat by my hands.
“Mind you don’t,” said B
and when she had ascertained that I was really
subsiding, she loo then she and
Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly
and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my
“She never did so before,” at
last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.
“But it was always in her,” was
the reply.& “I’ve told Missis often my opinion
about the child, and Missis agreed with me.&
She’s an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl
of her age with so much cover.”
long, addressing me, she said—“You ought to be
aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs.
Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off,
you would have to go to the poorhouse.”
I had nothing to say to these
words: they were not new to me: my very first
recollections of existence included hints of the
same kind.& This reproach of my dependence had
become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and
crushing, but only half intelligible.& Miss
Abbot joined in—
“And you ought not to think
yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and
Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be
brought up with them.& They will have a great
deal of money, and you will have none: it is your
place to be humble, and to try to make yourself
agreeable to them.”
“What we tell you is for your
good,” added Bessie, in no harsh voice, “you should
try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you
wo but if you become passionate
and rude, Missis will send you away, I am sure.”
“Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God
will punish her: He might strike her dead in the
midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go?&
Come, Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her
heart for anything.& Say your prayers, Miss
Eyre, when for if you don’t
repent, something bad might be permitted to come
down the chimney and fetch you away.”
They went, shutting the door,
and locking it behind them.
The red-room was a square
chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never,
indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at
Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to
account all the accommodation it contained: yet it
was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in
the mansion.& A bed supported on massive
pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red
damask, stood out like a tabe
the two large windows, with their blinds always
drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls
the table at
the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson
the walls were a soft fawn colour with a
the wardrobe, the toilet-table,
the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.&
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.&
Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned
easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white,
with a and looking, as I
thought, like a pale throne.
This room was chill, because it
it was silent, because remote
from the solemn, because it was
known to be so seldom entered.& The house-maid
alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the
mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust: and
Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to
review the contents of a certain secret drawer in
the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments,
her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased
and in those last words lies the secret of
the red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in
spite of its grandeur.
Mr. Reed had been dead nine
years: it was in this chamber
hence his coffin was borne by
the undertaker’ and, since that day, a sense
of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent
intrusion.
My seat, to which Bessie and the
bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low
ottoman near the marble chimney- the bed rose
to my right hand there was the high, dark
wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying
the to my left were the muffled
a great looking-glass between them repeated
the vacant majesty of the bed and room.& I was
not quite sure whether they and
when I dared move, I got up and went to see.&
Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure.&
Returning, I had to cross before the looking-
my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the
depth it revealed.& All looked colder and
darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and
the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a
white face and arms specking the gloom, and
glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was
still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it
like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp,
Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out
of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before
the eyes of belated travellers.& I returned to
Superstition was with me at that
but it was not yet her hour for complete
victory: my
the mood of the
revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter
I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective
thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
All John Reed’s violent
tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all
his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality,
turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit
in a turbid well.& Why was I always suffering,
always browbeaten, always accused, for ever
condemned?& Why could I never please?& Why
was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?&
Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was
respected.& Georgiana, who had a spoiled
temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent
carriage, was universally indulged.& Her
beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to
give delight to all who looked at her, and to
purchase indemnity for every fault.& John no
one thwarted, though he twisted
the necks of the pigeons, killed the little
pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the
hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds
off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he
called his mother “old girl,” sometimes reviled
her for her dark skin, bluntly
di not unfrequently tore and
spo and he was still “her own
darling.”& I dared commit no fault: I strove to
and I was termed naughty and
tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon,
and from noon to night.
My head still ached and bled
with the blow and fall I had received: no one had
reproved John for
and because
I had turned against him to avert farther irrational
violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.
“Unjust!—unjust!” said my
reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into
precocious though transitory power: and Resolve,
equally wrought up, instigated some strange
expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be
effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting
myself die.
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
now, at the distance of—I will not say how
many years, I see it clearly.
I was a discord in Gateshead
Hall: I w I had nothing in
harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her
chosen vassalage.& If they did not love me, in
fact, as little did I love them.& They were not
bound to regard with affection a thing that could
not sympathise w a
heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament,
in capacity, a useless thing,
incapable of serving their interest, or adding to
a noxious thing, cherishing the
germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt
of their judgment.& I know that had I been a
sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child—though equally dependent and
friendless—Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence
her children would have
entertained for me more of the cordiality of
fellow- the servants would have been less
prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.
Daylight began to forsake the
red- it was past four o’clock, and the
beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.&
I heard the rain still beating continuously on the
staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove
I grew by degrees cold as a stone,
and then my courage sank.& My habitual mood of
humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell
damp on the embers of my decaying ire.& All
said I was wicked, and perhaps I what
thought had I been but just conceiving of starving
myself to death?& That certainly was a crime:
and was I fit to die?& Or was the vault under
the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne?&
In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie
and led by this thought to recall his idea,
I dwelt on it with gathering dread.& I could
but I knew that he was my own
uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when
a parentless and that in his
last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed
that she would rear and maintain me as one of her
own children.& Mrs. Reed probably considered
she h and so she had, I dare
say, as well as her nat but how
could she really like an interloper not of her race,
and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death,
by any tie?& It must have been most irksome to
find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand
in the stead of a parent to a strange child she
could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien
permanently intruded on her own family group.
A singular notion dawned upon
me.& I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr.
Reed had been alive he would ha
and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and
overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a
fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror—I
began to recall 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
and I thought Mr.
Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his
sister’s child, might quit its abode—whether in the
church vault or in the unknown world of the
departed—and rise before me in this chamber.& I
wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any
sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural
voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some
haloed face, bending over me with strange pity.&
This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be
terrible if realised: with all my might I
endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm.&
Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and
tried to look boldly at this
moment a light gleamed on the wall.& Was it, I
asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some
aperture in the blind?& No; moonlight was
still, while I gazed, it glided up
to the ceiling and quivered over my head.& I
can now conjecture readily that this streak of light
was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern
carried by some one across the lawn: but then,
prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my
nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift
darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from
another world.& My heart beat thick, my head
a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the
some I was
oppressed, suffocated:
rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate
effort.& Steps came running along the outer
the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.
“Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said
“What a dreadful noise! it went
quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot.
“Take me out!& Let me go
into the nursery!” was my cry.
“What for?& Are you hurt?&
Have you seen something?” again demanded Bessie.
“Oh!& I saw a light, and I
thought a ghost would come.”& I had now got
hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it
“She has screamed out on
purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust.&
“And what a scream!& If she had been in great
pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted
to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks.”
“What is all this?” demanded
anothe and Mrs. Reed came along
the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling
stormily.& “Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave
orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-room
till I came to her myself.”
“Miss Jane screamed so loud,
ma’am,” pleaded Bessie.
“Let her go,” was the only
answer.& “Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you
cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be
assured.& I abhor artifice, particularly in
it is my duty to show you that tricks will
not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer,
and it is only on condition of perfect submission
and stillness that I shall liberate you then.”
“O aunt! have pity!&
Forgive me!& I cannot endure it—let me be
punished some other way!& I shall be killed
“Silence!& This violence is
all most repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she felt it.&
I was a precocious she
sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent
passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.
Bessie and Abbot having
retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now frantic
anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and
locked me in, without farther parley.& I heard
and soon after she was gone, I
suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness
closed the scene.
CHAPTER III
The next thing I remember is,
waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful
nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red
glare, crossed with thick black bars.& I heard
voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if
muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation,
uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of
terror confused my faculties.& Ere long, I
became aware that some lifting
me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and
that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or
upheld before.& I rested my head against a
pillow or an arm, and felt easy.
In five minutes more the cloud
of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite well that I
was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the
nursery fire.& It was night: a candle burnt on
Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin
in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my
pillow, leaning over me.
I felt an inexpressible relief,
a soothing conviction of protection and security,
when I knew that there was a stranger in the room,
an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not
related to Mrs. Reed.& Turning from Bessie
(though her presence was far less obnoxious to me
than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been),
I scrutinised the face of the gentleman: I
it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in
by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for
herself and the children she employed a physician.
“Well, who am I?” he asked.
I pronounced his name, offering
him at the same time my hand: he took it, smiling
and saying, “We shall do very well by-and-by.”&
Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie, charged
her to be very careful that I was not disturbed
during the night.& Having given some further
directions, and intimates that he should call again
the next day, to my grief: I felt so
sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair
and as he closed the door after him,
all the room darkened and my heart again sank:
inexpressible sadness weighed it down.
“Do you feel as if you should
sleep, Miss?” asked Bessie, rather softly.
Scarcely dared I for
I feared the next sentence might be rough.& “I
will try.”
“Would you like to drink, or
could you eat anything?”
“No, thank you, Bessie.”
“Then I think I shall go to bed,
for it is past twelve o’ but you may call me
if you want anything in the night.”
Wonderful civility this!&
It emboldened me to ask a question.
“Bessie, what is the matter with
me?& Am I ill?”
“You fell sick, I suppose, in
the red- you’ll be better soon, no
Bessie went into the housemaid’s
apartment, which was near.& I heard her say—
“Sarah, come and sleep with me
I daren’t for my life be alone with
that poor child to-night: it’s such a
strange thing she should have that fit: I wonder if
she saw anything.& Missis was rather too hard.”
they were whispering together for
half-an-hour before they fell asleep.& I caught
scraps of their conversation, from which I was able
only too distinctly to infer the main subject
discussed.
“Something passed her, all
dressed in white, and vanished”—“A great black dog
behind him”—“Three loud raps on the chamber door”—“A
light in the churchyard just over his grave,” &c.
At last both slept: the fire and
the candle went out.& For me, the watches of
that long night passed in
strained by dread: such dread as children only can
No severe or prolonged bodily
illness followed this incident of the red- it
only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the
reverberation to this day.& Yes, Mrs. Reed, to
you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering,
but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what
you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought
you were only uprooting my bad propensities.
Next day, by noon, I was up and
dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery
hearth.& I felt physically weak and broken
down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable
wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept
no sooner had I wiped
one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.&
Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none
of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in
the carriage with their mama.& Abbot, too, was
sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved
hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging
drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word
of unwonted kindness.& This state of things
should have been to me a paradise of peace,
accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand
a but, in fact, my racked
nerves were now in such a state that no calm could
soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.
Bessie had been down into the
kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a
certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of
paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and
rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most
enthusiastic and which plate I
had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my
hand in order to examine it more closely, but had
always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a
privilege.& This precious vessel was now placed
on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the
circlet of delicate pastry upon it.& Vain
favour! coming, like most other favours long
deferred and often wished for, too late!& I
co and the plumage of the bird,
the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I
put both plate and tart away.& Bessie asked if
I would have a book: the word book acted as a
transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch
Gulliver’s Travels from the library.& This book
I had again and again perused with delight.& I
considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered
in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in
fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them
in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under
mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old
wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the
sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to
some savage country where the woods were wilder and
thicker, and the p whereas,
Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid
parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I
might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my
own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the
diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds
and the corn-fields forest-high,
the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the
tower-like men and women, of the other.& Yet,
when this cherished volume was now placed in my
hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in
its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now,
never failed to find—all
giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent
and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer
in most dread and dangerous regions.& I closed
the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it
on the table, beside the untasted tart.
Bessie had now finished dusting
and tidying the room, and having washed her hands,
she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid
shreds of silk and satin, and began making a new
bonnet for Georgiana’s doll.& Meantime she
sang: her song was—
“In the days when we went
&& A long time ago.”
I had often heard the song
before, and always for Bessie
had a sweet voice,—at least, I thought so.& But
now, though her voice was still sweet, I found in
its melody an indescribable sadness.&
Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the
refrain very low, “A long time
ago” came out like the saddest cadence of a funeral
hymn.& She passed into another ballad, this
time a really doleful one.
“My feet they are sore, and
&& Long is the way, and th
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
&& Over the path of the poor orphan child.
Why did they send me so far
and so lonely,
&& Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
&& Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.
Yet distant and soft the
night breeze is blowing,
&& Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
&& Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.
Ev’n should I fall o’er the
broken bridge passing,
&& Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
&& Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.
There is a thought that for
strength should avail me,
&& Though both of shelter a
Heaven is a home, and a r
&& God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”
“Come, Miss Jane, don’t cry,”
said Bessie as she finished.& She might as well
have said to the fire, “don’t burn!” but how could
she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a
prey?& In the course of the morning Mr. Lloyd
came again.
“What, already up!” said he, as
he entered the nursery.& “Well, nurse, how is
Bessie answered that I was doing
very well.
“Then she ought to look more
cheerful.& Come here, Miss Jane: your name is
Jane, is it not?”
“Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.”
“Well, you have been crying,
Miss Jane E can you tell me what about?&
Have you any pain?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh!& I daresay she is
crying because she could not go out with Missis in
the carriage,” interposed Bessie.
“Surely not! why, she is too old
for such pettishness.”
self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I
answered promptly, “I never cried for such a thing
in my life: I hate going out in the carriage.&
I cry because I am miserable.”
“Oh fie, Miss!” said Bessie.
The good apothecary appeared a
little puzzled.& I was he
fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were
not very bright, but I dare say I
should think them shrewd now: he had a hard-featured
yet good-natured looking face.& Having
considered me at leisure, he said—
“What made you ill yesterday?”
“She had a fall,” said Bessie,
again putting in her word.
“Fall! why, that is like a baby
again!& Can’t she manage to walk at her age?&
She must be eight or nine years old.”
“I was knocked down,” was the
blunt explanation, jerked out of me by another pang
“but that did not make me ill,”
I while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch
As he was returning the box to
his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for the
servants’ he knew what it was.& “That’s
for you, nurse,” “ I’ll
give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back.”
Bessie would rather have stayed,
but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at
meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.
“The fall
what did, then?” pursued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was
“I was shut up in a room where
there is a ghost till after dark.”
I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown
at the same time.
“Ghost!& What, you are a
baby after all!& You are afraid of ghosts?”
“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he
died in that room, and was laid out there.&
Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at
night, and it was cruel to shut
me up alone without a candle,—so cruel that I think
I shall never forget it.”
“Nonsense!& And is it that
makes you so miserable?& Are you afraid now in
daylight?”
“No: but night will come again
before long: and besides,—I am unhappy,—very
unhappy, for other things.”
“What other things?& Can
you tell me some of them?”
How much I wished to reply fully
to this question!& How difficult it was to
frame any answer!& Children can feel, but they
cannot an and if the analysis
is partially effected in thought, they know not how
to express the result of the process in words.&
Fearful, however, of losing this first and only
opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it,
I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a
meagre, though, as far as it went, true response.
“For one thing, I have no father
or mother, brothers or sisters.”
“You have a kind aunt and
cousins.”
Again I then bunglingly
enounced—
“But John Reed knocked me down,
and my aunt shut me up in the red-room.”
Mr. Lloyd a second time produced
his snuff-box.
“Don’t you think Gateshead Hall
a very beautiful house?” asked he.& “Are you
not very thankful to have such a fine place to live
“It is not my house, and
Abbot says I have less right to be here than a
servant.”
“Pooh! you can’t be silly enough
to wish to leave such a splendid place?”
“If I had anywhere else to go, I
should but I can never get away
from Gateshead till I am a woman.”
“Perhaps you may—who knows?&
Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”
“I think not, sir.”
“None belonging to your father?”
“I don’t know.& I asked
Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might have
some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew
nothing about them.”
“If you had such, would you like
to go to them?”
I reflected.& Poverty looks
still more so to children:
they have not much idea of industrious, working,
they think of the word only as
connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless
grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty
for me was synonymous with degradation.
“No; I should not like to belong
to poor people,” was my reply.
“Not even if they were kind to
I shook my head: I could not see
how poor people had the and
then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their
manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of
the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their
children or washing their clothes at the cottage
doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not
heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of
“But are your relatives so very
poor?& Are they working people?”
“I Aunt Reed says
if I have any, they must be a beggarly set: I should
not like to go a begging.”
“Would you like to go to
Again I reflected: I scarcely
knew what school was: Bessie sometimes spoke of it
as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks,
wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly
genteel and precise: John Reed hated his school, and
but John Reed’s tastes were no
rule for mine, and if Bessie’s accounts of
school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of
a family where she had lived before coming to
Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of
certain accomplishments attained by these same young
ladies were, I thought, equally attractive.&
She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and
flow of songs they could sing
and pieces they could play, of purses they could
net, of French books
spirit was moved to emulation as I listened.&
Besides, school would be a complete change: it
implied a long journey, an entire separation from
Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.
“I should indeed like to go to
school,” was the audible conclusion of my musings.
“Well, well! who knows what may
happen?” said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up.& “The
child ought to have change of air and scene,” he
added, “nerves not in a good
B at the same
moment the carriage was heard rolling up the
gravel-walk.
“Is that your mistress, nurse?”
asked Mr. Lloyd.& “I should like to speak to
her before I go.”
Bessie invited him to walk into
the breakfast-room, and led the way out.& In
the interview which followed between him and Mrs.
Reed, I presume, from after-occurrences, that the
apothecary ventured to recommend my being sent to
and the recommendation was no doubt readily
for as Abbot said, in discussing the
subject with Bessie when both sat sewing in the
nursery one night, after I was in bed, and, as they
thought, asleep, “Missis was, she dared say, glad
enough to get rid of such a tiresome,
ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she
were watching everybody, and scheming plots
underhand.”& Abbot, I think, gave me credit for
being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.
On that same occasion I learned,
for the first time, from Miss Abbot’s communications
to Bessie, that my father had b
that my mother had married him against the wishes of
her friends, who considered t
that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her
disobedience, he cut her of
that after my mother and father had been married a
year, the latter caught the typhus fever while
visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing
town where his curacy was situated, and where that
disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the
infection from him, and both died within a month of
each other.
Bessie, when she heard this
narrative, sighed and said, “Poor Miss Jane is to be
pitied, too, Abbot.”
“Yes,” responded A “if she
were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate
but one really cannot care for such
a little toad as that.”
“Not a great deal, to be sure,”
agreed Bessie: “at any rate, a beauty like Miss
Georgiana would be more moving in the same
condition.”
“Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!”
cried the fervent Abbot.& “Little darling!—with
her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet
just as if she were
painted!—Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh rabbit for
“So could I—with a roast onion.&
Come, we’ll go down.”& They went.
CHAPTER IV
From my discourse with Mr.
Lloyd, and from the above reported conference
between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope
to suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a
change seemed near,—I desired and waited it in
silence.& It tarried, however: days and weeks
passed: I had regained my normal state of health,
but no new allusion was made to the subject over
which I brooded.& Mrs. Reed surveyed me at
times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me:
since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line
of separation than ever between me and her own
appointing me a small closet to sleep in
by myself, condemning me to take my meals alone, and
pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins
were constantly in the drawing-room.& Not a
hint, however, did she drop about sending me to
school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that
she would not long endure me under the same roof
for her glance, now more than ever, when
turned on me, expressed an insuperable and rooted
Eliza and Georgiana, evidently
acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as
possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek
whenever he saw me, and once at
but as I instantly turned against him, roused by the
same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt
which had stirred my corruption before, he thought
it better to desist, and ran from me tittering
execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose.&
I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as
hard a blow as my kn and when I
saw that either that or my look daunted him, I had
the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage
but he was already with his mama.&
I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale
of how “that nasty Jane Eyre” had flown at him like
a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly—
“Don’t talk to me about her,
John: I told yo she is not
I do not choose that either you or
your sisters should associate with her.”
Here, leaning over the banister,
I cried out suddenly, and without at all
deliberating on my words—
“They are not fit to associate
with me.”
Mrs. Reed was rather a stout
but, on hearing this strange and audacious
declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me
like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me
down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic
voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable
during the remainder of the day.
“What would Uncle Reed say to
you, if he were alive?” was my scarcely voluntary
demand.& I say scarcely voluntary, for it
seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my
will consenting to their utterance: something spoke
out of me over which I had no control.
“What?” said Mrs. Reed under her
breath: her usually cold composed grey eye became
troubled w she took her hand
from my arm, and gazed at me as if she really did
not know whether I were child or fiend.& I was
now in for it.
“My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and
and so can papa and
mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and
how you wish me dead.”
Mrs. Reed soon rallied her
spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed both
my ears, and then left me without a word.&
Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour’s
length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I
was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared
under a roof.& I for I felt
indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast.
November, December, and half of
January passed away.& Christmas and the New
Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual
presents had been interchanged,
dinners and evening parties given.& From every
enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of
the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily
apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana, and seeing them
descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin
muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair
el and afterwards, in listening
to the sound of the piano or the harp played below,
to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman,
to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments
were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as
the drawing-room door opened and closed.& When
tired of this occupation, I would retire from the
stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery: there,
though somewhat sad, I was not miserable.& To
speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into
company, for in company I was
and if Bessie had but been kind and companionable, I
should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings
quietly with her, instead of passing them under the
formidable eye of Mrs. Reed, in a room full of
ladies and gentlemen.& But Bessie, as soon as
she had dressed her young ladies, used to take
herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and
housekeeper’s room, generally bearing the candle
along with her.& I then sat with my doll on my
knee till the fire got low, glancing round
occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than
myself haun and when the embers
sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at
knots and strings as I best might, and sought
shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.& To
this crib I human beings must
love something, and, in the dearth of worthier
objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure
in loving and cherishing a faded graven image,
shabby as a miniature scarecrow.& It puzzles me
now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated
on this little toy, half fancying it alive and
capable of sensation.& I could not sleep unless
it was folded in my night- and when it lay
there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy,
believing it to be happy likewise.
Long did the hours seem while I
waited the departure of the company, and listened
for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs:
sometimes she would come up in the interval to seek
her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring me
something by way of supper—a bun or a
cheese-cake—then she would sit on the bed while I
ate it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the
clothes round me, and twice she kissed me, and said,
“Good night, Miss Jane.”& When thus gentle,
Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest
and I wished most intensely that
she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and
never push me about, or scold, or task me
unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do.&
Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good
natural capacity, for she was smart in all she did,
and had a remarkabl so, at
least, I judge from the impression made on me by her
nursery tales.& She was pretty too, if my
recollections of her face and person are correct.&
I remember her as a slim young woman, with black
hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear
but she had a capricious and hasty
temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or
justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to
any one else at Gateshead Hall.
It was the fifteenth of January,
about nine o’clock in the morning: Bessie was gone
my cousins had not yet been
su Eliza was putting on her
bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her
poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and
not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper
and hoarding up the money she thus obtained.&
She had a turn for traffic, and a marked propensity
shown not only in the vending of eggs
and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with
the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of
that functionary having orders from Mrs.
Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of
her parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would
have sold the hair off her head if she could have
made a handsome profit thereby.& As to her
money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped
in a rag or an old curl- but some of these
hoards having been discovered by the housemaid,
Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued
treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at
a usurious rate of interest—fifty or sixty per
cent.; which interest she exacted every quarter,
keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious
Georgiana sat on a high stool,
dressing her hair at the glass, and interweaving her
curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of
which she had found a store in a drawer in the
attic.& I was making my bed, having received
strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before
she returned (for Bessie now frequently employed me
as a sort of under-nurserymaid, to tidy the room,
dust the chairs, &c.).& Having spread the quilt
and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat
to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house
furni an abrupt command from
Georgiana to let her playthings alone (for the tiny
chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were
her property) st and then, for
lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the
frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and
thus clearing a space in the glass through which I
might look out on the grounds, where all was still
and petrified under the influence of a hard frost.
From this window were visible
the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road, and just
as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white
foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out,
I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll
through.& I watched it ascending the drive with
carriages often came to Gateshead, but
none ever brought visitors in whom I
it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang
loudly, the new-comer was admitted.& All this
being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found
livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little
hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs
of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall
near the casement.& The remains of my breakfast
of bread and milk stood on the table, and having
crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash
to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when
Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery.
“Miss Jane, take off your
what are you doing there?& Have you
washed your hands and face this morning?”& I
gave another tug before I answered, for I wanted the
bird to be secure of its bread: I
scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some
on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window,
I replied—
“No, B I have only just
finished dusting.”
“Troublesome, careless child!
and what are you doing now?& You look quite
red, as if you had been about some mischief: what
were you opening the window for?”
I was spared the trouble of
answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to
li she hauled me to the
washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief
scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a
disciplined my head with a bristly
brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying
me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down
directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room.
I would have asked who wanted
me: I would have demanded if Mrs. R
but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the
nursery-door upon me.& I slowly descended.&
For nearly three months, I had never been called to
Mrs. Reed’ restricted so long to the
nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms
were become for me awful regions, on which it
dismayed me to intrude.
before me was the breakfast-room door, and I
stopped, intimidated and trembling.& What a
miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of
unjust punishment, made of me in those days!& I
feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go
fo ten minutes I stood in
the vehement ringing of the
breakfast- I must enter.
“Who could want me?” I asked
inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff
door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my
efforts.& “What should I see besides Aunt Reed
in the apartment?—a man or a woman?”& The
handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing
through and curtseying low, I looked up at—a black
pillar!—such, at least, appeared to me, at first
sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape
standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top
was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by
way of capital.
Mrs. Reed occupied her usual
she made a signal to me to
I did so, and she introduced me to the
stony stranger with the words: “This is the little
girl respecting whom I applied to you.”
He, for it was a man,
turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and
having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking
grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy
brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice, “Her size
is small: what is her age?”
“Ten years.”
“So much?” was the doubtful
and he prolonged his scrutiny for some
minutes.& Presently he addressed me—“Your name,
little girl?”
“Jane Eyre, sir.”
In uttering these words I looked
up: he seemed to but then I was
his features were large, and they and
all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and
“Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a
good child?”
Impossible to reply to this in
the affirmative: my little world held a contrary
opinion: I was silent.& Mrs. Reed answered for
me by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon,
“Perhaps the less said on that subject the better,
Mr. Brocklehurst.”
“Sorry indeed to hear it! she
and I” and bending from the
perpendicular, he installed his person in the
arm-chair opposite Mrs. Reed’s.& “Come here,”
placed me square and straight before him.& What
a face he had, now that it was almost on a level
with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and
what large prominent teeth!
“No sight so sad as that of a
naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty
little girl.& Do you know where the wicked go
after death?”
“They go to hell,” was my ready
and orthodox answer.
“And what is hell?& Can you
tell me that?”
“A pit full of fire.”
“And should you like to fall
into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”
“No, sir.”
“What must you do to avoid it?”
answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must
keep in good health, and not die.”
“How can you keep in good
health?& Children younger than you die daily.&
I buried a little child of five years old only a day
or two since,—a good little child, whose soul is now
in heaven.& It is to be feared the same could
not be said of you were you to be called hence.”
Not being in a condition to
remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down on the
two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed,
wishing myself far enough away.
“I hope that sigh is from the
heart, and that you repent of ever having been the
occasion of discomfort to your excellent
benefactress.”
“Benefactress! benefactress!”
said I inwardly: “they all call Mrs. Reed my
if so, a benefactress is a
disagreeable thing.”
“Do you say your prayers night
and morning?” continued my interrogator.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you read your Bible?”
“Sometimes.”
“With pleasure?& Are you
fond of it?”
“I like Revelations, and the
book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little
bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and
Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”
“And the Psalms?& I hope
you like them?”
“No, sir.”
“No? oh, shocking!& I have
a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms
by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather
have, a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm
to learn, he says: ‘Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels
sing P’ says he, ‘I wish to be a little angel
’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for
his infant piety.”
“Psalms are not interesting,” I
“That proves you have a wicked
and you must pray to God to change it: to
give you a new and clean one: to take away your
heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
I was about to propound a
question, touching the manner in which that
operation of changing my heart was to be performed,
when Mrs. Reed interposed, te
she then proceeded to carry on the conversation
“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I
intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three
weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the
character and disposition I could wish: should you
admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if
the superintendent and teachers were requested to
keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard
against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit.&
I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may
not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst.”
Well might I dread, well might I
dislike Mrs. R for it was her nature to wound me
never was I h however
carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to
please her, my efforts were still repulsed and
repaid by such sentences as the above.& Now,
uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to
I dimly perceived that she was already
obliterating hope from the new phase of existence
I felt, though I
could not have expressed the feeling, that she was
sowing aversion and unkindness
I saw myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst’s
eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I
do to remedy the injury?
“Nothing, indeed,” thought I, as
I struggled to repress a sob, and hastily wiped away
some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.
“Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault
in a child,” said Mr. B “it is akin to
falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in
the lake burning wit she shall,
however, be watched, Mrs. Reed.& I will speak
to Miss Temple and the teachers.”
“I should wish her to be brought
up in a manner suiting her prospects,” continued my
“to be made useful, to be kept humble:
as for the vacations, she will, with your
permission, spend them always at Lowood.”
“Your decisions are perfectly
judicious, madam,” returned Mr. Brocklehurst.&
“Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly
appropriate to the pupils of L I, therefore,
direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its
cultivation amongst them.& I have studied how
best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of
and, only the other day, I had a pleasing
proof of my success.& My second daughter,
Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and
on her return she exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how
quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with
their hair combed behind their ears, and their long
pinafores, and those little holland pockets outside
their frocks—they are almost like poor people’s
children! and,’ said she, ‘they looked at my dress
and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk gown
before.’”
“This is the state of things I
quite approve,” returned Mrs. R “had I sought
all England over, I could scarcely have found a
system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre.&
Consistency, my dear Mr. B I advocate
consistency in all things.”
“Consistency, madam, is the
first of C and it has been observed
in every arrangement connected with the
establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire,
unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active
such is the order of the day in the house
and its inhabitants.”
“Quite right, sir.& I may
then depend upon this child being received as a
pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in
conformity to her position and prospects?”
“Madam, you may: she shall be
placed in that nursery of chosen plants, and I trust
she will show herself grateful for the inestimable
privilege of her election.”
“I will send her, then, as soon
as possible, Mr. B for, I assure you, I
feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that
was becoming too irksome.”
“No doubt, no doubt, and
now I wish you good morning.& I shall return to
Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two: my
good friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to
leave him sooner.& I shall send Miss Temple
notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that
there will be no difficulty about receiving her.&
Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mr. B
remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, and to
Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton
Brocklehurst.”
“I will, madam.& Little
girl, here is a book entitled the ‘Child’s Guide,’
read it with prayer, especially that part containing
‘An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha
G---, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and
deceit.’”
With these words Mr.
Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn
in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he
Mrs. Reed and I were left alone:
some minut she was sewing, I
was watching her.& Mrs. Reed might be at that
time some six she was a woman
of robust frame, square-shouldered and
strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not
obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw
being much deve her brow was
low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose
under her light eyebrows
glimmered a her skin was dark
and opaque, he her constitution
was sound as a bell—illness she
was an exact, her household and
tenantry were thorough her
children only at times defied her authority and
she dressed well, and had a
presence and port calculated to set off handsome
Sitting on a low stool, a few
yards from her arm-chair, I I
perused her features.& In my hand I held the
tract containing the sudden death of the Liar, to
which narrative my attention had been pointed as to
an appropriate warning.& W
what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr.
B the whole tenor of their conversation,
was recent, raw, and I had felt
every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and
a passion of resentment fomented now within me.
Mrs. Reed looked up from her
her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the
same time suspended their nimble movements.
“G return to
the nursery,” was her mandate.& My look or
something else must have struck her as offensive,
for she spoke with extreme though suppressed
irritation.& I got up, I I
I walked to the window, across the
room, then close up to her.
Speak I must: I had been
trodden on severely, and must turn: but how?&
What strength had I to dart retaliation at my
antagonist?& I gathered my energies and
launched them in this blunt sentence—
“I am not deceitful: if I were,
I should say I but I declare I do not
love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the
world except John R and this book about the
liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it
is she who tells lies, and not I.”
Mrs. Reed’s hands still lay on
her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell
freezingly on mine.
“What more have you to say?” she
asked, rather in the tone in which a person might
address an opponent of adult age than such as is
ordinarily used to a child.
That eye of hers, that voice
stirred every antipathy I had.& Shaking from
head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement,
I continued—
“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
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.”
“How dare you affirm that, Jane
“How dare I, Mrs. Reed?&
How dare I?& Because it is the truth.&
You think I have no feelings, and that I can do
without one bit but I cannot
live so: and you have no pity.& I shall
remember how you thrust me back—roughly and
violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and
locked me up there, though I was in
though I cried out, while suffocating with
distress, ‘Have mercy!& Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’&
And that punishment you made me suffer because your
wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing.&
I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this
exact tale.& People think y}