MIA

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 of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; 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 inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide. 

My head

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 tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; 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 footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.  This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; 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 husband; 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 he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.  My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room.  I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; 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- glass; 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 my stool.

Update

Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; 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, much less punished; 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," too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "her own darling."  I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; 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 wantonly striking me; 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 suffered; now, at the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.  I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; 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 with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; 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 more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

Swirling

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, if they can help it; 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 analyse their feelings; 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 paused; 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 at?"  "It is not my house, sir; 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 be glad to leave it; 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."

Weight matters

Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to me to approach; 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 answer; 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 me a tall gentleman; but then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.  "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 must have some talk;" and bending from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Reed's.  "Come here," he said.  I stepped across the rug; he 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."

Another day, another week

"This is the state of things I quite approve," returned Mrs. Reed; "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. Brocklehurst; I advocate consistency in all things."  "Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; 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. Brocklehurst; for, I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome."  "No doubt, no doubt, madam; 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. Brocklehurst; 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 departed.  Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was sewing, I was watching her.  Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; 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 developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell--illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.

Things I like (in no particular order)

1. Heat (at my uni house we can't afford it)

2. Gilmore Girls - if you've never watched then do so because you're missing out!

3. Sunny days

3. The amazing chocolate and banana muffins I make (even if I do say so myself)

4. Going to bars for cocktails with the girls

5. Going out clubbing with friends or to the Limelight

6. My cats especially when they've just been fed and they're so contented and cute

7. Meeting nice boys (even though unfortunately it never seems to come to anything)

8. New episodes of er and my er boxsets which I have watched many, many times

9. The proud feeling I get when I get all of my reading for the week done in time (and believe me we have a lot of reading to do)

10. Putting on clothes that are just out of the tumble dryer and still warm

11. The Twilight books and movie

12. And after stating the above, I have to say I love Robert Pattison!

13. Shopping, especially for new clothes, even though I can't afford it

14. Chocolate (if this list was in order that would be very near the top)

15. My American writing tutor because he's just amazing and every girl in our class is crazy about him; he has that gorgeous older man thing going

16. Musicals! Especially the good ones where I know all the words and can sing along

17. Walking along the narrow streets of Rome, it's a beautiful place

18. Jane Eyre - my favourite book, although closely followed by Making Mischief and Hunting Unicorns

19. Whittards White chocolate - it really is deliciously yummy

20. Sex

So not good…

I heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could I understand or sympathise with the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser.  Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes.  I suspected she might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter deeply; like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.  "You say you have faults, Helen: what are they?  To me you seem very good."  "Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things, in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot _bear_ to be subjected to systematic arrangements.  This is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and particular."  "And cross and cruel," I added; but Helen Burns would not admit my addition: she kept silence.  "Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd?"  At the utterance of Miss Temple's name, a soft smile flitted over her grave face.  "Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one, even the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed liberally.  One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight."  "That is curious," said I, "it is so easy to be careful."  "For _you_ I have no doubt it is.  I observed you in your class this morning, and saw you were closely attentive: your thoughts never seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you.  Now, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss Scatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream.  Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our house;--then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be awakened; and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready."  "Yet how well you replied this afternoon."  "It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had interested me.  This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no farther than the prerogatives of the crown.  If he had but been able to look to a distance, and see how what they call the spirit of the age was tending!  Still, I like Charles--I respect him--I pity him, poor murdered king!  Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed.  How dared they kill him!"

What is wrong with me?

CHAPTER VII   My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks.  The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles.  During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air.  Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning.  Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid.  From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.  Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.  Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season.  We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated.  We set out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed.  It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.  At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.  I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, "like stalwart soldiers."  The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others. 

Therapy and my not so wonderful CPN

Mr. Brocklehurst again paused--perhaps overcome by his feelings.  Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material; especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity.  Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school.  Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used--  "Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what--_what_ is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma'am, curled--curled all over?"  And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.  "It is Julia Severn," replied Miss Temple, very quietly.  "Julia Severn, ma'am!  And why has she, or any other, curled hair?  Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly--here in an evangelical, charitable establishment--as to wear her hair one mass of curls?"  "Julia's hair curls naturally," returned Miss Temple, still more quietly.  "Naturally!  Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance?  I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly.  Miss Temple, that girl's hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence--that tall girl, tell her to turn round.  Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall."  Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed.  Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.  He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence.  These words fell like the knell of doom--  "All those top-knots must be cut off."  Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.

Pull yourself together!

ortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.  She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.  "Ah!" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.  She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.  Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place.  I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.  And Mademoiselle--what is your name?"  "Eyre--Jane Eyre."  "Aire?  Bah!  I cannot say it.  Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel.  We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs."  "Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs. Fairfax.  I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.  "I wish," continued the good lady, "you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?"  "Adele," I inquired, "with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?"  "I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin.  Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses.  A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it.  Shall I let you hear me sing now?"