Summary: Chapter 1
The novel opens on a dreary November afternoon
at Gateshead, the home of the wealthy Reed family. A young girl
named Jane Eyre sits in the drawing room reading Bewick’s History
of British Birds. Jane’s aunt, Mrs. Reed, has forbidden
her niece to play with her cousins Eliza, Georgiana, and the bullying
John. John chides Jane for being a lowly orphan who is only permitted
to live with the Reeds because of his mother’s charity. John then
hurls a book at the young girl, pushing her to the end of her patience. Jane
finally erupts, and the two cousins fight. Mrs. Reed holds Jane
responsible for the scuffle and sends her to the “red-room”—the
frightening chamber in which her Uncle Reed died—as punishment.
Summary: Chapter 2
Two servants, Miss Abbott and Bessie Lee, escort
Jane to the red-room, and Jane resists them with all of her might.
Once locked in the room, Jane catches a glimpse of her ghastly figure
in the mirror, and, shocked by her meager presence, she begins to
reflect on the events that have led her to such a state. She remembers
her kind Uncle Reed bringing her to Gateshead after her parents’ death,
and she recalls his dying command that his wife promise to raise
Jane as one of her own. Suddenly, Jane is struck with the impression
that her Uncle Reed’s ghost is in the room, and she imagines that
he has come to take revenge on his wife for breaking her promise.
Jane cries out in terror, but her aunt believes that she is just
trying to escape her punishment, and she ignores her pleas. Jane
faints in exhaustion and fear.
Summary: Chapter 3
When she wakes, Jane finds herself in her own
bedroom, in the care of Mr. Lloyd, the family’s kind apothecary.
Bessie is also present, and she expresses disapproval of her mistress’s
treatment of Jane. Jane remains in bed the following day, and Bessie sings
her a song. Mr. Lloyd speaks with Jane about her life at Gateshead,
and he suggests to Jane’s aunt that the girl be sent away to school,
where she might find happiness. Jane is cautiously excited at the
possibility of leaving Gateshead.
Soon after her own reflections on the past in the red-room,
Jane learns more of her history when she overhears a conversation between
Bessie and Miss Abbott. Jane’s mother was a member of the wealthy
Reed family, which strongly disapproved of Jane’s father, an impoverished
clergyman. When they married, Jane’s wealthy maternal grandfather
wrote his daughter out of his will. Not long after Jane was born,
Jane’s parents died from typhus, which Jane’s father contracted
while caring for the poor.
Summary: Chapter 4
“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 visit you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how
I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought
of you makes me sick. . . .”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
About two months have passed, and Jane has
been enduring even crueler treatment from her aunt and cousins while
anxiously waiting for the arrangements to be made for her schooling.
Now Jane is finally told she may attend the girls’ school Lowood,
and she is introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst, the stern-faced man who runs
the school. Mr. Brocklehurst abrasively questions Jane about religion,
and he reacts with indignation when she declares that she finds
the psalms uninteresting. Jane’s aunt warns Mr. Brocklehurst that
the girl also has a propensity for lying, a piece of information
that Mr. Brocklehurst says he intends to publicize to Jane’s teachers
upon her arrival. When Mr. Brocklehurst leaves, Jane is so hurt
by her aunt’s accusation that she cannot stop herself from defending
herself to her aunt. Mrs. Reed, for once, seems to concede defeat.
Shortly thereafter, Bessie tells Jane that she prefers her to the
Reed children. Before Jane leaves for school, Bessie tells her stories
and sings her lovely songs.
Analysis: Chapters 1–4
In the early chapters, Brontë establishes the young Jane’s
character through her confrontations with John and Mrs. Reed, in
which Jane’s good-hearted but strong-willed determination and integrity become
apparent. These chapters also establish the novel’s mood. Beginning
with Jane’s experience in the red-room in Chapter 2,
we sense a palpable atmosphere of mystery and the supernatural.
Like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Jane
Eyre draws a great deal of its stylistic inspiration from
the Gothic novels that were in vogue during the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. These books depicted remote, desolate
landscapes, crumbling ruins, and supernatural events, all of which
were designed to create a sense of psychological suspense and horror.
While Jane Eyre is certainly not a horror novel,
and its intellectually ambitious criticisms of society make it far
more than a typical Gothic romance, it is Brontë’s employment of
Gothic conventions that gives her novel popular as well as intellectual
appeal.
