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Jane Eyre

C >> Charlotte Bronte >> Jane Eyre



This etext was prepared from the 1897 Service & Paton edition
by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Bronte




PREFACE




A preface to the first edition of "Jane Eyre" being unnecessary,
I gave none: this second edition demands a few words both of
acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark.

My thanks are due in three quarters.

To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale
with few pretensions.

To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to
an obscure aspirant.

To my Publishers, for the aid their tact, their energy, their
practical sense and frank liberality have afforded an unknown and
unrecommended Author.

The Press and the Public are but vague personifications for me, and
I must thank them in vague terms; but my Publishers are definite:
so are certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only
large-hearted and high-minded men know how to encourage a struggling
stranger; to them, i.e., to my Publishers and the select Reviewers,
I say cordially, Gentlemen, I thank you from my heart.

Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and
approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know,
but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or
carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in
whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each
protest against bigotry--that parent of crime--an insult to piety,
that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters
certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple
truths.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not
religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck
the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious
hand to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as
distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they
should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for
truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a
few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of
Christ. There is--I repeat it--a difference; and it is a good, and
not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation
between them.

The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has
been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make
external show pass for sterling worth--to let white-washed walls
vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise
and expose--to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it--to
penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it
will, it is indebted to him.

Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good
concerning him, but evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of
Chenaannah better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had
he but stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful
counsel.

There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle
delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of
society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of
Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as
prophet-like and as vital--a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is
the satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I cannot
tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek
fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his
denunciation, were to take his warnings in time--they or their seed
might yet escape a fatal Rimoth-Gilead.

Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader,
because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique
than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as
the first social regenerator of the day--as the very master of that
working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of
things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found
the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise
his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit,
humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a
vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does.
His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same
relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning
playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does to the electric
death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr.
Thackeray, because to him--if he will accept the tribute of a total
stranger--I have dedicated this second edition of "JANE EYRE."

CURRER BELL.

December 21st, 1847.



NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION



I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of "Jane
Eyre" affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to
explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one
work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction
has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not
merited; and consequently, denied where it is justly due.

This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already
have been made, and to prevent future errors.

CURRER BELL.

April 13th, 1848.



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 morning;
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 joining the group; saying, "She regretted to be under
the necessity of keeping me at a distance; 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 questioners; besides, there is
something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that
manner. Be seated somewhere; 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 Turk;
and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined
in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; 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 blank of mist and cloud; 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, generally speaking; 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-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them
only inhabited; 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 Thule; 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 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.

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.

Each picture told a story; 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 in good humour; 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
ballads; 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 Reed; 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
found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or
conception; 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 here;" 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 fourteen years old; four years older
than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a
dingy and unwholesome skin; 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 school; 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 him from home;
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 bullied and punished me; 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 inflictions; 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 notion in
my face; 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 rat!"

Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to
it; 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 our books; you are a dependent, mama
says; you have no money; your father left you none; 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 mine; 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 what was his intention; 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,
however; 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 had passed its climax; 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 aloud.

"What! what!" he cried. "Did she say that to me? Did you hear her,
Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mama? but first--"

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, I was a trifle
beside myself; 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
it like a spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.

"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie. "Miss
Abbot, lend me your garters; 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 me.

"Don't take them off," I cried; "I will not stir."

In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.

"Mind you don't," said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I
was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss
Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my
face, as incredulous of my sanity.

"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."

Bessie answered not; but ere 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
would have a home here; 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 you are by yourself;
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 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.

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.

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