Janise Marvin

H. Brit Lit
Jane Eyre Essay
3/16/09
Setting and Mood

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, is a novel about Jane’s experiences as she matures

into adulthood. Brontë uses many different techniques throughout the novel to convey

Jane’s emotions and mood; the most distinct and significant of these is the setting and

place of the different stages in her life. Each stage of the book and coincidentally, Jane’s

life, takes place at a different place. Jane moves from place to place as she grows up and

learns from experiences. Jane’s life can be divided into taking place in five different

places: Gateshead Hall, Lowood School, Thornfield, Moor House and Ferndean. Each of

these places has a different feel and mood associated with it by Jane.

The childhood and adolescent stage of Jane’s life is spent at Gateshead Hall and

Lowood School. At Gateshead Hall, Jane lives with her cruel aunt, Mrs. Reed, while at

Lowood School, Jane is subject to the whim of Mr. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Reed is absolutely

terrible to Jane. She is not allowed to talk or be seen or really do anything other than sit

there while she is living at Gateshead Hall. The only person at Gateshead Hall who treats

Jane with any care is Bessie, a maid. After an episode of Jane talking back to John, her

cousin, Mrs. Reed locks Jane in the Red Room, which is insanely scary to Jane with her

overactive imagination, given the room’s history: "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" (Brontë 13). Jane loathes her aunt, and because her aunt

loathes her as well, Jane is sent off to school where she is able to earn an education.
When Mr. Brocklehurst comes to interview Jane to come to Lowood, Mrs. Reed tells him

how Jane will need a “strict eye” (Brontë 29) and she has a “tendency to deceit” (Brontë

29). This angers Jane and as soon as he leaves the house, Jane explodes at Mrs. Reed: “"I

am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I

dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed…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 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, and that you treated me with

miserable cruelty” (Brontë 32-33). These shows how Jane is still just a small child of ten

and not mature yet. When Jane arrives at Lowood, she is excited, but soon finds that

Lowood has several downfalls as well. Mr. Brocklehurst doesn’t think that the girls at the

school deserve anything better than the worst. The food is inedible, ““a nauseous mess;

burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it”

(Brontë 40), and there was only one washbasin to six girls. Jane finds refuge in the

character of Miss Temple, the superintendent, who gives the girls bread and cheese and

shows Jane love and affection. Miss Temple, along with Bessie, helps give Jane the

necessary tools that she will need to mature and grow up as her life progresses.

As Jane grows up, she moves farther away from familiar territory. She takes up a

job being a governess at Thornfield. It is here that Jane falls in love. She works for Mr.

Edward Rochester, who despite social barriers, treats Jane as an equal and teases her like

they’ve been friends for a long time. This attitude helps Jane mature and become more

confident in herself, but she still does not feel like she is in love or ready to be in love for

that matter. She finally gains this feeling when Rochester proposes to her in the gorgeous
gardens of Thornfield.

“I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and
more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high
wall shut it out from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue
screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole
separation from lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and
terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat, led
down to the fence” (Brontë 209).

Thornfield is such a gorgeous place, and accordingly, this is the place where Jane feels so

pretty and optimistic. She loves Rochester and he makes her feel loved and gorgeous. “I

looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect

and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and

borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at my

master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look; but I was sure I might lift

my face to his now” (Brontë 217). But even with her feeling so good, something bad was

going to happen, as foreshadowed by the lightning splitting the same chestnut tree as she

was proposed to by. When Rochester’s wife turns up, Jane feels betrayed and leaves

Thornfield. She eventually finds herself at the Moor House with Diana, Mary and St.

John Rivers after hoards of physical and emotional turmoil of betrayal by Rochester and

having no home to sleep in and begging for food. This is the most trying journey that

Jane has to take, and this is in accord with the amount of growth that she attains through

this journey. The Rivers are very kind people and coincidentally turn out to be her

cousins. Jane and St. John grow closer and he proposes marriage to her, but she still loves

Rochester and sees that she won’t ever feel the same way about another man as she does

Rochester. The Rivers reveal to Jane that her Uncle has died, and he left her some

£20,000. Jane had always felt inferior to Rochester when they were close and now she is
at an equal stance as him. Jane has a dream one night:

“‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’—nothing more.

‘O God! What is it?’ I gasped.
I might have said, ‘Where is it?’ for it did not seem in the room—nor in
the house—nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air- -nor from
under the earth—nor from overhead. I had heard it—where, or whence, for
ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being—a
known, loved, well-remembered voice—that of Edward Fairfax
Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.
‘I am coming!’ I cried. ‘Wait for me! Oh, I will come!’ (Brontë 312)

After hearing this and being sure that it was Rochester needing her, she decides to return

to Thornfield.

When Jane reaches Thornfield, she is shocked to find it completely burned down.

She discovers that Rochester’s crazy wife had started the fire and killed herself in it while

Rochester survived only losing his sight and a hand trying to save everyone else. Jane

traveled to Rochester’s new home, Ferndean, where she finds Rochester and they get

married. At first, Rochester suspects that Jane is there just because she pities him, but in

the end he sees that she really does love him. Because of how Jane has grown from her

past experiences, we can see that she has gained confidence in herself and has become

more and more independent. She feels like more of an equal to Rochester because of the

money she gained and she has her cousins, the Rivers, behind her backing her all the

way. It is because of these important differences that Jane and Rochester work out the

second time. Jane no longer feels inferior.

Each time that Jane moved from one place to another, her attitude toward life

changed and she grew more and more. In the transition from Gateshead Hill to Lowood,

Jane matured and became more excited about the prospects of life, and as she moved

from Lowood to Thornfield, she became more independent and confident in herself. With
the heartbreak of leaving Thornfield for Moor House, it was evident that Jane had gained

a loving spirit, somewhat broken, but she had experienced love and being treated as an

equal. Lastly, as Jane moved back to Rochester at Ferndean, we could see Jane becoming

herself as she could see herself as an equal to Rochester and no longer inferior. Setting

was an important piece in Jane Eyre, developing the character Jane fully until she had

become a full, dynamic character.