Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 2.

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.



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.



Daylight began to forsake the red room; 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 behind the hall; 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 might be
so; 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 buried;
and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with
gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was
my own uncle my mother's brother that he had taken me when
a parentless infant to his house; 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 had kept this promise; and so she
had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; 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 have treated me kindly;
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 avenge the oppressed;
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 room;
boldly round the dark 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, and this stirred; 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 grew hot; a
sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something
seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I
rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running
along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.



"Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said Bessie."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 from me.


"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 another voice peremptorily; 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 children; 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 if...... "



"Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:" and so, no doubt, she felt
it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; 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 her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Chapter 3.>