Mrs Reed feels no love for Jane, and Brontë shows this very clearly in the early chapters. Jane has a cut on her head, form when the force of the book knocked her into the door. The cut is bleeding and Jane says “the pain was sharp”, so it must have been quite serious and obvious to someone looking at her. However, none of the servants, cousins or Mrs Reed care and they tell Jane off when she tries to stand up for herself, saying, “Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!” Mrs Reed orders her to be taken to the ‘Red Room’ and to be locked in there. This is to punish Jane but it shows Mrs Reed’s hatred of Jane for her to be locked up anywhere when she could have been seriously injured.
When Jane is sent to Lowood School, Mr Brocklehurst physically mistreats the girls and they are not properly looked after. He prefers to indulge his family rather than spend money on good food and proper clothes for the girls. Helen Burns comments on this when Jane asks if he lives at the school:
“No - two miles off, at a large hall.”
Perhaps this is just an innocent remark but it allows the reader to gain an insight into Mr Brocklehurst’s life. He does not have to live with the inadequate food, cold water and lack of individuality that the girls have to go through. Mr Brocklehurst thinks that he is doing them a favour:
“when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls.”
He is wrapped up in religion and his dream of making the girls into simple women that don’t need to be any trouble, which is hypocritical because his wife and daughters live a life of luxury with elaborate clothes and hairstyles. His relationship with the girls is he lacks any compassion or understanding, as he doesn’t care about what they are going through and has no sympathy for them.
Miss Scatcherd resorts to physical punishments to discipline the girls. She is very fussy about the girls being presentable:
“Burns, you are standing on the side of your shoe, turn your toes out immediately.” “Burns, you poke your chin out most unpleasantly; draw it in.” “Burns, I insist on your holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude.”
When she discovers Helen Burns’ dirty nails, she orders her to get the rod used for hitting her hand. Miss Scatcherd thinks that the girls need severe discipline and her fussiness makes it even harder for the girls to avoid her punishments. She thinks that the girls are disorderly and disobedient but they are actually very well-behaved and any disobedience can be dealt with by the other teachers without any physical punishment, so she just has exceptionally high standards of behaviour, which the girls cannot match.
Mental abuse plays an important part in the book because it is written from the eyes of Jane so we can see what is really going on in her head. In the Reed household, no one shows any love for Jane, except perhaps Bessie, who cannot show it because she has to obey the wishes of John. Mrs Reed promised her dying husband that she would love Jane as her own but she is always excluded from certain privileges like sitting around Mrs Reed’s chair, on account of her needing “to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition.” Mrs Reed says that she is waiting to hear from Bessie to see how Jane has been behaving, even though Jane appears to have done nothing wrong, and when Jane asks about it, Mrs Reed replies by saying, “Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners”, indicating that she dislikes Jane. After Jane’s recovery from her fit in the Red Room Mrs Reed warns her children not to go near Jane, saying that, “she is not worthy of notice.” She tries to turn everyone else against Jane, just to intensify the level of cruelty towards Jane. When Mr Brocklehurst comes and he asks if Jane is good child, Mrs Reed replies by saying, “Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr Brocklehurst.” Before he even has time to find out about Jane for himself, she is already putting her down and turning him against her. After he leaves and Jane reveals her true feelings living at Gateshead, Mrs Reed becomes worried because she does not want Jane to repeat this to anyone so she changes her attitude towards her, saying,
“Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to be your friend.”
Jane either sees through this or is just so angry at Mrs Reed that she cannot see how she could change. In any case, she does not fall for this and her hatred for Mrs Reed remains.
Mrs Reed knows that Jane is a superstitious person, which makes her punishment of being locked in the Red Room even more terrible. Mr Reed died nine years earlier in that room, and since Jane is afraid of ghosts and other supernatural things, she is terrified. At first anger does not allow her to fear, as she can only think of the difference between Mrs Reed’s treatment of her compared to Georgiana, Eliza and John:
“Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acid spirit, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged…John no one thwarted, much less punished…”
After thinking of her life though she begins to think about the room that she is in and what could happen to her in there, saying, “and then my courage sank.” Bronte uses effective adjectives to reflect Jane’s mood, such as, ‘solemn’, ‘drear’ and ‘chill’ and this makes the reader think only of bad things happening. Mrs Reed sent Jane to the Red Room while the cut on her head was still bleeding. Jane could feel dizzy and weak which makes the situation even worse because she is already thinking that something terrible is going to happen so if it does she will not be able to cope. After Jane sees the light in the Red Room and screams, Mrs Reed still keeps Jane in there. She is a hypocrite because she says Jane does bad things but if her son does them he will not be punished. “I abhor artifice, particularly in children” is an example of this because her son lies and gets away with it. This presents Mrs Reed as an unjust person who will contradict herself just to make Jane’s life miserable.
Mr Brocklehurst uses religion in all parts of children’s lives to try and teach them. He uses it as a reward, for example, his son who chose to read psalms instead of eating a biscuit and got two biscuits in return. He also uses it as a rule which the girls have to live by. When he hears about Miss Temple giving the girls bread and cheese when they could not eat their breakfast, he tries to explain that they should have not had anything to eat at all by saying they should follow the examples of religious figures:
“…sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of Our Blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him”
He also uses religion as a form of punishment, like when Jane says that psalms are not interesting he says, “That proves that you have a wicked heart: and you must pray to God to change it”. He uses religion as a tool of power, a way to scare people into doing what he says. He has no respect from the girls but if he makes people believe that if they listen to him they will be doing the will of God then he will gain respect.
For a short while at school Jane does not encounter Mr Brocklehurst, but after a while he comes to inspect it. He has heard from her aunt that Jane is a naughty child, which is not true and was said because Mrs Reed cannot see that Jane is not a bad girl. He stands her out in front of the whole school, declaring that she was a servant of the ‘Evil One’ and telling them:
“You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example - if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse.”
However, despite warning the girls against Jane, they do not listen and Helen Burns later reassures her that she will still have friends, saying, “Mr Brocklehurst is not a God: nor is he even a great or admired man: he is little liked here.” This tells us that most people at the school do not respect him and they probably only listen to him because of his authority.
Mr Brocklehurst is shown as an orderly man who wants the girls to learn this trait too. He runs the school on bells:
‘Again the bell rang: all formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and dimly-lit schoolroom’
He also allows the girls no freedom as they are not even allowed to talk at breakfast and their day is planned, with the same food every day. The girls are allowed no individuality in their clothes or hair. When he sees girls with curls or top-knots he orders them to be cut off, saying:
“…each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven”
This makes him a hypocrite because a while later his wife and daughters enter wearing the newest fashion of dress and their hair elaborately styled. Jane even thinks, ‘They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress’, which marks just how obviously ridiculous Mr Brocklehurst is being about the pupils hair and clothes.
There is an element of unfairness running through these chapters, which nowadays when women and children have so many more rights, seem to be so unjust. Mrs Reed ill-treatment of Jane compared to the rest of the family cannot be justified. She has no reason to hate Jane but she does to hate her spiteful children. She has to indulge John because he will inherit and she wants her share, but her daughters are just as bad as him and they are still indulged. The servants, even if they like Jane, cannot show it because they want secure jobs for when John runs the house. Bessie likes Jane but can only tell her when no one else is about. On Jane’s last night at Gateshead Bessie says to Jane, “I don’t dislike you, miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all the others” to which Jane remarks, “You don’t show it.” This is true but in those days a servant like Bessie could not afford to lose a job just because she did not want to show she did not like someone.
Miss Scatcherd is another character who shows unfairness. Helen Burns is a calm, good girl who Jane looks upon as someone to set an example for her. Miss Scatcherd, however, just looks for Helen’s faults and cannot see the goodness. She remarks on the slightest things, like the position of Helen’s head and chin, and when she discovers Helen’s dirty nails she does not even wait for an explanation. None of the girls had been able to have a wash that morning because the water had been too cold but Miss Scatcherd does not comment on the other girls’ faults.
The only character who shows real love for children is Miss Temple, who is respected by all the girls. When Jane mentions her to Helen ‘a soft smile flitted over her grave face’. Miss Temple gives Jane and Helen cake when they visit her in her office. She worries about the girls:
“I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you…but as there is so little toast, you must have it now.”
The toast has been sent up but there was not enough for three. The servants says that the usual amount has been brought up, showing us that Mr Brocklehurst’s strict rules extend even to the teachers. Miss Temple, however, decides not to argue. When Mr Brocklehurst comes and tells Jane off for breaking her slate Miss Temple whispers, “Don’t be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident; you shall not be punished.” These words are all that Jane needs to help her through, not just because she will not be punished but also because somebody cares for her, something that has rarely happened to her before.
To conclude, I saw that there were many different types of relationships presented in Jane Eyre. The time that the book is set, and the situation that the characters are in contribute towards these relationships. Mrs Reed, the servants, Georgiana and Eliza treat Jane unfairly because she is a dependant who does not even work to stay at the house. Mr Brocklehurst wants power and cannot let the free will of children stand in his way. Miss Temple genuinely wants to help children and is not afraid to show it. John just wants someone to torment to add to his sense of power. The children affected by these feelings are only thought of by Miss Temple, and no one else seems to care what they are going through.
