Mrs Reed ignores this and blames the whole incident on Jane, simply turning a blind eye on the matter. Then when Jane shouts out, which she would not normally do as she knew the consequences, saying that John was “a murderer”, she was dragged upstairs, to the red room, this shows that she was mistreated at Gateshead.
‘Hold her arms, Miss Abbot; she’s like a mad cat’
This shows that they don’t trust Jane to be taken upstairs calmly, instead the forcefully drag her there causing her to respond to the treatment of her even more.
During her stay at Gateshead Hall Jane was accustomed to many forms of mental abuse from everyone. The main form of mental abuse at Gateshead is from Mrs Reed as she sent Jane to the red room. The red room is intimidating to Jane because her Uncle Mr Reed died in there and was laid to rest in then there,
‘It was is this chamber he breathed his last’
Therefore we know that Jane’s description of the red room was a hyperbole, an exaggeration, as she was so small and frightened she would have elaborated the description of the room as she described it as a “square chamber, very seldom slept in, and a bed hung with curtains of deep red damask” as well as the furniture being made from darkly polished old mahogany, this creates a sense of intimidation, linking in with the idea of death and the theme of gothic literature. Gateshead hall is a very gothic setting for the novel; as it is a big house with very old deserted rooms, and it is haunted with the ghost of Jane’s uncle. This spooky setting is mentally damaging which scars her for life. We know that Jane is very scared of being in the red room as she gets worked up about being in there and thinks that she sees a ghost,
‘My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed to be to be the beating of wings; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down’
This shows that Jane is treated badly, mentally and physically, as she is so scared that when she cries to be let out, Mrs Reed comes and tells her that all the screaming and shouting and tricks will not be tolerated and then leaves her in their even longer. This shows an appalling relationship between adults and children as Mrs Reed can’t tell when Jane is genuinely terrified and scared.
Another form of mental abuse at Gateshead is that the adults talks badly of and to Jane so this will affect her mentally,
‘One really cannot care for such a little toad as that’
This is what Abbot said to Bessie, when they thought that Jane was asleep but in fact she was listening to them talking about her parents. This shows the relationships between adults and children are poor as Abbot and Bessie know lots about Jane’s parents but they don’t talk to her about it they only speak of it when they think she can’t hear.
Although Jane is at Lowood the physical and mental abuse doesn’t stop, it just becomes more public, because at Gateshead it was done in private. For a start she is sent to Lowood already branded a liar by what Mrs Reed told Mr Brocklehurst,
‘This I learned from here benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state,’
This isn’t an accurate description of Mrs Reed as we know that she only looked after Jane because she promised her husband that she would. This shows that the relationships between adults and children are unpleasant because it is obvious that Mrs Reed has made Jane look like the villain when in fact, it is her who has the bad character, as she has lied to Mr Brocklehurst about Jane.
Another form of abuse is when Jane drops her slate she is punished by Mr Brocklehurst by being made to stand on a chair, with no food and she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone for a whole day
‘Let the girl who broke her slate come forward’
She is then isolated from the whole school, and made an example of. This shows the poor relationship between adults and children as they are punished in a hope to save them from evil. They have so little food because it is often inedible or when it is decent it is taken off them by the older girls,
‘They would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.’
As well as the insufficient amounts of food, they are also clothed badly with thin clothes and no overcoats for the winter,
‘Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold’,
This means that many of them were very ill and when out walking their hands and feet became numb. This is due to Mr. Brocklehurst being very strict about their clothes and not allowing them to have decent clothing during the winter months, showing the negative relationship between him and the pupils at Lowood.
As well as the physical abuse suffered at Lowood there is also lots of mental abuse. The main victims we know about in the novel are Jane herself and her friend Helen Burns. Jane is often singled out from the rest and made to feel an outsider by Mr Brocklehurst;
‘Not a true member of the flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien’
Mr Brocklehurst dislikes Jane and doesn’t allow her to show him her true self he just judges her on what he has been told by Mrs Reed which we know is unfair because she has never liked Jane.
Also humiliated by a teacher is Helen Burns, she is told off for being untidy by Miss Scatcherd
‘Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the words ‘slattern’ and bound it like a phylactery round Helen’s forehead’
Miss Scatcherd humiliates Jane for every tiny detail for having dirty fingernails, not having a tidy draw. However she doesn’t praise Helen for being clever. This shows that there is a poor relationship between children and adults as the teachers are quite happy to discipline the girls but they very rarely praise them for achieving something.
Also, there are lots of examples of injustice as Gateshead and Lowood, up to chapter 5 in the novel there is injustice suffered from Mrs Reed and her children. To show Jane that she is an outcast she is excluded from the family activities. She is daily reminded that she is not good enough for the Reed family and she is only at Gateshead because her uncle made Mrs Reed keep her not because she was particularly wanted.
‘You ought not to think yourself on an equality with the misses Reed and master Reed.’
This shows that Jane was constantly reminded not to think of herself as important as she was less important than the servants because they earned their keep but she didn’t.
Jane doesn’t know affection until she goes to Lowood at the age of ten; this is because she felt imprisoned in her own home. Mrs Reed even asked for Jane to be kept at Lowood over all holidays so that she never had to see her again. When Jane stands up to her aunt about the way that she has been treated, Mrs Reed doesn’t apologise instead she just makes excuses for herself
‘I assure you, I desire to be your friend’
However we know that this is not true because it isn’t until Jane shouts at Mrs Reed does she show only signs of liking Jane or wanting to be her friend.
In addition to this, at Lowood there is a real lack of understanding of the true nature of the pupils this is evident mainly from Mr Brocklehurst and the way he treats the girls and his own family as he is very hypocritical. He walks into the classroom and asks why a girl has curly hair,
‘What-what is this girl with curled hair?’
He says that girls at the school should be plain; he doesn’t understand that it is natural, and then his own family walks in with elaborately curled hair, this shows he is hypocritical because he has one set of rules for the girls at Lowood and another for his own family. He treats the girls at Lowood so harshly because he believes that by making them grow up without basic luxuries then they will not be gluttonous when they are older.
This shows he has true lack of understanding of the girls at Lowood because he also believes that Jane is the devil child
‘Who would think that the devil had already found a servant and an agent in her?’
Mr Brocklehurst believes that because Jane has dropped her slate she must be evil and the devil must have already clamed her as his own even though she is still very young.
There is also evidence that there is a lack of understanding of the pupils at the school because of the forms of punishment used
‘Punish her body to save her soul’
They believed that by starving the girls they would be saving them from doing something wrong again as they would realise than they couldn’t go without food. However this is not true because the girls had so little food anyway it made little difference.
The only adult who had a very positive relationship with children was Miss Temple; she was a seen as a very motherly figure to them all. She speaks out to Mr Brocklehurst;
‘ I must be responsible for the circumstance… the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinnertime’
This shows that Miss Temple cares for the girls, as she doesn’t want them to go without food for long periods of time. This means that she gives them more food than she should even though she knows that she will get in trouble for it. This is the only positive relationship between adults and children in the first nine chapters of the novel.
As well as this she is constantly trying to keep the girls spirits up
‘I can remember miss temple, walking lightly and rapidly, along our dropping line… to keep up our spirits’
When the girls were walking the long walk to and back from church every Sunday in the cold miss temple would try and cheer them up, rather than leave them to get colder.
Miss temple also has a very strong relationship with the girls as they are all united against Mr Brocklehurst.
There is a contrast between Mrs Reed and Miss Temple because Mrs Reed is a mother and she should be able to bring up Jane as one of her own, but instead she refuses. Whereas Miss Temple is a very motherly figure even though she herself is not a mother and she mothers the whole school well and willingly.
‘Saying god bless you my children’
This shows that she sees all the girls at Lowood as her own children. Furthermore she is quite happy being seen as a motherly figure to the girls at Lowood as many of them don’t have parents.
In conclusion I believe that the relationship between adults and children in Jane Eyre is very unfair, and possibly exaggerated from the truth. Even though children were treated badly the punishments described in the novel seem rather too harsh and the living conditions too extreme. However this could be as Charlotte Bronte saw it, if she was a small child like Jane, who would have found the school a daunting experience, this could be the case as we know that the novel was based partly on her own life. The treatment of children in the Victorian Era was very different as it is today because most of the punishments used back then would not be acceptable now a days and severe action would be taken about whereas then it was seen as normal. Overall the relationships between adults and children in chapters I 1-9 of Jane Eyre are negative as would be expected as children should have been seen and not heard in those days..