Explore the ways Charlotte Bront presents the relationship between adults and children in chapters 1-9 of Jane Eyre

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‘Explore the ways Charlotte Brontë presents the relationship between adults and children in chapters 1-9 of Jane Eyre’

        ‘Jane Eyre’ is written by Charlotte Brontë, and it is classed as a retrospective fictional autobiography, where the writer is looking back talking about themselves, but the novel isn’t true.  Throughout the first nine chapters there are many examples of negative and positive relationships between adults and children.  One of the first examples of negative relationships we see is between Jane and John Reed; because he physically abuses Jane constantly e.g. throwing books at her.  Mrs Reed also has a negative relationship with Jane as she is always excluding her from the family activities.  Mrs Reed’s two daughters, Eliza and Georgiana shout at Jane and are horrible to her by ignoring her most of the time.  The maid Abbot dislikes Jane because of her appearance.  At first Bessie dislikes Jane too, until after the incident in the red room when she takes a liking to Jane.  

But the two most positive relationships for Jane are with Miss Temple and Helen Burns as they both look after her.  For the most part there are negative relationships with people for Jane, this suggests that the novel will be full of punishment and unfair treatment of children by adults, as in the Victorian era, children should have been seen and not heard.  Many aspects of Victorian society, as well as being partly based on Brontë’s life, influenced the novel.  During the Victorian era, English society was divided into three distinct classes-upper, middle and lower classes. The upper class consisted of the clergy and aristocrats, these were the most privileged as they didn’t have to pay tax, whereas the other two did.  Education was also divided with the upper class having all the benefits of the best education whereas the lower classes would be lucky to get any.  This means that Jane was very lucky to get an education because she was an orphan.  

Women were seen as pure and clean, their bodies were temples not to be adorned with jewellery, and they were to be kept plain.  They role in life was to be a wife and look after the house and children.  The only jobs they were allowed to have been as domestic servants or a governess, they also weren’t allowed to own any property or have their own bank accounts.

Women were treated badly in the Victorian Era, as was Jane Eyre, as she is constantly abused both mentally and physically at Gateshead and Lowood.

 The first example of physical abuse at Gateshead is in the opening pages of the novel as we find out that she was abused by John Reed.  He bullies Jane by throwing books at her when he catches her reading

‘The volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it’

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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 ...

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