Jane, to get away from everyone in the house including her annoying, bullying cousin, John, likes to go into the lounge and sit on the window seat and shut the curtains on all her worries. This shows us that Jane thinks of her life like a prison that she cannot escape from. It also shows us that Jane is very imaginative as she can read books and think in her mind that she is somewhere else other than her life sentence in her prison.
Charlotte Bronte uses adjectives and similes to describe the ‘red room’ so it makes the reader feel and be able to imagine that they to are in the red room. Also when describing the furniture she always makes them seem bigger.
“Bed supported on the massive pillars”
“Pillows on the bed… snowy Marseilles”
This is good as we are reading seeing this story from Jane’s point of view. We are seeing it in first narrative. At this point in the story Jane is still a child and Charlotte Bronte has done well to describe the furniture in such a way that it makes it sound like a child’s view. Of course the furniture is going to seem big and overpowering to a small child like Jane. This makes us the reader feel sympathetic to Jane as feel for the small little girl all alone in a dark room with overpowering furniture.
The colour red symbolises danger. This would therefore scare Jane. Also before Abbot and Bessie left the room, Abbot started to talk about the devil. In many places the devil is linked in with the colour red. With Abbot talking about the devil and telling her to repent her sins as if the devil is coming, this would scare the child as the colour red all around the room this would probably make Jane think that the devil is actually coming to get her. This makes the reader react with more sympathy for Jane as it makes the reader wonder how any child can be put through this sort of fear knowingly.
In the red room, Jane’s uncle, Mr Reed had died. It makes us the reader feel sorry for Jane as she is only a child and when the wind blows she probably thinks her uncles ghost is coming back to haunt her.
Another way that the author, Charlotte Bronte, helps us to feel sorry for Jane is through language. The type of archaic language used in the novel, Jane Eyre, is a formal one that is typical of that era.
In this novel the children talk formally as if they were adults. Jane does not swear in response when someone has hurt her as most adults in Victorian times would when their children misbehaved tell them that God is going to punish them that God is going to punish them and they will go to hell.
Children in those days were thought to have been born with sin so they would have to be taught and disciplined to be good. The adults thought that children were naughty little things that should be seen and not heard. The Reed children belittle Jane by calling her names.
“Dependent, you have no money, you ought to beg and not live here with gentlemen’s children, wear clothes at are mama’s expense.”
Basically this may be interpreted as the children ridiculing Jane for her poverty and dependence. To get away from the name calling Jane hides behind the curtain. This makes us, the reader; feel sorry for Jane because no child should be put through this type of bullying day to day.
John Reed is a schoolboy of fourteen years of age. He is large and stout like a dingy. He has wholesome skin, heavy limbs and large extremities whereas Jane is a small plain girl of ten. The Reeds and Abbot judge Jane by calling her dependent, and they also judge her because they say that she isn’t like a normal child for her age. They judge her because she knows too much for her age.
The structure of the story also plays a big part in how Charlotte Bronte creates sympathy for Jane. The story opens on the first page with someone telling us that they couldn’t go for a walk today because of the weather. The details that are left out are that who is speaking to us and telling us the story. This gets the reader interested in the story as it makes the reader intrigued to find out who is this person and what is going to happen next to them.
The first two chapters are both short for nineteenth century novels but because they are short it makes you want to keep reading onto the next chapters and also both of the first two chapters end on cliff hangers so that will make you want to read on as well.
Drama and tension are built up with the long but sharp descriptions used to describe Jane’s pain and anguish. Also there is a lot of drama when Jane is in the red room. With the long sentences it helps to impregnate an image of the story in your mind and the repetition helps the reader to read more fluently.
In Victorian times, parents thought if their children were not beaten they would become spoilt and naughty. Girls were treated as second-class citizens and were not expected to go very far in life. They were expected to become like wives and mothers when they grew up and as children they were suppose to act like delicate, happy, quiet, pretty little girls. As a modern reader I feel sorry for Jane, as I know that she will not have a chance and choices in life that I know that I will have when I grow up.
Charlotte Bronte and Jane are similar because they were both girls in a time when women did not have much in the world to do except maybe marry, be a governess or a maid.
Charlotte Bronte was influenced by other writers of her time such as Charles Dickens who wrote about poor people and children. This was unusual style of writing for that time period as most novels were written about adults and rich people because these were the people who funded the novels to be written.
I also think that Charlotte Bronte was influenced by the gothic stories of her time as she uses that very theme intensely in chapter two when she is talking about Jane in the red room.
This analysis of the first two chapters has uncovered a great deal of exciting events, interesting characters and suspense. Considering these chapters are relatively short for a Victorian novel Charlotte Bronte has cramped a great deal of detail in them. She has used a variety of techniques and language to get across sympathy for her main character, that is Jane. I feel that I can say that after reading this novel Charlotte Bronte has successfully put across sympathy for “Jane Eyre” in the first two chapters of the novel.
