After Jane reaches Lowood and describes the food given to her, and her living conditions you feel sympathy for her. People need food to think properly and as Jane had no food on the night she arrived at Lowood, as she was too excited and she was unable to eat breakfast. Jane may not have been able to think to her full extent and the teachers at Lowood would punish her if she was not concentrating nor had the answer to the questions given to her, and this affected Jane severely. Bronte in the first few chapters reflects Jane’s emotions using fire and the weather which I believe was the best technique Bronte uses in the book because if Jane does not tell the reader how she feels they will know by the way she describes the weather or her surroundings. In chapters five and six Bronte also starts to describe Jane using the food she is given at Lowood. When Jane is in a good mood the food is good,
‘Excitement and fatigue rendering me incapable of eating; I now saw however, that it was a thin oaten cake’
And when Jane is in a bad mood the food is bad,
‘Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted.’
When Bronte uses the weather to describe Jane’s mood
‘That wind would have saddened my heart’
‘I wished the wind to howl more wildly’
You feel sympathy for Jane when you start to understand how she feels; it is as if no amount of unrest in the weather could mirror her feelings.
Before Jane met Helen she did not want to live with poor people as she thought that although they would love her they had nothing to give her. In chapter eight Jane starts to learn from Helen and her pure ways of action and thinking.
‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith’
Bronte uses a technique in which you have to look for clues to find what Jane learns and feels. I do not believe that this is one of Bronte’s best techniques as it complicated and you need to go back in the book to understand what meaning of the sentence actually is. Bronte is successful in engaging the reader’s sympathy for Jane Eyre.