Recovery and Reflection — Jane Eyre

Jane wakes from the fit that closed Chapter 2 to find a stranger beside her bed: Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary sometimes called for the servants. The relief is immediate and specific. He is not from Gateshead. He has no stake in the family's verdict on her. He settles her, charges Bessie to let her sleep, and leaves. When he closes the door the room darkens again.

The next day Jane sits wrapped in a shawl by the nursery fire, physically weak and emotionally wretched. The Reeds are all out. Bessie is unusually kind. It should be peaceful. Instead, every comfort Jane reaches for is wrong. The china plate with the bird of paradise, once so coveted she was never allowed to hold it, is now placed on her knee. She cannot eat the tart. The plumage seems faded. She asks for Gulliver's Travels, the book she has read with delight again and again. She cannot read it. The giants appear as goblins, Gulliver a desolate wanderer. Bessie sings. The songs, usually lively, now carry the cadence of a funeral hymn. The orphan ballad makes Jane cry before she can help it.

Mr. Lloyd returns in the morning. He asks what is wrong. Bessie volunteers that Jane is probably crying because she missed the carriage outing. Jane corrects her: she has never cried for such a thing. She says plainly: I cry because I am miserable. Lloyd asks what makes her miserable. Jane tells him, in pieces: the red room and Mr. Reed's ghost, having no father or mother, John knocking her down, her aunt locking her in the red room. She is the first child he has listened to. He asks whether she has any other relations, whether she would like to go to school. She says she would indeed like to go to school.

Mr. Lloyd recommends the change to Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed agrees without hesitation. The servants, talking after dark when they think Jane is asleep, confirm what Jane suspected: her mistress was glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome child. From the same overheard conversation, Jane learns for the first time the facts of her own life: her father was a poor clergyman, her mother married him against her family's wishes and was cut off, both died of typhus within a month of each other when Jane was an infant. Bessie, hearing this, says poor Miss Jane is to be pitied too. Abbot agrees: if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness. But one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.