Isolation and Defiance — Jane Eyre

After her illness, Mrs. Reed increases Jane's isolation further: she is assigned a small closet to sleep in alone, takes meals by herself, and is confined to the nursery while the Reed children use the drawing room. Jane waits in silence for the school that Mr. Lloyd recommended. No one mentions it. John resumes his bullying. Jane punches him hard in the nose; when Mrs. Reed sweeps her to the nursery and dares her to speak, something speaks through Jane before she can stop it: My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead. Mrs. Reed's cold composed eye shows fear. She shakes Jane soundly and leaves without a word.

November, December, half of January pass. Christmas celebrations fill the house below: the piano, the clinking of glass, the butler and footman moving through the lit rooms. Jane watches from the stairhead, then retreats to the dark nursery. She takes her doll to bed because human beings must love something, and she has nothing else. On the rare evenings when Bessie brings a bun or a cheese-cake and sits on the bed, Jane thinks her the best and prettiest being in the world. On the morning of the fifteenth of January, Eliza is feeding her chickens and calculating interest on her hoarded money. Georgiana is doing her hair with artificial flowers from the attic. A carriage rolls up the drive.

Mr. Brocklehurst arrives, the clergyman who runs Lowood School. Mrs. Reed tells him, in front of Jane, that Jane has a tendency to deceit. Brocklehurst interrogates Jane about hell and the broad road, delivers his warnings, and departs satisfied. As soon as he is gone, Jane turns on Mrs. Reed. She says she is not deceitful. She says she does not love Mrs. Reed and never will. She tells her she will inform every girl at Lowood what Mrs. Reed did. Mrs. Reed tells her she will be glad when Jane is gone. Jane says: send me to school soon, for I hate to live here. Mrs. Reed gathers her work and leaves the room.

Jane is left alone: winner of the field. She has fought the hardest battle of her life and won it. The victory feels like aromatic wine at first, then turns metallic and corroding, like being poisoned. She goes outside into the black frost, whispering to herself what shall I do, what shall I do. Bessie finds her and scolds her. Jane puts her arms around Bessie without calculation. The nursemaid softens. She tells Jane that Missis intends her to leave Gateshead in a day or two. That afternoon they have tea together, Bessie tells stories and sings. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.