Sympathy for Jane Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
In the first two chapters of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte creates
sympathy for Jane from the settings she uses like the red room, which
comes up later in chapter two. Also with all the metaphors of Janes
true feelings under the surface and the ways that the chapters are
structured.
Charlotte Bronte starts off the book straight to the point as if we
just enter Janes mind at this moment in time, it is meant to draw the
reader in and at once create the atmosphere of this time when we have
joined her. With the 'clouds so sombre' and the 'rain so penetrating'
we get a glimpse inside Jane knowing that she must be so 'cold' inside
like the 'winter'. While there is a fire inside the house where she
could get warmth to fill her up she is not allowed, and with a
'saddened' 'heart' she's not even told why she can't sit with the
family around their 'mamma' by the fire but instead 'dispensed from
joining the group' and not told why.
This helps create sympathy for Jane by trying to show the reader that
she is a 'deprived' child, and the only escape she gets is when she
goes to the 'window - seat' and shuts the 'folds of scarlet drapery'.
But still she now feels protected, but not yet separated until she
reads her books. The weather once again bears it face to show us that
Jane still is not happy with 'a pale blank mist and cloud' and
'ceaseless rain' which could be the tears of frustration which we must
feel she has to hold back to never show any signs of weakness or hurt
to Mrs Reed or her children especially John who steps into the book in
a while.
The book begins to resemble a gothic genre with its 'stormy'
atmosphere and the 'phantoms' around 'the quite solitary churchyard'
and 'it was an object of terror'. There is quite a metaphor for what
Jane is like inside when she describes a picture which 'gave
significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and
spray'. It could be Charlotte Bronte giving significance to the fact
the Jane still only at the age of ten has to stand up against 'the sea
of billow and spray' pounding away at the stone and leaving their mark
in her life e.g. Mrs Reed, Helen Burns, Miss Temple, Mr Brocklehurst,
Mr Rochester etc. Also her 'standing up alone' against the society of
the time where as a women plus being poor would have no place just how
'the rock' seems to have no place in the sea but was in the end put
there for a reason.
And finally after reading the book she 'was then happy: happy at least
in' her 'own way'. But then of course whenever Jane is happy there is
always an 'interruption' which 'came too soon'. The interruption is
John Reed, Mrs Reed's son. He calls her a 'bad animal', which shows
what the Reeds must really think of her; an animal that they just have
to look after and they treat her like one all the same. Charlotte
Bronte creates a horrible image for John Reed saying that he has
'unwholesome skin;...
