Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.

This is a rather unusual romance in that we begin by surveying Jane’s childhood. More modern romances sometimes include flashbacks to childhood, but if it’s meant to be an adult romance, we rarely spend much time there. Jane Eyre, however, is meant to tell Jane’s story first and foremost, apart from any ensuing romance, and I’ve always loved it for that…even if it’s sometimes frustrating.

This book is also told in first person, which was hardly a novel concept in the 1800’s, but it WAS rare for a book to be told from a woman’s POV, and from the perspective of a 10-year-old girl, at that.

I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavoring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner, – something lighter, franker, more natural as it were – she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy little children.”

Jane strikes me here as, if not necessarily neurodivergent, then at least suffering from childhood PTSD (the reasons will quickly become clear). If she were neurodivergent, then making her join the rest of the Reed brood might make things harder, but it’s hard enough being treated as an “unnatural” child for reasons likely beyond her control.

And then Jane asks what she’s done to deserve this censure.

“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners: besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”

Seeing she’s not going to be included in family time tonight, Jane, a person after my own heart, takes a book and finds a quiet nook to read it in. Said book is Bewick’s History of British Birds, a real book (obviously one Bronte loved) famous for its poetical prose and woodcut pictures of the birds in their habitats. Jane enjoys some of the writing, but mainly the pictures.

Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery-hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills, and crimped her night-cap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and older ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.

Pamela is a book considered by some to be the first English novel, and while I can’t find the Henry story, it’s presumably another popular book from the 1700’s.

With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.

The interruption comes in the form of her cousin John, who’s not perceptive enough to find her by his own wits, but Eliza knows her well enough to guess where she’s hiding and rats her out.

I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by [John].
“What do you want?” I asked with awkward diffidence.
“Say, ‘What do you want, Master Reed?'” was the answer. “I want you to come here;” and seating himself in an armchair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.
John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten; large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. […] He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, “on account of his delicate health.” Mr. Miles, the master, had affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John’s sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining for home.
John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in a week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh on my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I became bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence; more frequently, however, behind her back.

Basically, John picks on her because he’s a spoiled bully and Jane has no one to intercede on her behalf. Presumably, he might’ve opted for one of his sisters as a target had she not been around, and that might be part of the reason they encourage this behavior…but they probably also think she deserves it, because their mother is just that terrible.

He subsequently hits her (allegedly as retribution for her talking back Mrs. Reed earlier, and then “hiding”, and the look on her face when she was WAITING FOR HIM TO HIT HER).

Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.

and this is only the beginning of her trauma

She explains that she was just reading, but he manages to spin even THAT out like she’s a despicable person.

“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense. Now, I’ll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they are mine; all this house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and windows.”
I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell. The cut bled, the pain was sharp; my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.
“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer – you are like a slave-driver – you are like the Roman emperors!”

Jane had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, a book intended for instruction, and which often showed deference to the Roman Emperors (as it was written by the British in peak colonialism mode), but Jane saw those “great men” for what they really were: Bullies. John doesn’t really understand the reference, but he knows well enough that she insulted him, and that’s all he needs to go on the offensive.

I really saw in him a tyrant: a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent sufferings: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called “Rat! rat” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was upstairs; she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot. We were parted: I heard the words:
“Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!”
“Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!”

and of course, they only saw jane attacking him

“Take her away to the red-room, and lock her there.” Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.

Until next time…