All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so…

We have our first glimpse of possibly supernatural occurrences…and Bronte makes a strong case for child protective services!

When last we saw Jane, she was being carted off to “the red-room”.

‘What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.’
‘Master! How is he my master? How am I a servant?’
‘No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing to earn your keep. […]’

I mean, she’s TEN. She shouldn’t have everyone in the household negging her about not doing anything!

She’s still in a rebellious mood, but after the servants threaten to tie her to the chair, she finally agrees to stay put.

‘She never did so before,’ at last said Bessie, turning to […] Abigail.
‘But it was always in her,’ was the reply. ‘I’ve told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.’

This doesn’t even appear to be them discussing the incident with John anymore, just the fact that she balked at essentially being put on time-out, which was somewhat understandable given that she was just torn away from a fight!

But they leave Jane with some recommendations about what to meditate on in her solitude.

‘You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor-house.’
I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in:- ‘And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.’

And this is what she’s been told all her life: You were born poor, so the people born with money are allowed to treat you like dirt.

‘What we tell you is for your good,’ added Bessie, in no harsh voice: ‘you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away, I am sure.’
‘Besides,’ said Miss Abbot, ‘God will punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney, and fetch you away.’

because obviously, SHE’S the bad one if she stands up to her abuser just once…

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchens; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, and her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room – the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.
Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

Naturally, while she’s sitting by herself, she gets to thinking about her whole situation (which the servants just rubbed in her face).

Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favor? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, and a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John, no one thwarted, much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called his mother ‘old girl,’ too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still ‘her own darling.’ I dared commit no fault; I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

Presumably, “dark skin” here means “a slight tan”; more importantly, however, John literally KILLS AND TORTURES ANIMALS FOR FUN, but because animal rights activism wasn’t really a thing yet, this is more equated to destroying “his things” and not a sign that he’s going to start on people next (and he’s ALREADY started on people, but clearly Jane isn’t considered a person in this household).

My head still ached and bled from the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.
‘Unjust!-unjust!’ said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power; and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression – as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

Because it IS unjust for a child to be endangered in her own home! But Jane herself is much more forgiving looking back on the situation.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall; I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgement. I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child – though equally dependent and friendless – Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

But the problem isn’t nature here, it’s nurture – even if the servants were the ones actually taking care of Jane, they’d still be inclined to mistreat (or at the very least discipline her) more often than the “natural” Reed children, and that’s just not the sort of environment that produces a healthy, happy child.

I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so: what thought had I been but conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own uncle – my mother’s brother – and that he had taken me when a parentless infant into his house; and in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say. as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her own race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.

From this memory of Mr. Reed forcing that promise on his wife, Jane begins to think that he might not consider the promise to be kept, and that people who have unfinished business mightn’t stay in the grave…

I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it – I endevoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room. At this moment, a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray of moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed it glided up the ceiling and quivered over my head.

In the years since, Jane postulated that it was probably just a lamp being carried across the lawn outside, but naturally, in the moment, she was terrified. She screamed and tried to force open the locked door, bringing the servants back to find out what’s wrong.

‘Miss Eyre, are you ill?’ said Bessie.
‘What a dreadful noise! it want quite through me!’ exclaimed Abbot.
‘Take me out! let me go into the nursery!’ was my cry.
‘What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?’ again demanded Bessie.
‘Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.’ I had now got hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
‘She screamed out on purpose,’ declared Abbot, in some disgust. ‘And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks.’

In a better home, someone would simply calm her fears. Whether or not something supernatural actually happened, Jane obviously has something of an overactive imagination, much like Anne…but unlike her, Jane’s in a home that doesn’t want to deal with her.

‘What is all this?’ demanded another voice, peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. ‘Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.’
‘Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,’ pleaded Bessie.
‘Let her go,’ was the only answer. ‘Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.’
‘Oh, aunt, have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it – let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if-‘
‘Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:’ and so no doubt, she felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes: she sincerely looked on me as a dangerous compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.

Maybe Mrs. Reed was herself a “precocious actress” when she was a child, someone who often faked injury to escape consequences. Or maybe she just never attempted to understand Jane on her own terms, because she added no value to her life. Regardless, Jane ends the chapter UNCONSCIOUS after the whole ordeal.

Until next time…