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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In the anthology 'Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights,' readers are invited to explore the intertwined themes of love, identity, and social constraint through the parallel narrative prowess of the Bront√´ sisters. This collection juxtaposes the intense and haunting atmospheres created in each sister's work, highlighting the profound emotional landscapes and the exploration of human resilience. The editor has carefully selected passages that illuminate the depth of Gothic and Romantic influences within Victorian literature, showcasing the diversity in style'—from Charlotte's penetrating social critique to Emily's raw portrayal of nature and passion'—without singular attribution. Charlotte and Emily Bront√´, hailing from the isolated yet fertile creative environment of the Yorkshire Moors, weave narratives that challenge the socio-cultural norms of their time. Through their distinctive voices, this anthology captures the spirit of defiance and individualism that characterized the 19th-century literary movement. Each sister's contribution is a fundamental piece in the broader tapestry of the era's literature, interlacing personal and fictional journeys to elevate the discussion on gender and class. A must-read for literary enthusiasts, this anthology provides an invaluable lens into the enduring narratives crafted by the Bront√´s. Experience the emotional depths and varied stylistic approaches within a single volume, presenting an unparalleled platform for reflection and scholarly dialogue. This collection stands as a testament to the enduring power of literature to transcend its time, inviting readers to uncover the profound insights each novel offers into the complexities of human nature and society. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - An Introduction draws the threads together, discussing why these diverse authors and texts belong in one collection. - Historical Context explores the cultural and intellectual currents that shaped these works, offering insight into the shared (or contrasting) eras that influenced each writer. - A combined Synopsis (Selection) briefly outlines the key plots or arguments of the included pieces, helping readers grasp the anthology's overall scope without giving away essential twists. - A collective Analysis highlights common themes, stylistic variations, and significant crossovers in tone and technique, tying together writers from different backgrounds. - Reflection questions encourage readers to compare the different voices and perspectives within the collection, fostering a richer understanding of the overarching conversation.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Jane Eyre & Wuthering Hights
Table of Contents
Introduction
Curatorial Vision
This pairing brings together Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë to illuminate two radical meditations on selfhood, passion, and moral agency. Each novel confronts the pressures of social expectation and the insistent demands of desire, testing how integrity survives in hostile circumstances. Read alongside one another, they sharpen the contours of their shared concerns: the hunger for recognition, the ethics of attachment, and the costs of transgression. The collection presents two distinct artistic temperaments probing similar questions, inviting a sustained encounter with interior life, fierce attachment to place, and the restless search for a just, livable order.
The curatorial through-line foregrounds the Gothic’s pressure on domestic life and the romance plot’s collision with conscience. Both works fashion intense psychological atmospheres where love becomes a crucible for ethical decision, and where isolation, rumor, and memory distort what can be known. The settings operate as moral weather, registering characters’ conflicts through storm, silence, enclosure, and thresholds. Against that backdrop, the protagonists’ resolve and volatility become tests of identity. By aligning these novels, the collection emphasizes how imaginative audacity and moral scrutiny can coexist, staging a dialogue between inward discipline and tempestuous feeling without reducing either book to a singular formula.
The aim is to encourage comparative reading across formal strategies and emotional registers. Jane Eyre offers a disciplined arc of growth and ethical self-assertion, while Wuthering Heights cultivates extremes that challenge conventional measures of virtue or harm. Together they chart a spectrum from confession to myth, from careful self-accounting to volatile communion. This arrangement highlights recurring figures—outsiders, guardians, witnesses—and recurring pressures—inheritance, secrecy, promises—that force choices with lasting reverberations. By presenting the novels in one constellation, the collection invites attention to echoes that might be muted in isolation, and to divergences that sharpen each work’s distinctive moral and aesthetic stance.
Approached side by side, the novels illuminate each other’s hidden angles. Patterns of voice, threshold imagery, and the choreography of pursuit and retreat become newly legible when cross-read. The sense of home as both refuge and trap, the transformative yet perilous force of attachment, and the entanglement of love with power assume a broader contour across the pair. This differs from encountering either novel alone, where intensity can obscure relational patterns. Here the curatorial frame encourages readers to trace motifs—windows, doors, moors, hearths—and to weigh competing ethics of steadfastness and surrender, thereby reframing familiar questions about autonomy and belonging.
Thematic & Aesthetic Interplay
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights speak across a corridor of affinities and dissonances. Each depends on a charged intimacy between narrator and readerly conscience, yet the timbre differs: one steady and introspective, the other fierce and incantatory. Both experiment with the interplay of secrecy and revelation, staging recognition as a trial of character. The natural world is not a backdrop but an instrument, amplifying or resisting human will. Domestic spaces complicate hospitality, turning comfort into scrutiny. In this exchange, tenderness and cruelty, justice and desire, are not simple opposites but braided forces that test the limits of endurance and forgiveness.
Recurring motifs echo between the novels: confinement and escape marked by doors, keys, and long corridors; storms that mirror emotional turbulence; names that bind or estrange; and vows that generate both shelter and peril. Figures of haunting appear as ethical residues rather than simple specters, insisting that broken promises and unacknowledged debts do not fade. Education, caretaking, and guardianship shape destinies, raising questions about influence and responsibility. Storytelling itself becomes an arena of power, where testimony may heal or wound. Across both works, love is inseparable from law, and memory from judgment, producing narratives that wrestle with accountability and grace.
The contrasts are equally instructive. One novel cultivates patient self-scrutiny and measured ascent, valuing interior clarity and negotiated boundaries. The other dramatizes engulfing attachment, elemental grievance, and the refusal of consolation. Where one tests integrity through renunciation, the other tests it through endurance of intensity. Together they form a dialectic of restraint and excess, civility and ferocity, deliberation and impulse. Differences in pacing and tonal weather create a vibrating field rather than a hierarchy, allowing each book to correct the other’s blind spots. The result is a composite portrait of love and power neither text could supply alone.
Their dialogue may be less a matter of overt reference than of reciprocal resonance. Shared motifs—found families, contested inheritances, the pull of remote places, the charisma of difficult figures—suggest convergent preoccupations. When read together, scenes of watchfulness, overheard speech, and sudden flight seem to glance across the books, as if answering or challenging prior gestures. Such correspondences need not imply direct borrowing; they reflect two imaginations grappling with neighboring problems. The pairing invites readers to notice these subtle cross-signals and to consider how each author transforms similar materials into a distinct ethic of attachment, responsibility, and imaginative daring.
Enduring Impact & Critical Reception
These novels endure because they articulate perennial questions about autonomy, dignity, and the volatility of love under pressure. They dramatize the negotiation between private desire and communal norms without settling for easy resolutions. Their protagonists confront coercion in intimate and social forms, insisting that moral choice remains meaningful even when circumstances narrow it. The language of conscience, pledge, and reparation runs alongside the language of longing, producing durable frameworks for thinking about care and harm. Read together, the books offer complementary vantage points on the pursuit of a life that honors passion while refusing to abandon accountability.
Over time, both titles have attracted sustained attention across classrooms and critical conversations, becoming touchstones for debates about individualism, gender, class, and the ethics of storytelling. General readers and scholars alike have returned to them to test evolving ideas about romantic fulfillment, justice, and the boundaries of acceptable conduct. Their capacity to provoke disagreement has been a sign of their vitality: one can admire their artistic boldness while also interrogating the wounds that boldness exposes. The pair has often anchored discussions about how narrative voice shapes moral judgment, and how intense feeling may clarify or distort ethical sight.
Their cultural afterlives are extensive, with persistent adaptation, quotation, and reinterpretation across theater, film, television, visual art, and music. Retellings and responses multiply, carrying forward signatures of orphans, remote houses, storms, and indelible names. These works are cited in conversations about consent, trauma, and resilience, and they inspire artistic experiments that transpose their tensions into new settings. Such exchanges testify to more than nostalgia; they reveal structures and images supple enough to invite continuing invention. The energy of their archetypes has entered a shared cultural vocabulary, enabling dialogue among artists, readers, and thinkers far beyond their original moment.
As a collection, the two novels create a laboratory for contemporary re-reading. They illuminate the stakes of care, justice, and belonging in intimate bonds, and the complicated legacies of harm that intimate bonds can carry. By juxtaposing disciplined self-fashioning with fierce, untamable attachment, the volume equips renewed debate about agency, responsibility, and the imaginative work of survival. It also underscores the pedagogical value of comparison without reducing either book to an emblem. The result is an encounter that honors two singular achievements while opening a shared space in which ethical reflection and aesthetic pleasure reinforce one another.
Historical Context
Socio-Political Landscape
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights emerged in 1847, early in Queen Victoria’s reign, when constitutional monarchy coexisted with rapid industrial expansion and volatile public debate. Britain’s factories, mills, and new railways accelerated urban growth while sharpening class divisions between landed elites, middling professionals, and wage laborers. Chartist petitions for broader male suffrage unsettled authorities, even after the 1832 Reform Act’s limited concessions. Religious controversies and educational reform stirred parishes and schoolrooms alike. For women, coverture restricted property and legal standing, and respectable employment options narrowed to teaching or domestic service. Against this backdrop, Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë wrote from Yorkshire’s provincial yet interconnected world.
Imperial structures underwrote local realities. Capital from Caribbean plantations and Asian trade coursed through banks and estates, while abolition left legacies of coerced labor and racial hierarchy embedded in law and commerce. Colonial wars at the periphery rarely halted metropolitan prosperity, but they fed patriotic rhetoric and anxieties about authority and discipline. In northern England, moorland villages neighbored textile towns governed by magistrates, clergy, and mill owners, each asserting moral jurisdiction. The books’ attention to wealth, mobility, and marginalization reflects a society knit together by steam routes and imperial credit yet riven by unequal access to status, education, and security.
Education and work defined respectable paths for genteel but precarious families. Governessing offered room, references, and social exposure without true advancement or legal protection. The 1834 Poor Law centralized relief through workhouses, stigmatizing dependence and formalizing surveillance of the poor. Property settlements navigated inheritance and guardianship, often sidelining women’s consent. Debates about charity versus systemic reform animated pamphlets, sermons, and local committees. These forces shaped how households employed servants, arranged marriages, and policed reputation. Without revealing story particulars, one can note that both novels probe the tension between moral autonomy and the narrow institutional channels through which it could be exercised.
Publishing norms affected tone and reach. The three-volume format suited circulating libraries, whose subscription model rewarded length and moral decorum. Librarians and reviewers exercised soft censorship, warning against scenes deemed improper or unladylike. Provincial authors faced barriers, yet railways, the postal service, and expanding literacy connected Yorkshire to London’s editors. Charlotte Brontë published with Smith, Elder and Co.; Emily Brontë’s novel appeared through Thomas Cautley Newby. Both first used gender-neutral pseudonyms—Currer and Ellis Bell—to navigate prejudice and preserve privacy. Advertising in periodicals, reprint negotiations, and overseas editions quickly transformed a private manuscript into a public, debated cultural artifact.
Religious life organized communities and imaginations. The established church held legal privileges, yet dissenting chapels thrived, fostering rival Sunday schools and charity networks. Clergy occupied civic roles as educators and moral arbiters, their sermons shaping local expectations about obedience, compassion, and penitence. Evangelical zeal encouraged introspection and conversion narratives, while skepticism circulated through lectures and pamphlets. Sabbatarian pressures regulated leisure, and blasphemy laws lingered, though prosecutions were rare. Rather than formal state censorship, a lattice of pulpit admonition, parental supervision, and library policy tempered what could be printed, purchased, or performed, guiding how readers interpreted passion, duty, and transgression.
Public crises punctuated daily routine. The Irish Famine and repeal of the Corn Laws forced arguments about free trade, poor relief, and moral responsibility. Railway mania enriched some and ruined others, collapsing speculative bubbles and altering village horizons with embankments and whistles. Demonstrations linked to Chartism flared, while news of uprisings elsewhere in Europe nourished fears of contagion. Policing expanded, and new prisons embodied utilitarian hopes for correction. Domestic ideology urged modesty and obedience, yet newspapers teemed with reports of breach-of-promise suits and marital cruelty. Such contradictions energize the novels’ interest in authority, rebellion, and the ethics of care.
Intellectual & Aesthetic Currents
The books appeared during a transition from late Romantic sensibility to Victorian psychological inquiry. Landscapes mattered not only for scenery but for states of mind: wind-scoured moors and austere houses evoked the sublime, while domestic interiors staged conscience and confession. First-person address and intimate focalization placed readers alongside turbulent feeling, yet moral reflection tempered sensational impulses. Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë refused tidy allegory, preferring inner weather—storms of longing, shame, and resolve—rendered in tactile detail. Their formal daring helped shift expectations from didactic tales to novels that tested the reliability of perception without discarding ethical seriousness.
Scientific and technological change widened imaginative horizons. Railways compressed distance and time; the electric telegraph promised instant communication; photography introduced new standards of visual truth. Popular lectures spread ideas about the mind, nerves, and the body’s hidden forces, while geological exhibits hinted at timelines dwarfing human history. These developments encouraged metaphors of transmission, shock, sediment, and exposure that suffuse the era’s prose. In both novels, consciousness registers as a network of sensations and recollections rather than a fixed essence, aligning literary technique with contemporary curiosity about mechanism, memory, and the limits of empirical explanation.
Parallel movements in other arts sharpened contrasts between ornament and candor. Painters revived medieval detail and luminous skies, inviting viewers to treat nature as a moral text, while audiences flocked to melodrama that magnified extremes of virtue and villainy. Domestic music-making cultivated taste and self-control, disciplining emotion through pattern and practice. Such cultural habits trained readers to value surface accuracy yet crave heightened feeling. The novels respond with meticulously observed rooms, clothing, and weather, but they also press beyond decorum to articulate impulses society often suppressed, harnessing theatrical pacing and painterly chiaroscuro without surrendering to caricature or mere spectacle.
The literary marketplace rewarded category play. Gothic architecture, stormy landscapes, and sudden revelations courted the appetite for shivers, while domestic realism promised instruction through plausible detail. Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë combine these modes, setting intimate moral tests within uncanny atmospheres that disturb easy judgment. Narrative voices shift between confession, testimony, and reported talk, training readers to weigh bias and omission. Direct apostrophes to the audience cultivate complicity, yet the books resist sermonizing. In rejecting neat programmatic alignments, they exemplify a competitive field in which no single manifesto could monopolize taste or dictate the proper subject of the novel.
Philosophically, the period balanced utilitarian calculations of happiness with claims for inviolable conscience. Evangelical self-scrutiny encouraged diaries, vows, and examinations of motive; civic rhetoric praised improvement through education and work. Early arguments for women’s legal reform gathered strength, confronting marriage practices that conflated obedience with virtue. The novels stage clashes between rule and exception, policy and mercy, asking whether authority derives from statute, tradition, or inward judgment. Rather than preach programs, Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë depict moral experimentation, dramatizing how individuals test principles under pressure and discover the costs of consistency, compromise, and rebellion.
Critical skirmishes reflected institutional pressures. Circulating libraries championed propriety, while readers increasingly demanded authenticity of feeling; reviewers castigated perceived coarseness, yet sales rewarded candor. Three-decker economics encouraged measured pacing and cliffhanger breaks; serial reprints adapted chapters to different markets. Tensions between metropolitan polish and provincial forthrightness surfaced in commentary about dialect, manners, and taste. The novels’ experiments with multiple narrators and retold events effectively challenged expectations for impartial omniscience, provoking debate about truth in fiction. Such arguments show how aesthetic innovation negotiated the gatekeeping machinery that sorted manuscripts into respectable instruction, thrilling diversion, or supposedly dangerous provocation.
Legacy & Reassessment Across Time
From the outset, responses diverged. Jane Eyre became a sensation, lauded for vitality yet rebuked for ardor and religious defiance; Wuthering Heights baffled many, its stark intensity taken as moral offense or unruly genius. Publishing under Currer and Ellis Bell initially masked the authors’ sex, complicating judgments about propriety and audacity. When identities were revealed, some reviewers reevaluated claims of impropriety through the lens of gender expectations, while others praised courage. The episode demonstrates how authorial attribution shifts reception, foregrounding the challenge these novels posed to conventional protocols of feeling, authority, and voice in mid-nineteenth-century fiction.
Victorian respectability often demanded smoothing rough edges. School and family editions tidied language, pruned episodes, and supplied moralizing notes to reconcile fervor with decorum. Such bowdlerization sought to align the books with prevailing ideals of gentility yet confirmed their disruptive power. Over time, sympathetic critics distinguished stylistic differences between Charlotte Brontë’s disciplined introspection and Emily Brontë’s elemental intensity, arguing that both expanded the novel’s range. As reprints multiplied, readers carried copies into drawing rooms and workplaces, transforming once-scandalous pages into cherished companions, even as the tension between candor and propriety continued to animate public conversation.
Twentieth-century upheavals reframed interpretation. After world wars exposed organized brutality and displacement, critics emphasized psychological survival, trauma, and estrangement, finding in these novels maps of endurance and ethical testing. Universities established canonical syllabi that placed Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights at the heart of courses on narrative voice and character interiority, accompanied by annotated editions clarifying variant texts and publication contexts. The focus on structure and consciousness highlighted technical ingenuity: nested testimonies, temporal layering, and carefully staged revelations. Such attention strengthened their status as laboratories for understanding how narrative form can register intense feeling without forfeiting complexity.
Later decades expanded the frame again. Feminist scholarship explored domestic labor, desire, and the politics of consent, while postcolonial inquiry scrutinized how imperial economies and racial categories haunt settings, speech, and inheritance. Environmental criticism analyzed moorland ecologies and weather as active forces, not mere backdrop. Disability studies reconsidered confinement, illness, and care. Meanwhile, stage, radio, television, and film adaptations reimagined scenes for changing mediums and audiences, shaping popular memory through casting, scenery, and soundtrack. These interpretations do not fix meaning; they show how the novels’ capaciousness accommodates new histories and ethical questions without exhausting their interpretive reserves.
Legal and material conditions also shifted legacy. With copyright expiration, inexpensive reprints and global translations circulated widely, embedding the books in classrooms and private libraries across continents. Scholarly series stabilized texts and supplied historical notes, while digitization enabled searchable archives and public-domain access. Museums and heritage sites preserved relevant landscapes and interiors, supporting tourism that entwines biography, setting, and reading experience. Contemporary writers and audiences continue to respond through homage, critique, and transformation, ensuring that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights remain living interlocutors rather than relics, their questions about power, belonging, and conscience renewed by successive generations.
Synopsis (Selection)
Jane Eyre
A coming-of-age novel about an orphaned governess who seeks love, self-respect, and autonomy while confronting social constraints and unsettling secrets in Victorian England. It blends Gothic mystery with a moral and emotional quest for identity.
Wuthering Heights
A tale of turbulent relationships between the Earnshaw and Linton families on the Yorkshire moors, told through nested narrators. It explores obsession, class, and revenge as powerful emotions echo across generations.
Author Biography
Introduction
Charlotte and Emily Brontë, renowned sisters and authors, made profound contributions to English literature in the 19th century. Born in Yorkshire, England, Charlotte (1816-1855) is best known for her novel 'Jane Eyre,' while Emily (1818-1848) gained acclaim for her sole work, 'Wuthering Heights.' Their pioneering narratives explored themes of individuality, morality, and the struggles against societal constraints, establishing them as key figures in the Victorian literary canon. The Brontë sisters' works continue to be celebrated for their emotional depth and complex characters, influencing countless writers and shaping modern concepts of feminist literature.
Early Life
Charlotte and Emily Brontë were born into a family of six children in Thornton, Yorkshire. Their parents, Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman, and Maria Branwell Brontë, fostered an environment that encouraged literary pursuits. After their mother’s early death in 1821, Charlotte and Emily, along with their siblings, faced a challenging upbringing, marked by tragedy and inspiration. The sisters found solace in their imaginative worlds, fueled by the writings of their father and inspired by the vast Yorkshire moors surrounding their home, elements that would later permeate their works.
As children, the Brontë sisters created elaborate stories and characters, notably in the form of the ‘Angria’ tales penned by Charlotte and her brother Branwell. These narratives fostered their creativity and provided a unique platform for expression. The Brontë house became a haven of literary experimentation, where themes of love, despair, and existential struggle took root. Their bond with their siblings—particularly with Branwell, who later descended into addiction—deeply affected their emotional and literary development, influencing their understanding of human frailty and passion.
Education and Literary Influences
The Brontë sisters received a formal education at the Clergy Daughters' School in Cowan Bridge, an experience marked by severe conditions that later inspired Charlotte’s depiction of the oppressive atmosphere in 'Jane Eyre.' While the environment was harsh, it emphasized the importance of education for women, a theme that both sisters would explore in their writings. Charlotte later became a governess, a profession that provided her with firsthand insight into the lives and struggles of women in domestic servitude, which would influence her depictions of female characters seeking independence.
Literary influences were pivotal in shaping the Brontë sisters' writing. They admired the works of prominent authors, including Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, whose romanticism and deep psychological insights resonated with their own sensibilities. Charlotte was particularly inspired by the strong female protagonists of her era, while Emily drew upon the wildness of nature and the complexities of human emotion reflected in her poetry and prose. Together, their works reflect a blending of gothic and romantic styles, transcending the conventions of their time.
Adulthood and Key Life Events
In their adolescence and early adulthood, both Charlotte and Emily faced personal losses; their siblings—Elizabeth, Maria, Branwell, and Anne—each succumbed to early deaths, leaving Charlotte and Emily to deepen their bond. The absences of their family members profoundly impacted their worldview, echoing themes of grief, loss, and resilience in their writings. Despite yearning for family connection, they began to carve out their identities as authors, relentlessly pursuing their passion for writing amidst the emotional upheaval.
Charlotte's role as a governess afforded her a nuanced understanding of class relations and gender, experiences vividly illustrated in her work. Her intense relationship with the Quaker, William Weightman, sparked inspiration for future characters in her novels. Meanwhile, Emily remained largely withdrawn, drawing strength from the natural world around the Brontë parsonage in Haworth. Her deep connection to the moors is evident in 'Wuthering Heights,' where the landscape becomes a character in its own right, symbolizing isolation and untamed passion.
In 1846, Charlotte and Emily, alongside their sister Anne, published a volume of poetry under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. This endeavor ignited their literary careers, revealing both their literary prowess and their desire to circumvent gender norms of the time. Despite mixed reviews initially, Charlotte’s 'Jane Eyre' (1847) quickly gained popularity for its innovation and emotional intensity, leading to a burgeoning recognition that would shape their literary legacies.
The sisters' literary pursuits were often intertwined with personal tragedies; Emily's health deteriorated following their brother Branwell's death from alcoholism in 1848. This loss deeply affected both sisters and emphasizes the human struggles that pervade their works. Emily’s declining health culminated in her death later that same year, leaving Charlotte to mourn her sister's untimely demise and carry on their shared dream of literary success.
Charlotte’s tireless efforts as a writer led her to London, where she met renowned literary figures including George Smith, who became her publisher. Her relationships with literary circles provided vital support, yet served as a bittersweet reminder of the isolation she often felt in her personal life. During this period, Charlotte published her other notable works, including 'Shirley' (1849) and 'Villette' (1853), which continued to explore themes of women's struggles for agency.
Charlotte endured significant heartache in her adult life, particularly during her fleeting engagement with Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curate. Although she was deeply in love, societal expectations and familial pressure clouded her happiness. Their eventual marriage in 1854 brought Charlotte much-needed companionship, embodying her lifelong desire for connection that remained elusive for so long.
The political landscape during the sisters' lifetimes also informed their works, as they expressed awareness of social reforms and debates surrounding women’s rights. Their writings often reflected the need for equality, revealing a counter-narrative to the limited roles prescriptive of their Victorian counterparts. This lens of social criticism within their fiction continues to resonate with modern audiences.
The passing of Emily marked a turning point for Charlotte, prompting philosophical reflections on mortality that would seep into her later writings. Charlotte felt increasingly alone amidst the sweep of loss but commemorated her sister's legacy through her poems and narratives, focusing on complex female characters who challenged societal expectations and sought autonomy.
Literary Career
Charlotte Brontë’s literary career is marked by her soulful exploration of inner conflicts, deep psychological insight, and revolutionary female characters. Her debut novel, 'Jane Eyre' (1847), challenged traditional narratives by presenting a strong-willed protagonist who defies societal conventions. The novel's innovative structure, blending autobiography with gothic elements, received extensive acclaim and criticism, establishing her as a pivotal figure in Victorian literature.
In 'Jane Eyre,' Charlotte unfolds themes of love, identity, and morality while integrating her own experiences as a governess. The novel's critical reception was overwhelmingly positive, marking a significant departure from the era's constraints on female authors. Audiences were enthralled by Jane’s struggles and triumphs, and Charlotte's ability to render psychological complexities with sincerity solidified her reputation as a master storyteller.
Following the success of 'Jane Eyre,' Charlotte continued to refine her literary voice, producing works that delved into more complex social issues. 'Shirley' (1849) addressed the impact of the Industrial Revolution on women's lives, while 'Villette' (1853) explored themes of alienation and identity. Both novels showcased her ability to portray compelling female characters navigating between personal desires and societal demands, reflecting her own tumultuous experiences.
Emily Brontë's literary career, while shorter, produced an enduring masterwork—'Wuthering Heights' (1847). This novel uncovers the intertwining lives of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, encapsulating themes of passion, revenge, and the supernatural. Its unconventional structure and raw emotionality diverged from mainstream Victorian literature, challenging readers and critics alike. Initially overlooked, 'Wuthering Heights' would later be recognized as a cornerstone of English literature.
Despite initial resistance to 'Wuthering Heights,' as critics deemed the story too dark, modern interpretations have applauded Emily's unique perspectives and rich symbolism, appreciating the emotional depth in her writing. Her approach to themes of nature and the struggle between civilization and the untamed spirit remains influential, providing inspiration for succeeding generations of writers exploring the human experience.
Together, the works of the Brontë sisters captured the essence of human struggles, reflecting the profound transformations occurring in 19th-century society. Their focus on female empowerment and individuality carved paths for subsequent feminist literature, inspiring authors like Virginia Woolf and later generations to challenge the status quo of female representation.
While both Charlotte and Emily experienced varying degrees of recognition during their lifetimes, their legacy grew profoundly after their deaths, culminating in scholarly appreciation and critical acclaim. Today, their works are widely taught, analyzed, and celebrated, emphasizing their contributions to narrative structure, character development, and thematic richness in literature.
Greatest Achievements
The Brontë sisters achieved remarkable acclaim during their lives, with Charlotte's 'Jane Eyre' standing as one of the most significant novels in English literature, championing the complexities of female consciousness. Conversely, Emily's 'Wuthering Heights' emerged as a groundbreaking work, redefining the themes of passion and nature in literary tradition. Their writing has garnered numerous accolades and adaptations, securing their places as literary icons and inspiring movements in feminist and gothic literature.
Beliefs and Advocacy
At the core of the Brontë sisters’ writings is their shared belief in the importance of individual autonomy and the critique of societal constraints, particularly as directed toward women. Their narratives delve into the psychological struggles of their characters, challenging gender norms and advocating for emotional and social liberation. Charlotte’s portrayal of Jane Eyre as a strong, independent thinker paved the way for subsequent exploration of feminist themes in literature.
Both sisters were impassioned advocates for women's rights, often addressing social injustices through their works. Emily's portrayal of Catherine’s fierce independence and struggles against oppressive surroundings in 'Wuthering Heights' reflects the sisters' commitment to exploring the complexities of gender dynamics. The Brontë sisters’ conviction in women's education and emotional agency directly parallels their characters’ plight, making their literature a call for social reform, highlighting the necessity for women's voices and heroism.
Charlotte’s later writings increasingly mirrored her political beliefs, as she sought to critique the norms of marriage and societal roles that constrained women. Her engagement with the feminist discourse of her time resonates in her ambitious depictions of female protagonists facing moral dilemmas that compel them to assert their identities. Her letters articulate her desire to challenge engrained notions of femininity and advocate for women’s greater societal participation.
Through their works, Charlotte and Emily Brontë carved out spaces for women’s voices, reflecting their lifetimes in a patriarchal society. Their shared dedication to authentic storytelling and emotional complexity positioned them as precursors to the feminist literary movement. The cultural and social discourses around women’s rights gained momentum in the century that followed their deaths, making their legacies crucial to understanding the evolution of literary feminism.
Final Years
In her final years, Charlotte Brontë dedicated herself to her writing while navigating the complexities of family life and personal loss. Following her marriage to Arthur Bell Nicholls in 1854, she continued to explore her literary passions, producing works that conveyed her acute understanding of the human condition. Despite her relative contentment, her health began to deteriorate. She was pregnant at the time of her death in March 1855, merely a year after her marriage, leaving behind unfinished writings and an indelible mark on literature.
Charlotte's death elicited widespread mourning, resonating through literary circles and beyond. Her contemporaries recognized her talent and unique voice, leading to increased admiration for her works. The literary community responded profoundly to the loss of such a significant author, underscoring her influence and the legacy she would continue to cultivate through her novels and poems. Together with Emily’s work, their contributions solidified the Brontë sisters as enduring figures in the cultural panorama.
Legacy
The legacy of Charlotte and Emily Brontë endures, solidifying their positions as monumental figures in English literature. Their works explore timeless themes of individuality, societal constraints, and the depths of human emotion, resonating with contemporary audiences. Counters to the patriarchal norms of their time, their narratives paved the way for future generations of writers and continue to inspire discussions surrounding gender, identity, and the power of literature as a means of social advocacy.
Jane Eyre & Wuthering Hights
Jane Eyre
TO
W. M. THACKERAY, Esq.,
This Work
is respectfully inscribed
by
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
A preface to the first edition of “Jane Eyre” being unnecessary, I gave none: this second edition demands a few words both of acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark.
My thanks are due in three quarters.
To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with few pretensions.
To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to an obscure aspirant.
To my Publishers, for the aid their tact, their energy, their practical sense and frank liberality have afforded an unknown and unrecommended Author.
The Press and the Public are but vague personifications for me, and I must thank them in vague terms; but my Publishers are definite: so are certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only large-hearted and high-minded men know how to encourage a struggling stranger; to them, i.e., to my Publishers and the select Reviewers, I say cordially, Gentlemen, I thank you from my heart.
Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as “Jane Eyre:” in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry — that parent of crime — an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let whitewashed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaannah better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel.
There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital — a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of “Vanity Fair” admired in high places? I cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time — they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Rimoth-Gilead.
Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day — as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, because to him — if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger — I have dedicated this second edition of “Jane Eyre.”
CURRER BELL.
December21st, 1847.
NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION
I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of “Jane Eyre” affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not merited; and consequently, denied where it is justly due.
This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already have been made, and to prevent future errors.
CURRER BELL.
April13th, 1848.
CHAPTER I
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: 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, and 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 that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring 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.”
“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.
“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.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book — Bewick’s History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape —
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with “the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, — that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.” Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.
I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.
The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.
The fiend pinning down the thief’s pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.
So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.
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 nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.
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 breakfast-room door opened.
“Boh! Madam Mope!” cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.
“Where the dickens is she!” he continued. “Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain — bad animal!”
“It is well I drew the curtain,” thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once —
“She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.”
And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.
“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 gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. 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, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him 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 after 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 the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was 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.
Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.
“That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,” said he, “and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!”
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.
“What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked.
“I was reading.”
“Show the book.”
I returned to the window and fetched it thence.
“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 the 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 the 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, striking my head against the door and cutting it. 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!”
I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.
“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first — ”
He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. 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 suffering: 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 me “Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone 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!”
Then Mrs. Reed subjoined —
“Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.” Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.
CHAPTER II
I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.
“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.”
“For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.”
“Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”
“No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”
They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed, and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.
“If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Bessie. “Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.”
Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of me.
“Don’t take them off,” I cried; “I will not stir.”
In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.
“Mind you don’t,” said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.
“She never did so before,” at last said Bessie, turning to the 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.”
Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said — “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 poorhouse.”
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.”
“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.”
They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.
The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.
This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; 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, 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.
My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool.
Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. 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 favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, 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.
My head still ached and bled with 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.
What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question — why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of — I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.
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, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. 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.
Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; 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 just 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 — that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house; and that 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 race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been most 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.
