Jane Eyre 2011: Week 1 - Volume the First: Part 1 - Chapters I-V

[Everyman]

MadgeUK wrote: "One the question of Mrs Reed's treatment of Jane, I find it significant that in the Red Room Jane thinks that her uncle would have treated her more kindly - she sees him as a sort of saviour. ..."

Which is interesting, since I believe he died when she was one year old, so anything she knows about him is purely from hearing others talk about him (and the other children weren't that much older). And since the family probably believed in the edict not so speak ill of the dead, he could have been a monster and she likely wouldn't have known it.

It perhaps suggests how unrealistic she is about judging people.

[Everyman]

MadgeUK wrote: "Post 85: First:."

It's nice that I'm providing you with such great pleasure trying to tear apart everything I suggest. However, in the interests of peace, I won't reciprocate.

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "Well, in this case, even in the text, the children are given bread and cheese!
"

Yes, and there were other kindnesses given.

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: An interesting exercise that you undertake -- one I suspect we all balance to some extent when we encounter historical material. Glad you make your intended perspective explicit -- hopefully, such will clarify the discussions resulting. "

I'm gratified that a few posters have respected, even if they don't necessarily agree with, the approach I (and some PhD exerts!) am taking.

[Everyman]

Christopher wrote: "I'll get there in due (scheduled) time! But to have said otherwise at this stage would have involved spoilers.

[Lily]

I do garner from Jane Eyre that it is the author's (Charlotte Bronte's) intent that the reader think well and sympathetically of her heroine. Now, can I pull text to support that view? Have to think about that. Does she succeed is another question, and, if so, in what ways?

[Everyman]

S. Rosemary wrote: "A big part of me doesn't think it's supposed to MEAN anything- it's 'just' a Gothic novel, written for pleasure and meant to be read for pleasure, like a very well written romance novel. "

But egad, think of all the literary critics who would be out of work if that concept were to gain favor, and all the millions of words of dissertation theses, scholarly articles, and books which wouldn't have been written. Such an approach would decimate the English faculties of our university system!

:)

[Rosemary]

Everyman wrote: "Which is interesting, since I believe he died when she was one year old, so anything she knows about him is purely from hearing others talk about him (and the other children weren't that much older). And since the family probably believed in the edict not so speak ill of the dead, he could have been a monster and she likely wouldn't have known it.

It perhaps suggests how unrealistic she is about judging people. "

I thought it was more because she knew that it was his wish she be cared for? I think that most children would imagine the best and kindest motives for an unknown benefactor, even if in reality said benefactor was cold and mercenary!

[Lily]

S. Rosemary wrote: "I thought it was more because she knew that it was his wish she be cared for? I think that most children would imagine the best and kindest motives for an unknown benefactor, even if in reality said benefactor was cold and mercenary!"

Especially when the "real" people she knows mostly don't seem very kind at all, except perhaps for Bessie some of the time and the apothecary who comes to care for her when she is ill -- or overly terrified.

[Everyman]

Have other people been having posts eaten? I've had several that never showed up. Eaten by ghosts in the Red Room?

[Lily]

Everyman wrote: "Have other people been having posts eaten? I've had several that never showed up. Eaten by ghosts in the Red Room?"

Not today, at least not more than one, which may have been yesterday.

[MadgeUK]

Very insightful post Susan. JE upset the Victorian applecart, as the quotes from the Quarterly Review I posted earlier clearly showed so in this sense it wasn't just another gothic novel although, of course, it can be read as such, or as a straightforward romance.

I like this phrase from Charlotte Bronte's Preface to the second edition, in response to her critics:-

'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.'

And it is of course an Autobiography written from JE's p.o.v., perhaps a part autobiography of CB too.

[Amalie]

Susan wrote: " Knowing this, I think we can rely on Jane as a narrator. She is sorting through her memories with an adult mind. ..."

I think Jane is – well, not exactly an unreliable narrator, but sometimes you have to read between the lines. Jane’s pretty good at telling us what’s going on around her but she doesn't so much tell the reader what’s going on in her head - sometimes she seems a little too modest, like she’s suppressing her most intense feelings to try and seem calmer or more composed. But overall I'm ok with her narration except at some points.

I like your view on your proto-feminist idea, Yes Jane really is a unique. We see her under the control of different men during her life, first at the Reed's, (John) then Brocklehurst at Lowood, Rochester, and even St. John, but Jane still triumphs. Her decision making is hers and hers alone and morally right.

Susan, if you are familiar with other Bronte novels this is even more evident in them as well particularly in Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

[MadgeUK]

We are all unreliable narrators I think since few of us have total recall, so reading between the lines is a must in life as well as in autobiographies:).

(BTW watch out for spoilers - we are only at Lowood so far.)

[MadgeUK]

Rosemary wrote: I think that most children would imagine the best and kindest motives for an unknown benefactor, even if in reality said benefactor was cold and mercenary!

I agree and we would probably look back to what might have been. As to unreliable/unrealistic memories of him, we do not know what age Jane was when her uncle died, all we learn is: '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.'

There is the knowledge though that he was a blood relative, her mother's brother, whereas Mrs Reed wasn't and this is usually an indication of the sharing of closer bonds, sometimes of wealth.

[Georgie]

Just to go back to Showalter, whose ideas I find fascinating - she does suggest that the red room incident signifies Jane's entry into adulthood (clearly the blood symbolism works here) and this is confirmed as she leaves Gateshead for Lowood - "I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman" -as she tells Mr Lloyd in Chapter 3. Her retaliation against the Reed children, while traumatic, does allow her her freedom.
Showalter also suggests that the red room "echoes the flagellation ceremonies of Victorian pornography...Jane is threatened with a bondage made more titillating because the bonds are to be a maid's garters." Who'd have thought these ideas could have been produced from an isolated girl from Haworth but perhaps we underestimate her!!
Brontë reveals early in the novel that Jane has the ability to consciously choose how she will act and where her destiny lies. We can see this in Brontë’s use of the modal verb in italics “Speak I must(in italics): I had been trodden on severely, and must (in italics) turn: but how? This illustrates that Jane sees no other course of action. After her outburst to Mrs. Reed, Jane sees herself as the “winner of the field”, which prepares her for the harsh institution of Lowood. For this reason Showalter calls Jane a "heroine of fulfillment", as opposed to Maggie Tulliver, who is a "heroine of renunciation".
Ellen Moers in "Literary Women" also explores the key images behind the Female Gothic in JE. She says that gothic genre explores fear and the Female Gothic is no different, except that women’s fears within their domestic sphere and fears connected with their own bodies and sexuality are the focus. The most potent phallic symbol in Jane Eyre is the metaphor to describe Mr. Brocklehurst, and the passage that describes Jane’s first meeting with him is remarkably rich with sexually suggestive language:
"The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at – a black pillar! – such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug; the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital."
Brontë associates the colour black with the patriarchal power of Mr. Brocklehurst, which is fearful and deathly.
A few thoughts to ponder anyway...

[MadgeUK]

I haven't had posts 'eaten' but I have noticed that other people's posts are showing up late - quite awhile after I have posted in the morning. Which can be confusing because I may have answered something which has already been answered:O.

[MadgeUK]

I referenced the work of Elizabeth Loftus earlier.) In particular, if a person develops a false memory, the brain treats that in exactly the same way as it treats a true memory, so there is simply no ability in the person to know that it is a false memory and therefore no ability to correct it from an adult perspective.

I am familiar with the concept of false memory syndrome in relation to child sexual abuse, which has sometimes been disproved by in depth psychiatry but I am not sure of its relevance to CB/JE. Does Ms Loftus' work suggest that an author can develop a false memory with regard to a character in a novel? Not just deliberately invent a false memory for the character but actually have a false memory when writing? Could CB be exhibiting a false memory syndrome herself when writing about JE's recollections? And how do we know - are there likely to be textual clues?

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus...

[Georgie]

Susan wrote: "Getting back to the proto-feminist idea, which is what fascinates me the most about this novel, I think we can see two signs in the first chapters that Bronte may be heading in that direction:
1. ..."

I agree Susan - I think the contrast between Jane and Georgiana at the start of the novel is perhaps setting the reader up for comparisons Victorian womanhood later in the novel - and the idea of Gothic doubling.

[MadgeUK]

Who'd have thought these ideas could have been produced from an isolated girl from Haworth but perhaps we underestimate her!!

Georgie - what a wonderfully interesting post 116! It reminded me of this link I posted earlier about CB's sexual imagery (SPOILERS)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/...

As to the pornographic element, CB could of course have seen stuff which Branwell owned. Victorian men were big on pornography and at hiding it under the covers of respectable books.

When the lives of single people were so outwardly 'buttoned up', as they were in the Victorian era, there must have been, if Freud and other psychologists are to be believed, a great deal of erotic imaginings so perhaps we should not be surprised at what really lies beneath the covers of JE!

Politically too CB was writing in a time of great turmoil. 1848 saw several revolutions in Europe and Karl Marx was writing radical articles for London newspapers, before publishing the Communist Manifesto, which had been commissioned by a group of German refugees living in London. Radical ideas were in the air as CB wrote JE and Yorkshire had always been a rebellious county.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revoluti...

[Georgie]

MadgeUK wrote: "Who'd have thought these ideas could have been produced from an isolated girl from Haworth but perhaps we underestimate her!!

Georgie - what a wonderfully interesting post 116! It reminded me of ..."

Thanks for the great Guardian article Madge - very entertaining reading - I must have missed when you first posted it as I went to work and missed about one hundred posts!

[MadgeUK]

It is very remiss of you to go to work at such a crucial time Georgie! :D.

I like the idea of 'gothic doubling' between Jane and Georgiana - we must now look out for textual evidence of that as well as of sexual imagery:). What an interesting reading this is turning out to be!

[Susan]

MadgeUK wrote: "Very insightful post Susan. JE upset the Victorian applecart, as the quotes from the Quarterly Review I posted earlier clearly showed so in this sense it wasn't just another gothic novel although, ..."

Amalie: I have yet to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but it is on my TBR list ;). So many books, so little time...

[Susan]

Georgie wrote: "Just to go back to Showalter, whose ideas I find fascinating - she does suggest that the red room incident signifies Jane's entry into adulthood (clearly the blood symbolism works here) and this is..."
Georgie: This analysis is completely fascinating to me. Yes, who would have thought that this would come out of Bronte? The "black pillar" did appear to me as very strange ;).

[Susan]

MadgeUK wrote: "Who'd have thought these ideas could have been produced from an isolated girl from Haworth but perhaps we underestimate her!!

Georgie - what a wonderfully interesting post 116! It reminded me of ..."

Madge: You are such a wealth of information! Thank you for posting these articles, along with all the other interesting links. You enrich all of our discussions. I may have to peruse these threads when I start grad school in the Fall for ideas ;)

[MadgeUK]

Thanks muchly Susan - you are very kind. I just have too much old lady time on my hands:D.

[Susan]

Well, you sure use that time "wisely"! :-)

[Lily]

So, do you think Charlotte consciously recognized that she was writing Mr. Brocklehurst as a lingam?

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "So, do you think Charlotte consciously recognized that she was writing Mr. Brocklehurst as a lingam?"

It is always a challenge to question what an author intended by an image, and what creative literary critics are able to develop out of it.

Sometimes it's there, and we are appreciating the author's richness of imagery.

But, as one critic pointed out, sometimes a stick is just a stick.

[MadgeUK]

If we give some credence to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, there are all sort of ideas in our minds which we do not consciously recognise but which our species have collected over the centuries and certainly various representations of lingams will be in our 'unconscious'. How else do so many authors, coming from ordinary backgrounds and writing in the proverbial garrett, come up with such extraordinary notions and imagery.

By all accounts the Bronte household, though outwardly conventional, was quite a powerhouse of emotion and divergent thinking. The collective unconscious within that family must have been quite extraordinary.

http://www.carl-jung.net/collective_u...

http://www.eupsychia.com/perspectives...

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "...we do not know what age Jane was when her uncle died..."

Well, we are told that Jane is ten years old at the opening of the novel and that her uncle died nine years ago.

PS -- much enjoyed the Jung and Eupsychia links, not so much because I necessarily agree with them, but for their relevance to that discussion!

[MadgeUK]

Thanks Lily - I hadn't spotted that piece of arithmetic!

[MadgeUK]

Chapter IV is a telling chapter about Mrs Reed's treatment of the rebellious Jane. This early paragraph shows continuing cruelty:-

'Mrs. Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion..................Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer; presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana...'

It is a very sad description of the life of a ten year old orphan girl. Very Victorian in its concept.

Edited to give these links:

http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/chi...

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/b...

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "Thanks Lily - I hadn't spotted that piece of arithmetic!"

I guessed as much. I had pulled it together when I did message 63, but it is sort of buried in the text and I don't cite a quotation or page for Jane's age -- I believe that is where we are told John's age or nearby. The quotation on Mr. Reed is in those first chapters, too, maybe the one with the bedroom.

[Lily]

Would it have fit Victorian practice to send a ten-year-old female on a 50-mile coach ride unescorted? (Some do that sort of thing on planes today, escorting children to boarding and having them met on arrival.)

[Rosemary]

Lily wrote: "So, do you think Charlotte consciously recognized that she was writing Mr. Brocklehurst as a lingam?"

Argh! Lily, I think you're lovely, but I also think that's definitely a case of reading too much into the text!

I must say, though, that Mr. Brocklehurst is one of my favorite villains. He's just SO AWFUL! He and his little pamphlets!

. . . is anyone else fond of The Gashlycrumb Tinies?

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

Susan wrote: "Getting back to the proto-feminist idea, which is what fascinates me the most about this novel, I think we can see three signs in the first chapters that Bronte may be heading in that direction:
1...."

These are great points, Susan, and I agree with each of your observations. I think it was just these points that struck me as well as I re-read these first few opening chapters. Then I started thinking about the other novels of Charlotte's that I've read (e.g., "Villette" and "Shirley"), as well as Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and it really jumped out at me. I just think that we have to be on to something here.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

Everyman wrote: "MadgeUK wrote: "One the question of Mrs Reed's treatment of Jane, I find it significant that in the Red Room Jane thinks that her uncle would have treated her more kindly - she sees him as a sort o..."

But, Everyman, you must remember that Mr. Reed, as he was dying, begged his wife to care for little Jane as one of their own. That's not what jumps to mind as the dying wishes of a cruel or heartless man. What do you think?

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

MadgeUK wrote: "Who'd have thought these ideas could have been produced from an isolated girl from Haworth but perhaps we underestimate her!!

Georgie - what a wonderfully interesting post 116! It reminded me of ..."

Madge, thanks for the Guardian article! I damn near fell out of chair laughing--as it was so cleverly and humorously written!

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

Susan wrote: "MadgeUK wrote: "Who'd have thought these ideas could have been produced from an isolated girl from Haworth but perhaps we underestimate her!!

Georgie - what a wonderfully interesting post 116! It..."

I second Susan's appreciation of your contributions, Madge! You're the best!

[Lily]

S. Rosemary wrote: "Lily wrote: "So, do you think Charlotte consciously recognized that she was writing Mr. Brocklehurst as a lingam?"

Argh! Lily, I think you're lovely, but I also think that's definitely a case of reading too much into the text!..."

I'm not the one who suggested the idea! It arose out of the discussion of Showalter's work. (esp. msg 116, but also 120, 124, for example). I have found the responses here quite appropriate and on the mark, however (msg 129, 130).

I am not as enamoured of Tanya Gold's article in the Guardian as Chris, however, perhaps because I happen to like Glaskell's novels and because I took Tanya too seriously. (I haven't read Glaskell's study of the Brontes.)

[Lily]

What is a "proto-feminist"?

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

Lily wrote: "What is a "proto-feminist"?"

Well, as I used it first, Lily, I guess I really mean "feminist". Sorry, my bad. ;-)

[Lily]

"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 scape-goat of the nursery." Chapter II.

I wondered if these traits would really have protected Jane. (It seemed to me that she might already have had some of them? Like perhaps "brilliant, careless, exacting"? Are we getting a look here at Jane's self image?) What do the rest of you think?

[Lily]

Christopher wrote: "Lily wrote: "What is a "proto-feminist"?"

Well, as I used it first, Lily, I guess I really mean "feminist"..."

I think it had been used earlier -- anyway, I looked at a Wiki article and I am still confused as to the uses in the contexts here and of Jane Eyre. So that was really the intended focus of my question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protofem...

[MadgeUK]

Lily wrote: "Would it have fit Victorian practice to send a ten-year-old female on a 50-mile coach ride unescorted? (Some do that sort of thing on planes today, escorting children to boarding and having them m..."

Is that equivalent to cruelty? I went on many an unescorted train ride when I was that age, under the eye of the driver (I travelled in the luggage van, next to the driver's compartment, a common occurrence.) Children would not be allowed on planes without the airline having agreed to have staff supervise them.

[MadgeUK]

Christopher wrote:I second Susan's appreciation of your contributions, Madge! You're the best!
..."

My fingers are blushing:O.

[Lily]

Christopher wrote: "...Mr. Reed, as he was dying, begged his wife to care for little Jane as one of their own...."

Well, I don't quite call this "begging", but there may be another description elsewhere. (I suspect Mrs. Reed might have required something close to "begging" or "insisting".)

"...but I knew that he was my 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?"

What is this "not of her race" stuff? Earlier there were also comments about John's dark skin. Is Mrs. Reed perhaps a Creole (view spoiler)[like Rochester's wife, later in the novel (hide spoiler)]?

[Lynnm]

@Georgie - thanks so much for the information in message 116. It's going to take me awhile to digest all that information.

@Madge - oh my goodness, I laughed and laughed at the Guardian article. I'm going to have to share that with my fellow English teachers. Thanks so much for posting.

[Everyman]

There have been some very harsh words proffered on the red room discipline of Jane, including the view that Mrs. Reed is a monster at least in part because she tied Jane down and locked her in a horrible place.

So let’s take a more careful look at that incident.

Mrs. Reed didn’t see the incident that led to the discipline. She was going on report from Eliza and Georgiana who ran to get her as Jane and John scuffled. John and Jane were apparently still locked in combat when Mrs. Reed, Bessie, and Abbot arrived on the scene: “we were parted.” Jane admits that “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.” According to the later comment of Abott, cited below, she was actually hitting (striking is how Abbot puts it) John, not simply trying to avoid combat. This is the situation the three adults faced when they entered the room.

Whether or not on 150 years distance and calm reflection Mrs. Reed was justified in deciding that Jane needed to be disciplined is for another post, but with John bellowing and Jane striking him in an apparent fury, it was not unreasonable for the adults who arrived on the scene without any background to decide that the first thing to do was to separate the combatants and to keep them apart for the time being. The first two utterances were apparently not from Mrs. Reed but from Bessie and Abbot:
"Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!"
"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!"
These comments clearly suggest that these two observers placed the fault more on Jane than on John.

So Mrs. Reed was faced with a situation where other observers (are we also suggesting that they are monsters?) recognized that Jane was in a fury and passion and flying at John. It was not unreasonable or monstrous for her to order that Jane be the one taken out of the situation and put in “time out,” a well respected technique of child management even today.

Why locked in, though? Was this cruel and extreme? Considering that Jane was still in a passionate fury, what would prevent her, as soon as the adults left, from just bolting out of the red room and going after John again? (That she had this propensity is shown by her initial unwillingness even to sit still.) We don’t know whether there were past incidents where Jane had been put in time out but had refused to stay there, but it’s certainly possible that this had happened before, and in this particularly egregious situation where Jane herself admits that she was out of control, it seems prudence rather than cruelty to make sure that she says put until the fit passes. (You can, of course, disagree about the necessity of locking her in, but can you really claim that it is not a reasonable scenario to propose on the spur of the moment when a mother is unexpectedly having to deal with a physical attack on her son by a hysterical girl? Isn’t this a totally maternal way to respond? Is Mrs. Reed a monster for being and acting like a mother?) The details of what happened could be sorted out later; to separate the combatants and keep them apart until tempers had cooled was not only prudent but necessary.

As she is led off to the red room, Jane admits that she was “out” of herself, that she had undergone a “moment’s mutiny.” Bessie notes that she needs to be held, that she is “like a mad cat.” (Just last month I was dealing with an angry cat we were trying to give a feline leukemia shot to, and I have the scars to prove how fraught with danger such an enterprise, ultimately unsuccessful when she secreted herself up among the springs of a chair, is.) And Abbot, who as far as we know has no reason to exaggerate or lie, says"What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's son!” So here we have direct validation that Jane was hitting John, which certainly justifies Mrs. Reed sending her into time out.

Much has been made of the cruelty of tying Jane down. Let’s look carefully at this. She was put on a stool, but “my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.” She was still totally rebellious and out of control, she couldn’t even sit still for a moment. Bessie then says “If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," Why? Well, wasn’t it reasonable to fear that, in her hysterics (I think it’s fair to call them that) it was for her own safety to restrain her so she wouldn’t go charging into things and hurting herself? Or as soon as the servants left racing to the door and frantically pounding on it? As a teacher, my wife had to deal with a student who went into hysterics from time to time, and the only thing to do was to hug her tightly, to restrain her totally, “tying her down” with arms rather than a garter, until the fit passed. It is fair to assume that this was not for punishment, it was for her own safety. It was the equivalent of the common practice of police of putting out-of-control inmates in restraint chairs to keep them from hurting themselves, a practice routinely followed to this day. That it was for safety and not punishment is clear from the fact that as soon as Jane heard the threat of being tied down, she instantly promised to sit on the stool. And that was that. If it had been intended as punishment, the threat would have carried through on. That it was not is proved by the fact that the tying down never happened, and as far as we know the garter was ot even taken off Abbot’s leg. The threat was sufficient.

Let’s emphasize several points here.
1. Jane was never tied down. She was told that if she couldn’t sit still she would be, but once she agreed to sit still, that was the end of that.
2. It seems clear that tying her to the stool was not a normal practice. (Indeed, Jane says she was subject to a “strange penalty.”) If it had been usual to tie her down, they would have had ropes or straps or some forms of restraining devices conveniently at hand. But they didn’t; they had to go for about all that was available to them, a garter, which hardly seems a very effective restraint for a hysterical 10 year old. It was more a matter of threat than actuality, and the threat worked.
3. There is no indication at all that Mrs. Reed had any knowledge that the servants would consider tying Jane down. She certainly did not tell them to tie Jane down. As I noted there is no evidence that Jane had ever been tied down in the past (she certainly doesn’t suggest that she had). This was entirely a matter of two servants trying in an emergency situation to find a way to control a hysterical girl, to keep her under some measure of safe control while waiting for her fit to pass. Sure, if they had had time to reflect they could have considered other options, but they did what on the spur of the moment they could think of. And the threat worked.
4. Since Mrs. Reed never ordered Jane tied down, since there is no evidence that she was ever tied down in the past, since there is no evidence that Mrs. Reed had any idea that the servants would consider tying her down, and since Jane never actually was tied down, by what possible justification can this incident be used to accuse Mrs. Reed of being a monster? It can’t. The charge, at least as far as this incident is concerned, is a total calumny and slander. (Indeed, I dare to suggest that those who offer it as such should be embarrassed to have done so; their empathy with Jane perhaps clouds objective judgment?).

This post is already lengthy, so I’ll address further aspects of this incident in a future post. I am sure that some here will delight in trying to rip apart everything I have suggested, but I ask that reasonable minds consider whether this isn’t, even if you don’t agree with all of it, at least a reasonable way of viewing the situation, and that I have offered a reasonable case to rebut the charge that Mrs. Reed is a monster for having tied up Jane and had her locked in a room. I don’t ask for agreement, but I do ask for an open minded consideration of an alternate point of view.