Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

home of Aunt Reed and her three children in Jane Eyre . Mr Lloyd describes it as “a very beautiful house” (ch. 3), and it is certainly a fine one. Apart from the normal rooms we are told of a breakfast room, a nursery, a conservatory, a housemaids’ apartment, and a housekeeper’s room. In the grounds there are a grove, a shrubbery, a plantation and a porter’s lodge. A great many different kinds and degrees of servant are mentioned. However, every prospect does not necessarily please here. The red-room is a place of terror and ghosts, and the curtained window seat in the breakfast room is not only a place of peace but a refuge for Jane from cruelty both physical and mental. This double face to the house lends credence to E. H. Chadwick’s (1914) claim that it is based on Stonegappe. When Jane returns to the house it has lost most of its terrors and has become a house for the disappointed and discontented, where petulance and frustration are seen as the results of Aunt Reed’s spoiling of her own children. See also Stonegappe ... log in or subscribe to read full text