Jane Eyre Supernatural and Gothic Quotes

“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 spare 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 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 similair 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.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 2. Jane is threatened with the wrath of God by Miss Abbot after her fight with her cousin John Reed. As punishment Abbot and Bessie imprison Jane in the red room on Mrs. Reed’s instructions. This is the death chamber in which her kindly uncle breathed his last moments nine years before and where she is meant to pray and repent for her misbehavior. But for Jane the red room more signifies hell and divine vengeance. The stern God of the Old Testament and religion are used in this instance to punish children who are seen not to conform. The room has a Gothic spookiness about it. It is red nearly from top to bottom, dark and rarely used, and its tabernacle and pillers conjure up Biblical imagery. The Gothic influences in Jane’s life are foreshadowed here. So too is the fire that Bertha Mason will later start because she is locked away in Edward Rochester’s attic. The red is symbolic of Jane’s fury and passion over her mistreatment and her struggles to find freedom and belonging. The red room is also a symbol for femininity and the more submissive feminine behavior that Jane is expected to adopt.

I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode – whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed – and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it – I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room: at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated; endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 2. Jane recalls the horrific Gothic experience she had on the night her Aunt Reed jailed her in the ominous red room as punishment for her altercation with her son John. Looking back she admits that it was likely a gleam of light from a lantern she saw. But as a 10-year-child child at the time she believed that she witnessed a supernatural vision of her dead Uncle Reed. She imagined him coming to avenge the wrongs of his wife Mrs. Reed for breaking her promise to him to care for Jane as one of her own children. Jane describes the terror that she felt resulting from her aunt’s abuse in imprisoning her in the room, as she screams out in panic, pounds the door and the servants come running.

Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright: I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, I traced the general points of middle height, and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features, and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but a little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked…I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 12. Jane is out walking on her way to Hay to deliver a letter for posting. On the way she unknowingly meets Mr. Rochester for the first time, when a horse and rider slip and fall on a sheet of ice. There is an air of mystery about the stranger she goes to aid and will eventually marry. Here Bronte depicts the masculine in the person of Rochesteer as not having “beauty, elegance, gallantry.” Instead he is the anti-hero – stern, gruff, brooding, and not at all handsome and heroic looking. But despite Rochester’s dark, intense and stern appearance, Jane is immediately drawn to him. She later learns that he is Rochester. Their first meeting, set against the backdrop of the moon-lit hills, has a Gothic air about it. On first hearing the horse approach, Jane thinks of Bessie’s ghost stories about “Gytrash,” a spirit creature that is sometimes horse and sometimes large dog.

It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place – such as the moon, for instance – and it nodded its head towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live. I said I should like to go; but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.
“Oh,” returned the fairy, “that does not signify! Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties;” and she held out a pretty gold ring. “Put it,” she said, “on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own heaven yonder.” She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adèle, is in my breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon to change it to a ring again.
“But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don’t care for the fairy: you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?”
“Mademoiselle is a fairy,” he said, whispering mysteriously.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 24. Rochester is telling Adele a fairy tale while driving in the carriage. In the story Jane becomes a fairy with magical powers. She arrives from Elf-land with an errant to make Rochester happy. Rochester hopes that through Jane to magically wipe out all his past transgressions so that he can begin a new, fresh life. But even 10-year-old Adele is skeptical of Rochester’s fanciful tale, as she ridicules it and protests “I don’t care for the fairy.”

On sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear…I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking…I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms…I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches that I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me…I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 25. As they are about to be married, Jane tells Rochester about two dreams she had the previous night. In the first she is on a long and dark road trying to reach Rochester, while a small terrified and crying child clings to her neck and impedes her progress. The second dream takes her to Rochester’s Gothic ancestral manor, destroyed and in ruin, and she loses her balance and drops the child as Rochester rides away from her. Jane’s prophetic dreams are foreshadowing of the end of Thornfield Hall when Bertha sets fire to the place, and also of trouble ahead in her relationship with Rochester. Jane has the ability to foresee the future in her dreams.
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