I lingered in the long passageway to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third story: narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 11. Jane gives us her first eerie impressions of the third story of her new home at Thornfield, with its secrets and locked rooms. There is a spooky creepiness about the place. Bluebeard was, according to the French folktale, a wealthy who was in the habit of murdering his wives and hiding their bodies in a locked room, which his latest wife was forbidden to enter. The reference to Bluebeard is foreshadowing of the secret that that will later be revealed about Thornfield’s locked attic.