On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart – a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation – to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. Jane feels no sense of returning home when she visits her Aunt Reed’s residence at Gateshead. She recalls leaving that hostile roof years before and now that unfriendly roof looms again before her. She no longer feels resentment towards the Reeds for the wrongs they did her and has greater confidence in herself. But she still feels alone and adrift in the world with no sense of belonging – “a wanderer on the face of the earth.”