Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane – the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear, as if an animal that I had struck or pushed has looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man’s voice.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. Mrs. Reed makes a deathbed confession to Jane. When John Eyre wrote to Mrs. Reed three years earlier about his wish to adopt his niece Jane, this news was kept from Jane by Mrs. Reed. She admits doing this because she hated how Jane treated her as a child and didn’t want to lift her to prosperity. The unforgiving Mrs. Reed wrote to Jane’s uncle to say that Jane had died of typhoid at Lowood.