Why the Red-Room Matters in Jane Eyre

In Chapter 2 of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, young Jane is locked in the red-room at Gateshead after defending herself against her cousin John Reed. The room is where her uncle died, and Jane fears that his ghost might appear. What makes the scene so important is how clearly Jane sees the injustice of her punishment, even while she’s too frightened to trust what she sees in the room. Years later, on the night she decides to leave Thornfield, she dreams that she’s back there.

This article discusses plot developments through Chapter 27.

Why is Jane locked in the red-room?

John Reed throws a book at Jane in Chapter 1, knocking her against a door and drawing blood. She fights back. Mrs. Reed orders the servants Bessie and Miss Abbot to take her to the red-room, where they lock her in. To the adults, Jane’s defiance is the offense that needs correcting. Because Brontë lets us see what John does first, we can judge Jane’s reaction against what actually happened.

The servants remind Jane that she depends on Mrs. Reed for her home. John can behave as though the house and everything in it belong to him. Jane can be punished for touching a book. The gap between them gives the scene its force. At Gateshead, even the right to complain depends on your place in the household.

What does the red-room symbolize?

The red-room makes Jane’s precarious place in the Reed household visible. It’s one of the grandest rooms at Gateshead, with red damask curtains, polished mahogany and a white chair that reminds Jane of a throne. It’s also cold, rarely used and far from the nursery and kitchen. Its grandeur makes it a fitting place to remember Mr. Reed. Its isolation makes it easy to shut Jane away.

Mr. Reed was Jane’s uncle. He took her in as a baby and made Mrs. Reed promise to look after her. Alone in the room where he died, Jane imagines that he might return to see how she has been treated. The idea contains a child’s hope that someone with authority might finally take her side. It also terrifies her. The one adult she can imagine intervening would have to come back from the dead.

Does Jane really see a ghost?

Jane catches sight of her own pale face in the mirror and thinks she looks like a spirit. Later, a moving light makes her fear that something supernatural is about to appear. The adult Jane, narrating the scene years afterward, suggests it was probably a lantern carried across the lawn.

That detail gives the reader two versions of the same moment. The adult narrator can explain the light. The child still has to live through the terror of it. When Jane screams and begs to be let out, Mrs. Reed treats her distress as another attempt to get her way and shuts her in again. That decision is the most frightening thing in the chapter.

Why does Jane dream about the red-room at Thornfield?

In Chapter 27, after Jane discovers that Rochester is already married, he urges her to stay with him. She loves him and wants to ease his suffering, but staying would mean giving up principles she believes in. That night, she dreams she is back in the red-room. The light reappears, and a figure Jane addresses as her mother urges her to leave. Before dawn, Jane goes.

As a child, Jane looks to the dead for someone who might open the door for her. In the dream, the figure gives her a decision to act on herself. Leaving will cost her a home, a livelihood and the man she loves. Brontë brings back the room at precisely the point when Jane has a door she can open, even though she has almost nowhere to go.

A book-club question for your reread

Read the end of Chapter 2 alongside the dream in Chapter 27. How does the moving light change meaning between the two scenes? Consider what Jane hopes an adult will do for her at Gateshead and what she’s prepared to do for herself at Thornfield.

Read the novel online. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre at Project Gutenberg

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