Jane Eyre - Chapter 4

Difficult Words

• Insuperable – impossible to overcome
• Capricious – prone to major mood swings
• Parterre - garden
• Usury – lending money and charge ridiculous amounts of interest
• Poltroon - coward
• Sotto voce – very softly

Audra’s Slang Summary

 

Let me just preface by saying I love this chapter.  

Months pass, and nothing is said about Jane going to school.  Nothing really changes for Jane, except that John Reed is afraid of her now (Hah!), so he tends to leave her alone.  Everyone does.  And Jane gets brave.  When she overhears Mrs. Reed telling John that he is to avoid Jane because she is not fit to associate with them, Jane yells over the banister that they are not fit to associate with her. 

Mrs. Reed runs up the stairs in a fury, and Jane, lovely creature, pulls out the dead uncle card.  That’s right – the What-would-Mr. Reed-do-if-he-saw-how-you-treated-me card.  That knocks the wind out of Mrs. Reed for once…but then she boxes Jane’s ears anyway.

Moving on.

When Jane sees a carriage pull up to Gateshead, she thinks nothing of it – but then she is called down to Mrs. Reed’s presence.  That hasn’t happened for 4 months…so Jane is kinda nervous. Upon entering the drawing room, the looming figure of a man named Mr. Brocklehurst blocks her view. This man is a clergyman who rules a school called Lowood with a crazy-fundamentalist iron fist, and Lowood is the school Mrs. Reed has chosen to send Jane off to forever.

Frankly, Mr. Brocklehurst is about as awesome as Mrs. Reed.  He tries to strike the fear of God into Jane by questioning her closely about hell, believing her to be a troublesome child. 

Remember how I told you Jane is catty?  Well, get this: When asked how to avoid going to hell, Jane says that she has to make sure she doesn’t die anytime soon.  Bahaha!

Then Mrs. Reed tells Mr. Brocklehurst that Jane is a liar.

And that, of course, turns the already crazy Mr. Brocklehurst against Jane, and he promises to tell all the teachers and students at Lowood to handle Jane with contempt, so that she can be broken of her evil ways.  Exit Mr. Brocklehurst.

At this point, Jane is fuming inside.  She thought she was going to get a new start at school, but Mrs. Reed has poisoned that, just like everything else.  So, when Mrs. Reed tells Jane to go back to the nursery, she hesitates. 

Then, Jane tells Mrs. Reed just what she thinks of her.  Finally.

Mrs. Reed is speechless. 

Then Mrs. Reed is the one who leaves the room.

Jane is the winner of her first battle.

There is a sort of friendly bond formed between Bessie and Jane that evening, since Jane is not afraid of Bessie after standing up to the much scarier Mrs. Reed.  Jane is to leave Gateshead in a couple of days, and is sad to leave Bessie, and sad that Mr. Brocklehurst is going to ruin everything thanks to Mrs. Reed - but at least Jane will be away from Gateshead. 

Fin for now.

Interesting Stuff, Inspired by the Book

 

Child’s Guide

The pamphlet that Mr. Brocklehurst presents to Jane – called the “Child’s Guide” – was meant to strike fear into her heart by giving her very detailed examples of how unexpectedly she could die. 

Surprise, this was based on a real book – a magazine – called The Children’s Friend. This magazine, the contents of which are pretty terrifying, was written by the Rev. W. Carus Wilson.  Here is a link to the issue of 1824, if you’d like a taste of the nasty stories he liked to scare kids with.

A couple of things strike me as interesting here. 

1. The fact the Mr. Brocklehurst carries this book with him to Jane’s house is funny.  He assumes she is a bad child before he even meets her – probably due to the letter Mrs. Reed sent him about her, but still.  Funny. 
2. The very negative light in which Charlotte Bronte presents this view of God, and how clearly she introduces hypocrisy into the story with the very characters that are supposed to be so pious…this is interesting.  Charlotte was a woman in the 1820s. Seriously, being so forward with her opinions – even through the veil of fiction – is pretty bold.  Clever, clever woman.  

This all makes me wonder: How new are our problems with religion, really?

Jane Eyre - Chapter 3

Difficult Words

•  Convolvuli – vine-y, trumpet-y flower plants, like morning glories

 

Audra’s Slang Summary

When Jane wakes up from her mercy-filled blackout, she’s back in the nursery, and there’s a stranger present.  Turns out, this guy is an apothecary. Mrs. Reed didn't want to call in the doctor she uses for her children and herself…so she called the dude she employed for all the servants.  Fitting. At any rate, this man’s name is Mr. Lloyd, and he is the first person we meet who treats Jane as if she is a normal human being (with the exception of Bessie, perhaps.  She’s just young, and easily irritated – not verging on evil, like the others in the household.) 

When Bessie is called down to dinner, Jane is left alone with Mr. Lloyd, and the conversation that ensues is vital to the events which follow in Jane’s life.  Mr. Lloyd asks Jane what happened to make her ill, and she tells him.  She also mentions she hates her life, but knows she can’t get out of it until she grows up.  Mr. Lloyd asks Jane if she has any other relations, to which Jane replies that Mrs. Reed had once mentioned she might have some poor relatives on her father’s side (Eyres), but no one seems to know (or care) anything about them.  

When it comes to light that Jane would rather be educated than live with her poor, although possibly kind, relatives, Mr. Lloyd comes up with a grand idea: Jane could go to school.  She would be far from Gateshead, Mrs. Reed, and her bully cousins, and she would have access to an education.  Jane, jumps at this plan – and the kind apothecary makes the suggestion to Mrs. Reed, who, of course, takes the poison….I mean bait. 

One more thing!  When Jane is supposed to be sleeping, she overhears a conversation about her parents that goes on between Bessie and Abbot.  Her mother – Mr. Reed’s sister – married Jane’s father, who was a poor preacher-man, against the wishes of her family…which, of course, made them angry.  Jane’s parents, then, were left on their own – at least, without any help from the Reed side.  Who needs ‘em, right?  Except money may have helped; the happy couple had only been married a year when they both caught typhus fever.  Sadly, that was that, and Jane was suddenly an orphan. 

Interesting Stuff, Inspired by the Book

 

Convolvuli 

 

When you type “convolvuli” into google, what comes up first is this nastyish moth thing.  I can find the beauty in it after the first look, but would have a hard time eating off of a plate decorated in such…lovley?...creatures.  They’re no butterflies.  How can I tell, you ask?  Umm….maybe from the first reaction, which happened to be revulsion rather than “Aww, what a cute butterfly!”….That’s generally the time I figure out it is a moth we are dealing with.  Feast your eyes.

(Moth pic came from here.)

Jane Eyre - Chapter 2

Difficult Words

•  Damask - reversible fabric 
•  Marseilles – thick cotton fabric with a raised pattern.  Also, a city in France. 
•  Consternation – sudden dismay 
•  Uncongenial – Well, congenial means favorable, so basically? Uncongenial = Sucky.

 

Audra’s Slang Summary

 

So, off to the red-room Jane was dragged.  Red.  For blood….and hate….and (mostly) for all the red stuff in the room.  Why does this room matter?  Oh, here’s the fun part.  Mrs. Reed chose to lock Jane up in this room because she knew it would scare Jane….because it was haunted.  Or, at least, somebody had died in it.  No one went into that room, unless there were too many people staying in the house to avoid it.  Imagine being that lucky houseguest:  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Reed, for putting us up!  I’m just gonna go sleep in the hall…”  

Turns out, Mr. Reed – Jane’s awesome (truly, he was awesome) uncle on her mother’s side – was the one who died in it.   Specifically, he died in the bed.  And Jane was thrust into a chair directly before the bed of death.  To stare at it. Just for fun.

So, Jane is (understandably) freaked out.  She starts imagining that her angst will call her dead uncle back from the grave to seek vengeance on his wife for not keeping her promise to raise Jane as her own child….and this is a horrible idea to her.  Apparently, Jane dislikes ghosts even more than Mrs. Reed.  She tries to calm herself down, but it just doesn’t work.  She screams to be released!...but, alas.  Mrs. Reed forces her back into the make-shift dungeon (after one of the servants opened the door to see what was up), and locks her in for another hour….but Jane doesn’t remember that hour.  She blacks out instead.  (Thank goodness.)

 

Interesting Stuff, Inspired by the Book

 

Red Room

There was a “red room” at my grandma’s house.  It wasn’t haunted.  In fact, it had the best bed in the house, and red blackout curtains that allowed you to comfortably sleep all day if you didn’t smell fresh-baked cookies…it was awesome to get to stay in the red room.  That’s right, Mrs. Reed, my grandma’s red room was WAY better than yours!  Also, she’s nice.  And a real person.  So, take that!

Garters

Bessie and Abbot’s threat to tie Jane down with Abbot’s garters made me wonder: What was the purpose of garters before now?  Well, the answer is rather obvious, really, if you think about where the garter is worn in today’s wedding tradition – it was to hold up stockings before the invention of elastic.  

Elastic was invented in 1820 by Thomas Hancock.  Therefore, garters were not made of elastic before then, and probably weren’t wide-spread for quite some time after that, especially in the working class.  (This is just speculation, but is an instance in which my thoughts are enough to convince me of something, and so I stop researching…) 

Since this book was first published in 1847, and is being presented as a first-hand account of Jane Eyre’s history, it stands to reason that Abbot’s garters would, in fact, have been used to hold her stockings in place on her “stout legs”. They just might have kept Jane in place too…since, as I understand it, they would not have been stretchy. 

TANGENT! Since 2013 is a couple of years after 1820, we have elastic now...and rubber bands. And magic tricks using them.  Here's a video of a cool rubber band trick, and how to do it! :)  

View How to Escape from Rubber Band Cuffs on Howcast

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Jane Eyre - Chapter 1

Difficult Words:  

• Caviller – An annoying person who complains. 
• Vignette – A picture/illustration.  Here, referring to the pictures in the book Jane is reading.
• Bilious – I really wanted this to mean super fat…but alas, it means sickly.  Whatever.

 

Audra’s Slang Summary:

So, there’s this girl. Her name is Jane.  And basically, Jane’s life really sucks. She’s an orphan, and being raised by her aunt – who is only related to her by marriage, and who follows whole-heartedly in the footsteps of the evil stepmother in any given fairy tale one might read.  Jane has three cousins, one of which is a boy who likes to do things like throw really heavy books at Jane, and Mrs. Reed (the evil stepmother aunt lady person) doesn’t care.  So, basically, Jane has it worse than Cinderella, because Jane has THREE step-sibling-like, crazy-mean bully-cousins who treat her like dirt. 

Here’s the best part, though.  Jane is catty.  Until now, apparently, she has kept it inside her brilliant little brain – but we get the chance to meet her at just the right moment: When John (the worst of her cousins) throws that book at her, she compares him to the Roman Emperors….and to slave-drivers….and to murderers.  Ya, for real.  This girl is 10. Excited to hear about her future?  You should be. Catty-ness only gets better, ya know.  Anyway. When John gets really mad that she stands up for herself, and runs at her like a charging animal, she totally stands her ground.  And makes him scream for his mommy.  Unfortunately, mommy hears him….and Jane gets punished….for John attacking her.  Lovely.

Interesting Stuff, Inspired by the Book:

 

So, Beckwick’s History of British Birds is a real book! If you’re feeling super studious, here’s a link to the whole thing!  (And my source for the pics below.)

I think it’s interesting that there are several seemingly random, somewhat disturbing pictures in a book solely dedicated to British Birds.  It now makes sense to me why Jane doesn’t think (or, at least, talk) about the pictures of the intended subject of the book….the creepy pictures are much more intriguing, even if they are rather terrifying.