Commentary-Jane Eyre(red-room)
This particular excerpt of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" is in prose, told in a first person narrative. It is about the last moments that Jane Eyre is locked in the "red room" after being wrongly accused of pouncing on Mrs. Reed's son, in which her mind has drifted off to the topic of ghosts and spirits coming back from the dead to take revenge on the living and then, upon thinking she has seen a ghost, flies into a panic, waking the whole household and being severely scolded. The first thing that caught my eye about this passage was that in the first paragraph there seems to be an abundant use of dashes. To me, the text between the dashes like for example "I doubted not - never doubted - that if Mr. Reed..." & "(Mr. Reed's spirit) might quit it's abode - whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed - and rise before me" sound like a sort of 'aside', something not quite directed at the reader but more like an inward comment made by the narrator to herself. Bronte takes the reader further into Jane Eyre's world by giving us little glimpses of her own thoughts which are not embedded in the rest of the text, emphasising her points very well also by making us feel closer to her.
The excerpt is structured quite simply: the beginning and the end, where Jane is by herself in the room is just in prose, telling us what Jane's thoughts and feelings are whereas when Bessie, Abbot and Mrs. The effect that this had on me was that my reading was speeding up because of the way the text is written but at the same time I saw the semi-colons and wanted to pause for longer periods of time, creating a certain 'chaos' so as to speak which stirred me up just as Jane would be feeling. while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head"). And, of course, all this also ties in with the idea of ghosts and spirits and angels which float and glide about the room. The commas almost make the reader take a breath at each one and the list formation coupled with all the action going on makes the reader read the passage faster and faster so that by the end when Jane is finally let out of the room as Bessie and Abbot arrive, the reader is almost as out of breath as Jane is! Also, notice how Bronte changes from using commas at the beginning of the sentence to semi-colons towards the end. There is also sound imagery, mostly when Jane is at the culminating point of her fear ("My heart beat thick.
Common topics in this essay:
Jane Eyre,
Bessie Abbot,
Jane Bronte,
Reed Reed's,
Jane Eyre's,
Abbot Reed,
jane eyre,
filled ears,
sound filled ears,
ghosts spirits,
glided ceiling,
bronte writes,
reader breath,
dangerous duplicity,
light jane,
bessie abbot,
rest text,
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Acceptance Essays
