Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" is a perfect example of bildingsroman, the education novel. Jane Eyre is a "coming of age" story as the main character, Jane travels from the innocence of childhood through the maturity of adulthood. During this journey, Jane goes through the battle of education versus containment, where she attempts to learn about herself and about the world. She must constantly battle a contaiment, whether it be a true physical containment or a mental one. This battle of education and containment can be seen by following Jane through her different places of residence, like Gateshead Hall, Lowood Institution, Thornfield, Moor House and Morton, and Ferndean Manor, where she becomes fully educated and escapes the feeling of containment which she cannot get rid of throughout the novel.
             The story starts while Jane is living with the Reed family in their home at Gateshead Hall. Here, is where education and containment begins, as Jane is kept confined indoors on a cold winter day. The other children (Eliza, John, and Giorgiana) are "clustered round their mamma in the drawing-room" (39) being educated, as Jane had been excluded from the group. Jane tries to educate herself by reading from Berwick's History of British Birds, but once again, she is held back agian by the abuse of John Reed, who punnishes her and throws the heavy book at her. In anger, Jane cries out, "You are like a murderer - you are like a slave-driver - you are like the Roman emperors" (43). In this passage, Jane compares John Reed to a slave-driver because,he is like a slave-driver, he deprives Jane of her attempt to become educated and keeps her for doing what she wants to do. Afterwards, Jane is blamed for the whole incident and experiences true physical containment when she is locked up in!
             the "red-room." The room that traps her physically, by its walls and locked doors, but also mentally, as it haunts her. This room is where Mr. Reed had died. "It...