-Marcus Banks
In the novel by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Jane has gone through many unjust, abusive and unfortunate events through out her life. She has endured many lies, beatings, verbal abuse, and humiliation. She has gone through all these misfortunes for the majority of her life, but these things are good. These incidents are what make Jane as a person. It is as if challenges and hard choices (good or bad) that are essential to question her own actions and find out who she is in the world. She doesn't learn much when she is happy. Being in that state, her being happy is precisely what leads her to being naive and allowing her heart to open up to Mr. Rochester and get hurt.
She spends most of her childhood life at Gateshead Hall, where she is taken in by her Uncle, Mr. Reed, when both her mother and father die. Her Uncle tries his best to bring her up as one of his own children (with kindness and decently), until his death. When he dies, Jane is left in the care of her careless aunt, Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed is not much of a guardian, but more like a monster who couldn’t care less about the well-being of Jane. She practically denies her existence and allows her children (mainly the boy, John) to physically abuse her for their own entertainment. The constant abuse at Gateshead is actually one of the main events that helps Jane find the strength she has stored inside. Being at Gateshead gives her a reason for her to stand up for herself and most importantly to her aunt. In the novel, Bronte describes a scene in the book where Jane expresses her feelings about her aunt and the way she has treated her and all the pain she has suffered. Jane says, “'I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.'”(36). Mrs. Reed is spellbound at what her niece has said about her, but Jane, “...left there alone--winner of the field” (37). She has overcome one of the greatest challenges in her life, but there is more in store for Jane.
As soon as Jane leaves the miserable conditions of her life at Gateshead Hall, she endures new ones at her new home, Lowood Institution. Everyone is plainly dressed and the food scanty. She is made to walk several miles in the cold to attend mass. But these are the least of her worries, the biggest one would be the humiliation that she receives from Mr. Brocklehurst. He calls her a liar in front of everyone present and makes her stand on a stool for a half-hour with no one allowed to talk to her. She leaves the stool heartbroken and humiliated and goes to a corner to cry. Then her friend, Helen Burns, comforts her. Then, after Jane tells her that she would rather die then be unloved by people, she gives Jane a very important piece of advice. Helen says, “ 'Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you.' ”. The beginning of her education at Lowood is on of the most challenging situation that Jane has to overcome, but this time she has a friend to help her, which she later loses.
Then there is the Typhus epidemic that killed many girl at the school, and during this epidemic someone close to Jane dies. Helen Burns is so sick that she has to be in an insular room where she won't infect any of the other girls. Jane then goes to Helen's room to pay a visit. She sleeps with her. Then in the morning, Jane wakes up to find Helen dead. This is the first time she has ever lost lost someone she really cared about and now has to survive at Lowood alone. As the school's living conditions get better, Jane finds being at Lowood better then before. She thrives as a student and later becomes a teacher.
After leaving The Lowood Institution to be a governess at Thornfield, she falls deeply in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester. She is deeply in love with him and is going to get married to him. Jane believes this to be all too good to be true, and she is right. It turns out that Mr. Rochester is not who he turns out to be. On the day of their wedding, Mr. Mason abject to the marriage because Mr. Rochester is already married to his daughter, Bertha Mason. Jane is heartbroken by what she has heard. Everything she feels inside that is happy is dead. She describes her feelings, as “My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt.”(300). She now has a hard decision to make. Should she stay with Mr. Rochester, a married man, or go away from him? She later decides to leave Mr. Rochester. It is the hardest decision that she ever has to make. It is hard because she is leaving Mr. Rochester (the man she loves dearly) and has no other place to go and has to start a brand new life. As Erick says in his blog called Mr. Rochester and the Black Gate Gates, “The gates in which Jane opens to leave Thornfiled is a symbol. She destroys her life at Thornfield and creates a new life. The gates are the thresholds to a new world. She is skeptical at first because Jane realizes that once she steps out there is no turning back.” When she leaves Thornfield, she will burn ever bridge that she knows and be alone once again.
As soon as she leaves Thornfield, she takes a coach to anywhere her money can take her. She ends up close to a town called Whitcross (which takes her two days to travel to). She forgets her parcel on the coach; now she hasn't a penny to her name and has to sleep on the street. She has never been this low in society; she has always had a roof over her head. Now she doesn't even have that. She goes hungry for the first time in her life. She has nothing to eat for most of the time, so she has to beg for food. Bronte describes how desperate Jane is food in a scene where she begged a little girl for cold porridge, “The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously.”(335)
She goes in to the town hoping to get a job, but no one requires her services. Worst then not having any food to eat, neither does she have any employment. Jane as change a lot during this time. Liszette states it best when she talks about how much Jane has changed in her blog Falling. She says, “Living outside? Begging for food? This is not the Jane we have come to know and love. Where has her pride gone?”. The choice she has made has taught her a lot about being dependent on other people. She also learns how much she doesn't like to be dependent on others. She enjoys being an independent women. A person who can make her own decisions and have her own money.
It is all about the challenges we have in live and the decisions that come after that determine who we are as human beings. If I had not come to Chinquapin, I don't know what kind of person I would be or where I would be at this moment. I know it was the hardest of all the other choices I had for a school, but the harder the school the harder I work and the more I learn because it is always a challenge.
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