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Jane Eyre - Settings & objects (05_settings_and_objects.doc)

Jane Eyre - Settings & objects

Jane Eyre makes particularly powerful and complex uses of setting, which it intertwines with plot, characterization, and, of course, symbolism and imagery.

The setting of the story is carefully divided into five distinct locales, each of which has its particular significance in Jane's history and each of which is like an act in a five-act drama.

Her early childhood is spent in Gateshead Hall, the home of the Reeds. From there she goes to Lowood, the charitable institution for poor or orphaned girls of clergyman, run by Mr. Brocklehurst, which almost starved it occupants, and was torturously strict. Jane attends this school for over eight years. Here Jane comes under the influence of Miss Temple and Helen Burns. Then as a governess to Adele at Thornfield - the manor and home owned by Edward Fairfaix Rochester in Millcote, which eventually burns down - she falls in love with Rochester. After the discovery of the existence of Bertha, Jane runs away and is taken into Moor House, the home of her cousins, the Rivers family; Jane eventually lives here for a few months. In the conclusion of the book she and Rochester are united at his crumbling hunting-lodge, Ferndean Manor, where he goes to live crippled and blind, after Thornfield Halls burns to the ground.

There are, in addition, two scenes in which Jane returns to an earlier home to discover changes in both herself and those she has known in the past: from Thornfield she returns to the deathbed of Mrs. Reed at Gateshead, and from Moor House she returns to Thornfield to find only its blind windows and gaping walls.

Other specific places and objects

Bewick's Book of British Birds: The colorful book of British birds which Jane likes to peruse while sitting in the window seat at Gateshead.

Red Room: The particularly Gothic and frightening room which Jane is locked up in after flying at John Reed who beat her. It is the room where the late Mr. Reed, Jane's uncle died, and its furnishings are dark, ornate and red.

Nursery: The nursery where Jane is allowed to stay sometimes and not others, at Gateshead.

Typhoid Fever: Fever which runs through Lowood, killing half its' inhabitants; a common cause of death among the young throughout the 19th century.

Thornfield Hall Attic: The third floor of Thornfield, where the mad Bertha is kept.

Leas: House of Mr.Eshton, where Mr. Rochester goes for a while.

Drawing-Room: Happy haunt of Mr. Rochester, where he cares to sit many hours in front of the fire, and speak to Jane.

West Indies: Where Mr. Mason and Bertha are both from (Jamaica).

Madeira: Home of Jane's uncle John who dies.

Chesnut Tree: The symbolic tree which gets struck by lightning.

Wedding Veil: The wedding veil which Rochester buys Jane, and which Bertha rips in half in the middle of the night.

Whitcross: The town where the coach deposits Jane when she leaves Thornfield after the shock of Bertha. She begs here for many days before finding Moor House.

Morton: The town where St. John is a pastor, where Jane teaches, and where Moor House is located, in the northern moors.

Village school: The school where Jane teaches peasant's daughters in Morton.