Essay, Research Paper: Jane Erye

Jane Erye's Life

So far I have been able to compare Jane Erye to life today. The beginning pages describe this part of Jane's life as cold, dark, and alone. The lines about of winter in Bewick allude to her life at this time, "centuries of winter...of extreme cold...Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy. " She is like the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and gastly moon glancing through the bars of a cloud at a wreck just sinking." As I first read this I thought of Jane as the moon looking throught the bars, like later when she is locked in the red room." No jail was ever more secure," then I thought that the cold and ghastly moon was Mrs. Reed "blind and Deaf on the subject" who watched and stood back as Jane, the wreck sinking, being beaten and tormented by John. He called Jane a "bad animal" while he was an inhumane person. "He bullied and punished me," he throws a book at her hitting her in the head." I really saw in him a tyrant: a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck." Like people of different cultures and races today feel alone and the object of the cold prejudices of others today, Jane feels alone in the dark being different and not of the others class. "I was a discord in Gateshead hall I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed and her children..." Again in this room there are so many descriptions about her feelings, "This room was a chill...It was silent...remote...solemn ...alone...All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality:" Daylight began to foresake the red room….I grew by degrees cold as stone, and then my courage sank. "This last line touched me. She had no one to help her. Today people, who come to other countries speaking different languages, the language barriers can cause them to feel alone. Also the Deaf community in the U.S. are isolated, treated as they are not able to do the same as everyone else. They feel alone in darkness when surrounded by hearing people who cannot sign because they do not know about thier culture which is very unique and interesting. They feel frustrated and some give up and stop trying to communicate because most hearing people have not made an attempt to know them, like Jane in the Reed family. Race was also an issue in Jane Erye. Mrs. Reed on Jane, "how could she really like an interloper, not of her race and unconnected with her."