Jane Eyre

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.”

These lines have always fascinated me.

It was an unusual start to a novel. No introductory passages to ease into the story, and no development of characters. A scene of a family returning from a morning walk on a cold wintery morning. Charlotte Bronte began her famous novel, Jane Eyre with these lines.

The next paragraph describes Jane surrounded by a family so far removed from her emotionally that even in their midst, she is all alone.

Our sympathies begin to align with Jane Eyre from the very first passages of the novel.

Jane lives with her maternal aunt Mrs. Reed in Gateshead Hall. Her overbearing cousins John Reed, Eliza Reed, and Georgiana Reed make her life as miserable as possible. Bessie the nursemaid is the only soul in the Reed household who often treats Jane with kindness.

Like Jane in the novel, I was accustomed to finding a quiet corner in my house so I could read undisturbed. Coincidentally it had rained hard throughout the day and it seemed to me just as I settled down with my book the rain stopped. It was in the quiet that follows a heavy rainfall that I read these lines.

Since then every time I have read Jane Eyre, for a fleeting moment I am taken back to that rainy day and the beginning of Jane's journey.