Exploring settings
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë makes careful use of settings, both
buildings and nature, to reflect and develop Jane's feelings.
Task 1: Jane’s progress
Jane moves through different locations as she grows up throughout the novel:
Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Moor House and Ferndean. The novel as a whole tells
the story of Jane’s journey from a young girl to a mature woman, and each of these
locations represents a different stage in Jane’s life.
Link these themes to one or more of the places in Jane’s life. Then answer the
questions underneath.
Themes
 isolation
 independence
 alienation
 young love
 rest
 mature love
 equality
 powerlessness
 freedom
 peace
 vulnerability
 misery
 temptation
 mystery
 contentment
 education
 reflection
Places
Themes
Gateshead
Lowood
Thornfield
Moor
House
Ferndean
1)
What different stage of Jane’s life does each setting represent?
2)
Can you see any significance in the names of each setting?
3)
Why is it significant that Thornfield is destroyed and that Jane and Rochester are
reunited in a different location?
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Exploring settings
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Task 2: Buildings analysed
Underline any key words or phrases in the following extracts which show how Brontë
associates the previous ideas with the buildings themselves. Write a brief explanation
explaining what effect this has.
NB. Extracts are taken from the Penguin Classics (1996) edition.
Gateshead (The Red Room)
This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the
nursery and kitchens; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid
alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust:
and Mrs Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret
drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a
miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room: the
spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.
Lowood (in the garden)
The garden was a wide enclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of
prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space
divided into scores of little beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to
cultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would, doubtless, look pretty:
but now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I
stood and looked round me: it was an inclement day for out-door exercise; not positively rainy,
but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all underfoot was still soaking wet with the floods of
yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale
and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst these, as
the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow
cough.
Thornfield
Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me: but then I was so little accustomed to
grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It
was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green
fields: advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was
three stories high, of proportions not vast, though considerable; a gentleman’s manor-house,
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Exploring settings
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
not a nobleman’s seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front
stood out well from the back ground of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing:
they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were
separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and
broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation.
Morton
They loved their sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low
roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs – all grown aslant
under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly – and where no flowers
but of the hardiest species would bloom – found a charm both potent and permanent ... I saw
the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the
outline of swell and sweep – on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell, by moss, by
heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite crag. These
details were just to me what they were to them – so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure.
The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and
sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions, the same
attraction as for them – wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.
Ferndean
I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then
the house — scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were
its decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of
enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no
garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of
the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and
narrow: the front-door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of
the Rochester Arms had said, ‘quite a desolate spot.’
Task 3
Pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attributing of human emotion to nature, inanimate
objects or animals.
Brontë uses pathetic fallacy frequently in the text. Complete the table below, which will help
you analyse its effect.
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Exploring settings
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Moment in the novel
Weather /
season
Chapter 1: Jane
reads in the library
at Gateshead
Rain
Chapter 9: Jane
discovers more
freedom at Lowood
Pleasant
spring
Chapter 12 : Jane
meets Mr Rochester
Ice
Chapter 22: Jane
returns to
Thornfield after her
visit to Gateshead
Warm
summer’s
day
Chapter 23: Jane is
living at Thornfield
and in love with Mr
Rochester
Perfect
midsummer
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Connections with Jane’s
feelings
Does the weather foreshadow
any future events?
23393
Key quotations
Page 4 of 5
Exploring settings
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Moment in the novel
Weather /
season
Chapter 23: Jane
accepts Mr
Rochester
Lightning
storm
Chapter 25: the
night before the
marriage
Wild wind
Chapter 28: Jane is
alone in the
countryside
Damp and
cold
Chapter 33: Jane
receives news of
her inheritance
from St John
Snow and
storm
Chapter 37: Jane
arrives at Ferndean
Darkness
and rain
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Connections with Jane’s
feelings
Does the weather foreshadow
any future events?
23393
Key quotations
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