In the preface to Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (writing as Currer Bell) defends the novel against religious hypocrites who might criticize the morality of Jane and Edward Rochester’s love: “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion […] To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns” (6).

Looking back over her life as an adult woman, Jane Eyre begins her story when she was a 10-year-old orphan living in Gateshead manor with her wealthy aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her aunt’s three children: Eliza, Georgiana, and surly teenager John.

On a dreary, cold day that prohibits outdoor activities, Mrs. Reed accuses Jane of being sullen and willful compared to her cousins. She forbids Jane from playing with Eliza and Georgiana, fearing that Jane’s bad temperament will rub off on them. Jane challenges Mrs. Reed’s judgment, but her self-defense only serves to affirm her guardian’s negative opinion.

Jane comforts herself by reading Bewick’s History of British Birds, losing herself in the details of its geographic descriptions. 14-year-old John interrupts her. Spoiled and entitled, he often bullies and terrifies her: “not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near” (18).