This week I would like you to read the following extract from Jane Eyre. Jane lives with her Aunt, Mrs Reed, who has decided that she should go away to boarding school (and never come back). She is annoyed about the way that she ahs been treated and she gets a sort of revenge in this extract. Mr Brocklehurst is the headmaster of Jane's new school and Mrs Reed has just told him not to trust Jane as she is a liar.
When you have read the extract make a note of things that are similar to and different from the way that Cassie gets revenge in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Be ready in class on Monday to discuss these similarities and differences.
Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence;
she was sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a
bell--illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager;
her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her
children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn;
she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off
handsome attire.
Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined
her figure; I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract
containing the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative my
attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning. What had
just passed; what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr.
Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent,
raw, and stinging in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as I
had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now
within me.
Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her
fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.
"Go out of the room; return to the nursery," was her mandate. My
look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she
spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went
to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the
room, then close up to her.
SPEAK I must: I had been trodden on severely, and MUST turn: but
how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I
gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence -
"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I
declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in
the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may
give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not
I."
Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice
continued to dwell freezingly on mine.
"What more have you to say?" she asked, rather in the tone in which
a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is
ordinarily used to a child.
That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking
from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I
continued -
"I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt
again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am
grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you
treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and
that you treated me with miserable cruelty."
"How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?"
"How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the TRUTH. You
think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love
or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall
remember how you thrust me back--roughly and violently thrust me
back--into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day;
though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with
distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!' And that punishment
you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me--knocked me
down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this
exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-
hearted. YOU are deceitful!"
Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult,
with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It
seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled
out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment:
Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she
was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even
twisting her face as if she would cry.
"Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why
do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?"
"No, Mrs. Reed."
"Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire
to be your friend."
"Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a
deceitful disposition; and I'll let everybody at Lowood know what
you are, and what you have done."
"Jane, you don't understand these things: children must be
corrected for their faults."
"Deceit is not my fault!" I cried out in a savage, high voice.
"But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return
to the nursery--there's a dear--and lie down a little."
"I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon,
Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here."
"I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed sotto
voce; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.
I was left there alone--winner of the field. It was the hardest
battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood
awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed
my conqueror's solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate;
but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the
accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its
elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled
play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang
of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath,
alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind
when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and
blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly
my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's silence and reflection
had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my
hated and hating position.
