To this crib I always took my doll. Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scare-crow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doted on this little toy; half-fancying it alive and capable of sensation, I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it happy likewise.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 4. The doll Jane clung to as a child is symbolic of the sense of home and feeling of being loved that she never had during her dark days with the Reeds. “Human beings must love something,” she says. So she cared for a doll the same way that a child loves a brother, sister or parent. It was her way of coping when she lived with a family that showed her no affection. Using a simile, she compares the shabbiness of her beloved doll to a scarecrow.