All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?…Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged…John no one thwarted, much less punished.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 2. While locked in the red room, Jane questions her constant mistreatment by the Reed family. She asked why she could never please them or win their favor. Using a simile she compares all their wrong-doings and tyranny to a “dark deposit in a turbid well.” But while she is made to suffer, Jane protests that the misbehavior of her cousins Eliza, Georgiana and John is left go unchecked and unpunished. The Gothic style that permeates the novel is found in the language of this passage with Bronte’s use of words like “violent,” “disturbed,” “dark.”