Eliza Reed Quotes

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 1. The novel’s opening paragraph sets the tone wonderfully and gives us our first glimpse into the characters of Jane and the Reed family. The child Jane’s loneliness and isolation while living at Gateshead are starkly spelled out. Her position of inferiority among her cousins is immediately evident. The poor weather and leafless shrubs combine to create a melancholic mood, foreshadowing a cold and dreary future for Jane. Throughout the novel Bronte uses nature as a sympathetic background to reflect Jane’s situation and mood.

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.”

Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. Eliza Reed says this to her sister Georgiana. Jane’s two cousins have grown up into two very different kinds of people since she last saw them as children. Eliza is tall, stern, repressed and religious. Georgiana is buxum, beautiful, lazy and vain. The sisters despise each other and are very unpleasant people.

Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes, – include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. The prim and uptight Eliza Reed gives some life advice to her frivolous sister Georgiana, whom she despises. It’s the last piece of advice that she will give to her, Eliza says. After her mother’s death Eliza is planning to enter a convent. The sisters don’t get along with one another.

After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this – if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. The Reed family is disintegrating. As Mrs. Reed lies in bed dying, Eliza tells her sister Georgiana how much she despises her. She says that she would rather die than be with Georgiana.

Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me.

– Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre, Chapter 21. Georgiana Reed responds to her sister Eliza’s tirade against her. She calls Eliza heartless and spiteful, accusing her of sabotaging Georgiana’s plans to marry Lord Edwin Vere out of jealousy. “You could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face,” Georgiana tells her.
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