Since Jane’s arrival at Lowood, there was a frequent
description of the images of winter usually in line with the barren landscapes
and horrid living conditions personifying an image of being away from home. The
difficulties she had to bear from poor nourishment to frozen water in the
pitchers all draw upon a dreary and devastating winter. Her longings for the
basic comfort in winter and the calamitous conditions of the institution make
the readers ache with sympathy,
“How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when
we got back!”
The playhour in the evening I thought was the pleasantest
fraction of the day at Lowood: the bit
of bread and the draught of coffee revived vitality, if it had not satisfied
hunger; the long restraint of the day was slackened”
but as the novel progresses, one realizes the insignificance
of these things. The emotional distress and the loneliness, which Jane endured
at Gateshead, made this transition easier for her. She recalls her experiences
at Gateshead and compares them to this appalling winter,
“That wind would have saddened; this obscure chaos would
have disturbed my peace: as it was, I derived a strange excitement, and
reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen
the darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour”
This gives reader her perspective of the circumstances.
Being free excited her; she wished the winter to become darker and the winds to
howl more passionately. This illustrates the vitality freedom brought to her
character. Towards the end, she quoted
Solomon in her own thinking process,
“Better is a dinner
of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith”
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