Jane's Departure from Gateshead

Jane Eyre's departure from Gateshead Hall on the morning of January 19th is the first great turning point in her life, severing her from a decade of relentless cruelty and launching her into the unknown world of Lowood Institution. The event crystallizes the value shift from abject dependence and persecution to the fragile hope of a new beginning, a change Jane has desperately wished for since the traumatic red-room incident. It is both an escape and an exile, carrying the bitter taste of rejection alongside the exhilaration of liberation.

The Morning of Departure

Jane rises half an hour before Bessie Leaven brings a candle into her closet, having dressed by the light of a setting half-moon. It is five o'clock on a raw winter morning, and the coach that will carry her away is due at six. Bessie presses her to eat boiled milk and bread, but Jane, too excited to swallow, can take only a few spoonfuls. Bessie wraps biscuits in paper and puts them into Jane's bag, then helps her on with her pelisse and bonnet. As they pass Mrs. Reed's bedroom, Bessie asks if Jane will go in and bid her mistress goodbye. Jane refuses: the night before, Mrs. Reed came to her crib and told her she need not disturb her in the morning, adding that she had always been Jane's best friend and that Jane should speak of her with gratitude. Jane covered her face with the bedclothes and turned to the wall. "That was wrong, Miss Jane," says Bessie. "It was quite right," Jane replies. "Your Missis has not been my friend: she has been my foe." At the front door, Jane cries out, "Good-bye to Gateshead!"

The Journey into the Unknown

The moon has set, and the winter morning is dark and raw. Bessie carries a lantern whose light glances on wet steps and gravel sodden by a recent thaw. Jane's trunk, corded and ready, stands at the porter's lodge. The coach arrives with four horses and its top laden with passengers; the guard and coachman urge haste. Jane is lifted from Bessie's neck, to which she clings with kisses. "Be sure and take good care of her," Bessie calls to the guard. The door is slapped shut, a voice exclaims "All right," and the coach drives off. Jane is thus severed from Bessie and Gateshead, whirled away to what she then deems remote and mysterious regions. The journey itself feels preternaturally long; they pass through several towns, and at one large town the coach stops for dinner. Jane is left alone in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier, and a little red gallery filled with musical instruments, walking about for a long time, mortally apprehensive of being kidnapped—a fear fed by Bessie's fireside tales. The guard returns, stows her back into the coach, and they rattle over the "stony street" of L—. The afternoon turns wet and misty; great grey hills heave up round the horizon; as twilight deepens, they descend a valley dark with wood, and Jane hears a wild wind rushing amongst trees. Lulled by the sound, she falls asleep, only to be woken by the sudden cessation of motion. A servant asks, "Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?" She answers yes, is lifted out, her trunk handed down, and the coach instantly drives away.

The Significance of the Departure

Jane's departure from Gateshead is not merely a change of location but a fundamental reorientation of her existence. At Gateshead, she was a "discord," a "heterogeneous thing" opposed to the Reeds in temperament and capacity, a child who dared commit no fault yet was termed naughty and tiresome from morning to night. The red-room incident, in which Mrs. Reed locked her in the chamber where Mr. Reed died, left her with "fearful pangs of mental suffering" and a shock whose reverberation she feels to this day. The departure is the direct consequence of Mr. Lloyd's recommendation that she be sent to school—a recommendation Mrs. Reed readily adopts, as Abbot observes, because she is "glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child." For Jane, school represents "a complete change," "a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life." The departure thus enacts the first major value shift of the novel: from the negative pole of oppression, isolation, and injustice to the positive pole of hope, possibility, and the chance to earn respect through her own efforts. It is the moment Jane begins to take control of her own destiny, however precarious that control may be.