Jane Eyre and John Reed

The relationship between Jane Eyre and John Reed is the foundational experience of oppression in Jane's childhood, a brutal tutorial in the abuse of power by a male heir over a dependent orphan. John's tyranny, enacted daily at Gateshead Hall, shapes Jane's early sense of injustice, her first acts of rebellion, and her understanding of the world's cruelty. His later ruin and shocking death serve as a grim coda to the violence he initiated, confirming the moral decay that his unchecked privilege produced.

Identity and Early Tyranny

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen when Jane was ten, large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin, thick lineaments, heavy limbs, and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. His mother had taken him home from school on account of his "delicate health," though his master affirmed he would do well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent from home. John had little affection for his mother and sisters and an active antipathy to Jane. He bullied and punished her not two or three times a week, nor once or twice a day, but continually; every nerve she had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in her bones shrank when he came near. She had no appeal against his menaces or inflictions, for the servants would not offend their young master by taking her part, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject, never seeing him strike or hearing him abuse her even when he did so in her presence.

The Violent Confrontation

The decisive crisis occurred when John, finding Jane reading behind a curtain in the breakfast-room, struck her for her "impudence" and her "sneaking way of getting behind curtains." He seized the book she had been reading—a volume from the library—and hurled it at her, hitting her and causing her to fall, striking her head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp, and Jane's terror passed its climax. She called him "wicked and cruel boy," comparing him to a murderer, a slave-driver, and the Roman emperors. Enraged, John ran headlong at her, grasping her hair and shoulder, and Jane, seeing in him a tyrant and a murderer, fought back in frantic sort, receiving him with her hands. He called her "Rat! Rat!" and bellowed aloud. Eliza and Georgiana ran for Mrs. Reed, who came upon the scene with Bessie and Abbot. They parted the children, and Mrs. Reed ordered Jane taken away to the red-room and locked in there. This punishment, which led to Jane's hysterical fit and subsequent illness, was the direct consequence of John's unprovoked attack.

Aftermath and Jane's Resistance

After the red-room incident, John attempted further chastisement, but Jane, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt, turned against him instantly. She levelled at his prominent nose as hard a blow as her knuckles could inflict, and when she saw that either that or her look daunted him, she had the greatest inclination to follow up her advantage. John ran from her, tittering execrations and vowing she had burst his nose. He went blubbering to his mother, who stopped him harshly, saying she had told him not to go near Jane, that she was not worthy of notice, and that she did not choose that either he or his sisters should associate with her. Jane, leaning over the banister, cried out that they were not fit to associate with her, a declaration that led Mrs. Reed to sweep her into the nursery and crush her down on the edge of her crib.

John Reed's Dissipated Life and Death

Years later, Bessie Leaven reported to Jane that John was not doing well. He had gone to college and been "plucked," and his uncles wanted him to be a barrister, but he was such a dissipated young man that they would never make much of him. He was very tall, some people called him a fine-looking young man, but he had thick lips. Mrs. Reed was not easy in her mind about him; his conduct did not please her, and he spent a great deal of money. Robert Leaven later brought the news that John had died at his chambers in London. His life had been very wild; for the last three years he had given himself up to strange ways, and his death was shocking. He had ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women, got into debt and into jail, and his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks before his death and wanted his mother to give up all to him; she refused, as her means had long been much reduced by his extravagance. The next news was that he was dead—they said he killed himself. The information about John's death and the manner of it came too suddenly for Mrs. Reed, bringing on a stroke that ultimately killed her.

Thematic Significance

John Reed embodies the corrupting influence of unchecked power and privilege within the domestic sphere. His physical brutality and psychological torment of Jane are the first and most visceral examples of the injustice she must overcome. His later descent into dissipation, debt, and probable suicide serves as a moral judgment on the system that produced him—a system in which a male heir could do no wrong in his mother's eyes, even as he twisted the necks of pigeons, killed pea-chicks, set dogs at sheep, and stripped hothouse vines. Jane's resistance to John, her refusal to accept his mastery, is the germ of the independent spirit that will later enable her to reject Rochester's offer of a bigamous marriage and St. John's loveless proposal. John Reed is the negative template against which Jane's entire moral development is measured.