at Jane, and when she fights back Mrs. Reed blames her for starting the fight and claims she is lying about it. Jane is locked up in an empty bedroom, the red room, where she has a terrifying experience that she believes is a visitation from the ghost of her dead Uncle Reed. Jane is later turned over to the care of Mr. Brockelhurst, a clergyman obsessed with death. Her life at Lowood school is no better than what she knew at Gateshead:
My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age, and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new roles and unwonted tasks (Brontd 92).
In her entire childhood, Jane does not know real love or warmth, and by the time she is out of school and on her own, she is seeking those qualities and trying to find the means to connect with other human beings.
Her quest begins for real when she is hired to work for Mr. Rochester, a man of some mystery about whom Jane knows little when she enters the household. The first thing that Jane sees is the house, and the house will be seen to represent Edward Rochester in many ways. His inner being is reflected in the strange house:
The house itself is a metaphor of Rochester's heart, a physical embodiment of the tropical hell he has tried to escape, enclosed within the half-life which is all he has found (Kinkead-Weekes 82).
In the attic is his lunatic wife; the floor below is empty and deserted except for the antiques, echoes of a bygone era when the Fairfaxes and the society of which they were a part still existed; and one floor down from that is the modern world of the rich landowner, though it is a life that has been stifled by the reality of the two floors above pressing down on it. For Jane, though, this floor has special meaning as the first place she could have to herself and as a hin
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