Extract question — The Red Room (Ch. 2)

Read the passage from Chapter 2 describing Jane's imprisonment in the red-room.

Explore how Brontë presents Jane's experience of injustice in this extract and elsewhere in the novel. [20 marks + 4 AO4]

Mark scheme (Level 6):

• AO1: Red-room as inaugural trauma; Jane's later 'fits' and rebellion stem from this scene.
• AO2: Gothic register — 'chill', 'silent', 'solemn'; the mirror as site of self-alienation ('a strange little figure'); the 'species of fit' that foreshadows Bertha.
• AO3: Victorian treatment of the dependent orphan; Lockean and Wordsworthian models of childhood psychology.
• Elsewhere: Lowood's institutional injustice (Helen's flogging), Brocklehurst's public shaming on the stool, Rochester's deception, St John's coercion.
• Conclusion: injustice radicalises Jane into the moral agent who 'cares for myself' (Ch. 27).