As she’s being dragged to the red-room, Jane resists her jailors, Bessie and Miss Abbott. After the servants have locked her in, Jane begins observing the red-room. It is the biggest and best room of the mansion, yet is rarely used because Uncle Reed died there.
Looking into a mirror, Jane compares her image to that of a strange fairy. The oddness of being in a death-chamber seems to have stimulated Jane’s imagination, and she feels superstitious about her surroundings. She’s also contemplative. Why, she wonders, is she always the outcast? The reader learns that Jane’s Uncle Reed—her mother’s brother—brought her into the household. On his deathbed, he made his wife promise to raise Jane as one of her own children, but obviously, this promise has not been kept.
Suddenly, Jane feels a presence in the room and imagines it might be Mr. Reed, returning to earth to avenge his wife’s violation of his last wish. She screams and the servants come running into the room. Jane begs to be removed from the red-room, but neither the servants nor Mrs. Reed have any sympathy for her. Believing that Jane is pretending to be afraid, Mrs. Reed vows that Jane will be freed only if she maintains “perfect stillness and submission.” When everyone leaves, Jane faints.
Jane awakens in her own bedroom, surrounded by the sound of muffled voices. She is still frightened but also aware that someone is handling her more tenderly than she has ever been touched before. She feels secure when she recognizes Bessie and Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, standing near the bed. Bessie is kind to Jane and even tells another servant that she thinks Mrs. Reed was too hard on Jane. Jane spends the next day reading, and Bessie sings her a song.
After a conversation with Jane, Mr. Lloyd recommends that Mrs. Reed send her away to school. Jane is excited about leaving Gateshead and beginning a new life. Overhearing a conversation between Miss Abbot and Bessie, Jane learns that her father was a poor clergyman who married her mother against her family’s wishes. As a result, Jane’s grandfather Reed disinherited his daughter. A year after their marriage, Jane’s father caught typhus while visiting the poor, and both of her parents soon died within a month of each other and left Jane orphaned.
