Jane’s health returned, but her isolation deepened. Mrs. Reed forced her to sleep in a small closet alone, ate her meals apart from the family, and forbade her cousins from speaking to her. John taunted her at every turn, and when he tried to strike her one afternoon, Jane punched him hard enough to make him run to his mother crying that she “flew at him like a mad cat.” Mrs. Reed scolded John for acknowledging Jane’s existence, and Jane, leaning over the banister, yelled that the Reeds were not fit to associate with her. Mrs. Reed dragged her to the nursery, shook her, boxed her ears, and Jane, half out of her mind with rage, blurted that Mr. Reed was in heaven and saw how cruel Mrs. Reed was, that she wished her dead. Mrs. Reed was momentarily shaken, then left her, and Bessie lectured Jane for an hour on her wickedness.
The winter wore on, Jane excluded from all Christmas and New Year festivities. She watched her cousins dress in silk and curls for parties, listened to piano music drift up from the drawing room, and passed lonely evenings with only a tattered doll for comfort, waiting for Bessie to come up with small treats of cake or stories, wishing the nursemaid would be kind to her always. Then one frosty January morning, a carriage pulled up to Gateshead, and a grim, austere man named Mr. Brocklehurst arrived: he was the head of Lowood School, summoned by Mrs. Reed to take Jane off her hands. In the breakfast room, Mrs. Reed told Brocklehurst Jane was deceitful, that he must watch her closely to stamp out her bad character, to keep her humble and suited to her lowly station. Jane stood silently, her heart breaking, as Mrs. Reed planted the seed that she would be hated and punished at Lowood for a fault she did not have.
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