Speech and Silence in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre's first words are addressed to Mrs. Reed. She asks her a direct question, which is taken by Mrs. Reed to be impertinent. Jane is told to remain silent and she obeys, but the question is surely to the point: What, the child inquires, Bessie say I have done?' Mrs. Reed ignores her, unaware that this moment signals the tentative beginning ofJane's own version of her conduct, a version she speaks for herself. Jane's dependence, a word John Reed taught her, is brought about by her linguistic inexperience as much as her class and her sex. It will not last forever. That question to Bessie comes from a need Jane Eyre herself does not yet recognize the need to put her experience into words. That they be her own words Jane will eventually come to understand so that, for example, on the journey back to Rochester many years after the child's timid inquiry, Jane will refuse to listen to the local innkeeper talk about 'that midge of a governess' (XXXVI, 376). Her silence will turn into speech. Readers of Jane Eyre also understand, once the novel is nearing its end, that Jane's true history is her own property and that no one else has the right to tell it. Their agreement that the narration ofJane Eyre is rigorously exclusive in its compelling surge2 has been nearly unanimous.