Sample response to characterization prompt for Jane Eyre excerpt:
In this excerpt from chapter one of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, the narrator, Jane, remembers her cousin John Reed as her violent childhood tormentor. Bronte uses physical description of John as well as his actions and how others treat him to show us a picture of a spoiled and spiteful young man.
At 14, John was pale and overweight, with a “dim and bleared eye,” suggesting laziness and dullness of mind. Bronte goes on to say that John is a large boy with big bones, hands and feet, which contradicts his mother’s depiction of him as “delicate.” It’s clear his mother still sees him as a much littler and more helpless boy than he really is.
John has been brought back home from boarding school, but the narrator suggests this has more to do with John’s overindulgent mother than with any real lack of capability on John’s part. Even the master, Mr. Miles, is said to have believed John would’ve done fine if not for his mother’s constant care packages of sweet treats. Jane recalls being truly terrified by this brute who would beat her mercilessly, even in the presence of his mother and the servants. Her being four years younger and much smaller than John does nothing to win their protection,
so powerful is his position as his mother’s favorite. At
the end of the passage, the mother, sister and servants automatically assume it was Jane who started the fight with John, when she in fact was the innocent victim. One of them says, “’Dear, dear, what a fury to fly at Master John!’” This shows us that the wait staff has been trained to pamper John and defend him at all costs.
John’s actions show him to be ridiculously immature and self-centered. He sticks his tongue out at Jane “as far as he could without damaging the roots,” and then strikes her on the head so hard she nearly falls down. Her habit of reading John’s books and her mental superiority easily send him into a rage. This is seen by his passionate act of throwing a history book at Jane and causing her to fall and cut open her head, ironically upholding her accusation that he is like the tyrannical Roman emperors described within the book’s pages.
Though he has many years to wait before he is the actual owner of his mother’s house, John Reed acts as overlord and treats his poor, orphaned cousin Jane as his slave and undeserving punching bag. In Jane’s memory, he was an awful person who showed her no cousinly affection at all.