THE AUTHOR'S NOTE

                      TO THE THIRD EDITION

   I AVAIL myself of the opportunity which a third edition of Jane
Eyre affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to
explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one
work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction
has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not
merited; and consequently, denied where it is justly due.

   This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already
have been made, and to prevent future errors.

                                                         CURRER BELL.

   April 13th, 1848.

                         JANE EYRE

                          CHAPTER I

   THERE was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been
wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;
but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early)
the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a
rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of
the question.

   I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly
afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight,
with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings
of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my
physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

   The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round
their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the
fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither
quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had
dispensed from joining the group; saying, 'She regretted to be under
the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard
from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was
endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and
childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner-
something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were- she really
must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy,
little children.'

   'What does Bessie say I have done?' I asked.

   'Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is
something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that
manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly,
remain silent.'

   A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in
there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume,
taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into
the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a
Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was
shrined in double retirement.

   Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to
the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating
me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the
leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.
Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet
lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly
before a long and lamentable blast.

   I returned to my book- Bewick's History of British Birds: the
letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet
there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could
not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts
of sea-fowl; of 'the solitary rocks and promontories' by them only
inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its
southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape-

           'Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,

            Boils round the naked, melancholy isles

            Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge

            Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.'

Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of
Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with
'the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of
dreary space,- that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields
of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine
heights above heights, surround the pole and concentre the
multiplied rigours of extreme cold.' Of these death-white realms I
formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended
notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely
impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves
with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock
standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat
stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing