Written Task

New Opening

I have already been living with Mrs Reed for some years, but not much I know about my life before. According to some information I got I could know about that part of my life. My mother, sister of Mr Reed, knew a man that wasn’t of much wealth, actually he was of very low wealth, fact that made my mother’s father, my grandfather, angry and making disinherit her and leaving us with nothing. A few months after I was born my father and mother got sick from typhus. My father died first from it, my mother gave me to my uncle, Mr Reed her brother, and asked him to take care of me as one of his own children before she died. Mr Reed was a nice man and took good care of me, he was always attentive to me, punished me when I deserved it but not going to extreme limits. He played with me when he was not busy. But one fateful day my uncle died, all of Gateshead was affected by this and the room where he died, the “Red Room”, remained unused since that day and said to be haunted. 

When my uncle died my aunt, Mrs Reed, took care of me but in a completely different way than my uncle, she was more evil, she had a hate against me. When we all went out for a walk in the nature one day she always kept me apart from the group, always treated me like a servant or even less than one. She always gave preferences to her children John, Georgiana and Elizabeth. At first she didn’t showed this attitude because of the memory of her recently dead husband and because of the sadness she felt because of it, but after this sadness overcame she became the real devil she was, she gave me extreme punishments that in most cases I didn’t deserve in those extreme ways. 

She mostly insisted, when applying those punishments, that I was nothing, that I had nothing, that my family had nothing and in the same way than them I was going to end, also she said that if I don’t behave as I am supposed to I will be locked down inside the red room and be left there for many days. Most of the time she didn’t ate with us on the table and when that happened John and his sisters bullied me so much, mostly with words, strong words that hurt more than a stab in the chest. In other cases they took my food, leaving me with less for me. They forbidden me to take books or anything to read or entertain myself, and showed them to me in a laughing way while Mrs Reed did nothing to help me, but if said anything in my defence she would punish me severely.  When Mr Reed died there was another person who treated me nice and gave me good attention, Mr Lloyd. Mr Lloyd was the apothecary of the family and went only when someone needed medical attention, but when he came he was the nicest to me in all of Gateshead. The other person that treated me nice was Bessie who was a servant. She treated me nice in Gateshead most of the time but the problem with her was that because of being a servant of Gateshead she had to follow orders and be loyal to Mrs Reed so in various cases I received punishments from her because something Bessie told her. In Gateshead there was also another servant, Miss Abbott. She felt the same hate to me as Mrs Reed and in most of the cases she will do anything possible to her to make me feel uncomfortable. One day when we were going for a walk Mrs Reed stopped me.

“You are not coming with us today Jane.” She said.

“Why not?” I replied.

“Because you don’t deserve it because of your bad attitude, so you are going to stay at Gateshead with Bessie and Miss Abbott.”

“But Miss Abbott hates me…”

“If you don’t behave yourself you will be punished for your insolence, do you understand young girl?”

"Yes Mrs Reed.”

When I came inside Bessie noticed I was sad, so she tried to cheer me up, but Miss Abbott had another ideas. Bessie played with me and read when she was not busy, in the moment when Bessie needed to leave for some reason, Miss Abbot came in and started saying awful things to me and destroying my happiness. Because of Bessie needing to be loyal to Mrs Reed did nothing against Miss Abbott for fear of the consequences it could carry.

Later that day I said something wrong by mistake but nobody heard me, except for Bessie said that was going to tell Mrs Reed. It was late at night and she did not wanted to wake up my aunt so she kept it to the next day, I by the other side went to sleep with hope that the next day would be more positive for me.

Words: 849 words.

Rationale