Gateshead, First response
Jane spends the first part of her life with living a Gateshead with her Aunt Reed and cousins: John, Eliza , and Georgina as well as their servants and Bessie Lee the maid.
" 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 ... the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. "
The first thing Jane tells us is that the weather on the first night we are spectating her is dreadful. This immediately makes me think that Gateshead will not be an open and inviting place for Jane, and indeed she is foreshadowing the cruelties and despair that she will inevitably feel in her time at that house.
" 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 ... the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. "
The first thing Jane tells us is that the weather on the first night we are spectating her is dreadful. This immediately makes me think that Gateshead will not be an open and inviting place for Jane, and indeed she is foreshadowing the cruelties and despair that she will inevitably feel in her time at that house.
Though Gateshead is a resplendent estate, Jane is bullied by her cousins and nearly always ignored by her aunt. This would make any home of any level of grandeur feel like Satan's own Pandemonium in Hell. It is no surprise that Jane took her first opportunity to be rid of this place.