Mrs. Reed serves as the primary antagonist in Jane Eyre (2011), and although she does not receive much screen time in the film, she plays a pivotal role in Jane’s upbringing and her life in general. Orphaned at a young age, Jane grows up in the care of Mrs. Reed, who treats her terribly and forces her to face cruel punishments. Mrs. Reed casts Jane away to charity school as a young girl, and does not have contact with her for years until she requests a visit from her on her deathbed. This is due to guilt, as she relays to Jane, and the fact that she has been hiding the fact that Jane has an uncle who would like to adopt her. Though Jane grows up to find her own success, working as a governess for Edward Rochester and falling in love with him, she finds herself struggling with her own self-worth and the ability to trust others, particularly Edward. Though Mrs. Reed is no longer a part of Jane’s life, it appears that the mistreatment she inflicted upon her niece will stay with her forever. As defined in Alex Woloch’s The One Vs. The Many, there are “two pervasive extremes of minorness within the nineteenth-century novel” (Woloch 25), and are known as the ‘worker’ and the ‘eccentric’. As the mostly absent antagonist of Jane Eyre (2011), Mrs. Reed functions as the ‘eccentric’, otherwise defined by Woloch as “the fragmentary character who plays a disruptive, oppositional role within the plot” (Woloch 25). Woloch furthers this definition by stating that the eccentric character is “usually, as a consequence, wounded, exiled, expelled, ejected, imprisoned, or killed” (Woloch 25). Mrs. Reed’s death functions both as a consequence of her mistreatment of Jane, and a driving force that propels Jane’s life, through her learning of her uncle and, presumably, a sense of relief that the woman who tormented her as a child will no longer be able to hurt her.
Works Cited
Fukunaga, Cary Joji, director. Jane Eyre. Universal Pictures, 2011.
Mrs. Reed. Image. Jane Eyre, 2011.
Woloch, Alex. The One Vs. The Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel. Princeton University Press, 2003. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=286709&site=eds-live&scope=site.
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