 Now Mrs. Reed's character is the primary antagonist to Jane Eyre. At the beginning of the novel, when she is very, very young and orphaned and she's placed under the care of Mrs. Reed, her auntie, we find that Mrs. Reed relentlessly torments Jane and she even locks her in the red room, which is believed to be haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, Mr. Reed. And actually, it's her dead husband, Mr. Reed, who had wished for Jane Eyre to be raised alongside the Reed children as their sister. However, Mrs. Reed torments and mistreats Jane and of course, ultimately when she's dying, we realize that perhaps one of the reasons why she tormented and hated Jane from such an early period in her life is maybe Mr. Reed loved Jane so much and almost loved her more than even his own children. So perhaps Mrs. Reed harbored an intense jealousy and resentment towards Jane because of that. Now, when it comes to Mrs. Reed's character, she is very formative in terms of Jane Eyre's early life and she makes Jane Eyre very vengeful initially, especially when she's sent off to Lowood. She's very angry. However, Jane learns how to forgive Mrs. Reed. But even when she's dying, Mrs. Reed, when she calls for Jane, she isn't apologetic as to her previous behavior to Jane. She still actually justifies it and we realize that she dies with a lot of hatred in her heart. Now, these are the key quotations when it comes to remembering Mrs. Reed's character. Now, this hateful, angry character and her angry nature is emphasized through the description of this first quotation. Under her light eyebrows, glimmered an eyed void of truth. Now here, what you want to focus on in terms of word level analysis for Mrs. Reed's character for this quotation is the abstract noun truth. Remember the abstract noun means a noun that you can't touch, taste, feel or see. Now, do you remember that Mrs. Reed was supposedly very devout? She was supposedly a very Christian, good Christian woman, but actually the way she treated Jane Eyre illustrates that she was very hypocritical. She was devoid of truth. She did not follow the word in the gospel. She mistreated Jane. She treated her very, very badly and especially more so because she was a helpless young orphan. Now, the second quotation to remember when it comes to Mrs. Reed's character is when Jane Eyre, before she leaves her lowwood, she stands up to Mrs. Reed. She's really angry and she tells Mrs. Reed, people think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. And this is the first time that Jane Eyre really steps outside of her social position as an orphan, speaks up to Mrs. Reed and criticizes her. And this is a criticism that she does, she does in front of everybody, including Mr. Brocklehurst, and Mrs. Reed never forgives her for saying this. Now, the word level analysis to do for this quotation is, of course, firstly, the oxymoron, the opposite of good versus bad. So, of course, Jane Eyre is telling Mrs. Reed outwardly that she is a hypocrite. She tries to act like she's good, but she's a bad person. The other word level analysis to do is a repetition of the pronoun you. And of course, this illustrates just how Jane really is damning of her auntie and she's telling her that what you are doing and what you've done to me is bad and I'm happy to be going off to Lowood. Now, the next quotation to remember for Mrs. Reed's character is, again, the description of how she raised imperious. She had a raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. And again, here, the Ascendentan, the Ascendentic listing of raised, imperious, despotic illustrates just how evil her nature is. Her appearance really characterizes her as quite evil, very mean spirited, very brutal. Everything that goes against Christian teachings and ultimately, actually, is Jane Eyre that transforms into being far more morally superior whilst Mrs. Reed actually is very morally corrupt and she degrades over time. The other word level analysis to do for Mrs. Reed's character and the quotation to remember is when she is telling Jane when she's quite young. Silence, exclamation mark. This violence is almost repulsive. Now, this is in contrast and of course, this shows that she totally refuses to tolerate Jane even standing up for herself when she's screaming and she's refusing to be put in the red room whilst her three children, John Reed, Eliza and Georgiana, are completely out of control but she doesn't put any type of control on their behavior. So she treats Jane very differently to her children and she really, really mistreats her. Now, the word level analysis you want to do here firstly is exclamatory sentence. Silence, of course here she's being very harsh when she's speaking to a very young child, Jane Eyre. And then the other word level analysis is the superlative adjective most. Remember, superlative adjective means an adjective that shows the most extreme content of something, most, least, best, worst. So in this case, it's a superlative adjective and again here she's really admonishing Jane Eyre. We can really see the hatred seeping through her when she's talking to a young Jane Eyre. The other quotations to remember when it comes to her character and of course this ties into when Jane stood up to her is when Mrs. Reed tells her and confesses to her, now this is when she's dying, she says, I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane. Now here the word level analysis you want to do is alliteration of see, so could and conduct and this illustrates how unforgiving Mrs. Reed is. She holds onto the anger that she had for Jane standing up to her and revealing her as a bad person in front of other people. And it's because of that, that when her uncle, Jane Eyre's uncle asks her to locate and asks her where Jane Eyre is. She tells her that she doesn't know, she's probably dead because this is her revenge. She doesn't want Jane to socially climb at all. The final quotation to remember from Mrs. Reed's character is when Jane reflects that she's died and she states, dying, she must hate me still. And here the word level analysis you want to focus on is the verb hate. Again, this illustrates Mrs. Reed is a cold character, cold all the way to the end. There's no penance, there's no repentance, even when she calls Jane we perhaps as we're reading the novel we think, okay, she's calling Jane maybe to apologize for her conduct. No, Jane gets no such apology. Actually, she reasserts even more firmly when she speaks to Jane that she's dying, that she still hates her. So she's really characterised as a very hateful character. And she's the primary antagonist who really gives Jane a massive challenge in her early years, but also teaches Jane a lot about the virtues and the values of forgiveness. So that's it when it comes to Mrs. Reed's character and the key quotations to remember for her character.