Mrs. Reed

John Reed is Jane Eyre's aunt by marriage, the woman to whose care Jane Eyre was entrusted as a small orphan, yet whose guardianship was marked by neglect, coldness, and active cruelty. She is a woman of means and respectable social standing, living at Gateshead, yet her wealth brings her no capacity for kindness or generosity of spirit. Her dislike of Jane Eyre is rooted in old family resentments—Jane Eyre's mother was her husband's beloved sister, whom she resented, and she transferred that resentment to the helpless orphan child left in her charge. John Reed's nature is fundamentally cold and unforgiving; she derives no pleasure from believing others good, only mortification from acknowledging their worth. Even when facing her own mortality and physical decline, she cannot find it within herself to extend kindness or reconciliation to the young woman who comes to nurse her in her final illness.