“God will punish her. He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go?  Come, Bessie, let us leave her.  Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, for if you don’t repent, something bad might come down the chimney and fetch you away.”  They left, shutting the door, and locking it behind them. 

The red-room was one of the largest and grandest bedrooms in the mansion, yet very seldom slept in. The bed rested on massive pillars of mahogany and was hung with heavy red curtains. The two large windows had blinds that were always drawn down; the carpet was red; the walls were a soft pink. A cushiony easy chair was white, like a pale throne.  The room was chilly because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because it was remote from the rest of the house; it was solemn, because it was so seldom entered.  The secret of the red-room, the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur, was this – here, in this chamber, my uncle, Mr. Reed, breathed his last breath.  Here his coffin was carried by the undertakers’ men.   And since that day, nine years ago, a sense of dreary respect had kept visitors away.  My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble fireplace. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door.  When I dared to move, I got up and went to see.  Alas, yes. No jail was ever more secure.

Returning to my seat, I passed by the mirror. I glanced at it, and the strange little girl gazing back at me, with a white face and arms and glittering eyes of fear, had the effect of a real ghost. It was like one of the tiny phantoms, half-fairy, half-imp, that Bessie’s evening stories described as coming out of the moors. I returned to my stool.

Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre, 1847