The Eyre Hangs Thick With Suspense If one were to make a list of the most crucial parts of literature and rank them from most to least important, suspense would be very close to the top of the list. Suspense is the path that many authors of any type of narrative use in order to keep their audiences not only engaged but excited to turn each page. Since it is so common, one could think that suspense would be easy to manufacture. In truth, creating effective suspense is on of the most difficult feats to achieve in writing. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, suspense is used throughout the piece to guide and intrigue the reader. This is shown in Chapter Two through the use of a carefully crafted setting, a strategic pacing of information, and the…show more content… Brontë did not neglect this in the slightest. In fact, she takes the first five imagery-packed paragraphs to construct the setting in which Jane would reside. With the most general setting addressed first, there is the weather outside. The “beating rain” and “howling wind” that Jane describes creates a rather hostile atmosphere in which Jane must exist. If pathetic fallacy is used to assess the weather, one can conclude that the storm foretells an event that matches the violence of the outside. This expectation of an adverse effect towards Jane caused by the weather or even just signified by the weather has the reader on alert, playing into the “dark and stormy night” paradigm. None of the audience is alarmed necessarily, but the framework for suspense is set in the setting. The inhospitable weather was not the only object that contributed to the fearful mood, as the area of the mansion that Jane stays in spares no niceties for her. The room could be described as a sea of red, featuring “massive pillars of mahogany,” “curtains of deep red,” and a “bed covered in crimson cloth.” The only…show more content… Pacing in literature is widely regarded as being the tempo or rhythm at which the author gives information to the reader. Brontë wanted to convey three main bodies of information in this segment of the passage. There was the setting of the red room, the reflection upon the death of Mr. Reed, and the perceived peril which befalls Jane. Accompanying these three bodies of information is their own respective pacing. Firstly, there is the tempo of the description of the setting. The deluge of information the reader receives in the first five paragraphs is immense and might take the reader a couple of re-reads in order to fully imagine the “Red Room” in its entirety. Every single sentence in that span of text adds another layer of knowledge that the audience can then use as a reference to conceptualize Jane’s surroundings. The pacing of information about Mr. Reed’s death pales in comparison to the maelstrom of Jane’s observations of the red-room. Said material comes a bit slowly and is broken up by other paragraphs of narration, oftentimes interrupted by more details concerning the setting. Any suspense that can be drawn from Mr. Reed’s death comes from the fact that the reader does not know what killed him and why Mr. Reed is particularly significant besides having died in the red-room. More
