Key Quote
“"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day"”
Jane Eyre (narrator) · Chapter 1 (Opening Line)
Focus: “no possibility”
The novel's opening line establishes a world defined by restriction: freedom is not merely absent but impossible, confined by weather, social position, and adult authority.
Technique 1 — NEGATIVE OPENING / ATMOSPHERIC PATHETIC FALLACY
The novel begins with negation: not action but its impossibility. The opening word 'There' is impersonal and empty — the sentence starts from nothing. This negative opening establishes the novel's emotional key: Jane's world is defined by what she CANNOT do. The weather functions as pathetic fallacy (nature reflecting human emotion): the rain and cold that prevent the walk mirror Jane's emotional confinement within the Reed household.
The phrase 'no possibility' is stronger than 'we could not' — it removes even the CHANCE of a walk. The modal impossibility (complete removal of possibility) is existential: Jane lives in a world where freedom is not just denied but unimaginable. The negation operates at the level of possibility itself, not merely at the level of action.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
Jane stagnates — she is literally unable to move forward (no walk) and metaphorically unable to develop (confined by the Reeds). The opening line is pure stagnation: no progress is possible. But this enforced stillness is also the condition from which the entire novel's movement springs — Jane's trajectory from 'no possibility' to 'Reader, I married him' is the journey from stagnation to self-determination.
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Technique 2 — IN MEDIAS RES — THE ORDINARY START
Unlike Gothic novels that begin with dramatic events, *Jane Eyre* opens with the mundane (ordinary, everyday): weather and walks. This anti-Gothic opening creates intimacy through familiarity — every reader has experienced a day too wet for walking. Brontë begins from the ordinary to make extraordinary claims about the inner life: even the most restricted external existence can contain passionate, revolutionary consciousness.
The impersonal 'There was' construction omits any human subject — 'there was' no possibility, as if the restriction comes from the universe itself rather than from specific people. This grammatical choice reflects Jane's childhood experience: when you are powerless, restrictions feel like natural laws rather than human decisions. The opening sentence captures the child's perspective: the world simply IS this way.
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Context (AO3)
WOMEN & WALKING
For Victorian women, walking was one of the few socially acceptable forms of independent movement — yet it required permission, accompaniment, and appropriate conditions. Even this minimal freedom is denied to Jane, reflecting the layers of restriction placed on women's physical autonomy.
THE RED ROOM
The opening's theme of confinement culminates in Jane's imprisonment in the Red Room — the room where her uncle died. This progression from restricted walking to literal imprisonment charts escalating control over the female body in Victorian domestic space.
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WOW — THE MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC (Gilbert & Gubar)
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic argues that 19th-century women writers expressed their rage at patriarchal confinement through coded literary strategies — creating 'madwomen' who embody the anger the author herself could not openly express. The opening line's emphasis on confinement establishes the novel's central concern: female restriction. Bertha Mason — Rochester's first wife, literally locked in the attic — is the novel's ultimate 'madwoman,' embodying the violence that confinement produces. Gilbert and Gubar read Bertha as Jane's dark double: the rage and passion that Jane must suppress to survive as a respectable Victorian woman. The novel's opening — 'no possibility' — thus foreshadows not only Jane's journey but Bertha's existence: a woman for whom ALL possibility has been destroyed, leaving only madness and fire.
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