My name is Jane Eyre, and I was an orphan in my aunt's house at Gateshead. Mrs Reed fed me and never liked me. Her son John threw a book at my head one November afternoon, and when I struck back, the servants carried me upstairs to the red room. That was the room where my uncle had died. I sat in the cold red light until I believed a ghost had come, and I screamed, and nobody opened the door. After that illness the apothecary asked whether I would like to go to school. I said yes with my whole heart. My aunt told the schoolmaster that I was a liar, and she sent me away in January without a single kind word.