Throughout Jane Eyre, as Jane herself moves from one physical location to another, the settings in which she finds herself vary markedly. Brontë makes the most of this necessity by carefully arranging those settings to match the differing circumstances Jane finds herself in at each. As Jane grows older and her hopes and dreams change, the settings she finds herself in are perfectly attuned to her state of mind, but her circumstances are always defined by the walls, real and figurative, around her.

As a young girl, she is essentially trapped in Gateshead. This sprawling house is almost her whole world. Her life as a child is sharply delineated by the walls of the house. She is not made to feel wanted within them and continues throughout the novel to associate Gateshead with the emotional trauma of growing up under its "hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart."

Gateshead is, so far as we can tell, a very nice house, though not much of a home. As John Reed delights in reminding her, she is a dependent; she could not and has not contributed in a manner commensurate with their standard of living. She may well be a relation, and likely their peer socially, but the unfortunate circumstances of her mother’s unsanctioned marriage and her father’s lack of wealth leave her vulnerable to this petty tyrant’s whims, especially considering Mrs. Reed’s predisposition to despising Jane. This is simply another circumstance over which she is has no control but which nonetheless shapes her existence.

Jane is, in short, a nine-year-old girl who has grown up in relative comfort physically but who is powerless in the extreme even for a culture that did not invest much power in grown women. Every aspect of life with the walls of Gateshead, as seen through Jane’s eyes, confirms this.

Shortly after we meet Jane, she finds herself even more confined than she suggests that she was prior to the beginning of the novel. Her row with John Reed -- which leaves her bleeding and frightened in the Red Room -- results in her virtual ostracism from the rest of the family. Through no fault of her own, she tells us -- and Jane is a credible narrator -- she is a pariah. The walls of the nursery become her world, not just those of the house. She eats and sleeps there and passes her days without seeming to leave it. Jane is now all but officially a prisoner in her house.

When she finally leaves for Lowood, as she remembers later, it is with a "sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation." Lowood is, physically, as different from Gateshead as would be possible and still provide shelter from the elements. Whereas at Gateshead her physical needs were more than adequately met, while her emotional needs were ignored, Lowood is, for its inmates, an austere place of continual privation. And yet, here Jane finds people who will love her and treat her with respect. Miss Temple and Helen Burns are quite probably the first people to make Jane feel worthwhile since Mr. Reed died.

Lowood is bounded by high walls that sharply define Jane’s world. Except for Sunday services, the girls of Lowood never leave the confines of those walls. At Lowood, Jane learns that, female or not, knowledge is the key to power. By learning, Jane earns greater respect and, such as it was at Lowood, privilege. Eventually, she becomes a teacher there, a position of relative power, all the more so compared to what she left behind at Gateshead.

Jane stays inside the walls of Lowood for eight years. She has learned a great deal but all she finds herself able to hope for, when she does finally decide to leave, is "a new servitude." The idea that she might be free to roam in an unbounded world is not yet part of her experience -- in a sense, it never will be.

Once again, Jane changes setting and circumstance and into a world that is completely new to her experience. Thornfield is in the open country and Jane is free from restrictions on her movements. Jane has always lived within physical walls and even as a teacher at Lowood had to get permission to leave. Jane describes looking our from the leads of Thornfield and wishing for "a power of vision" to see beyond the limits of the valley. She is still confined, in a sense, but now she is living with relative freedom. She is restless and longs for "more... acquaintance with variety of character" that she has access to, but she is also freer than she has ever been.

Jane is an adult but to live she must be employed. Except for the very wealthy, this is the condition of all adults. One is free even while one is not. Jane’s restlessness is a product of idleness relative to her capabilities. She imagines that out there in the "busy world" that she has "heard of but never seen" that life is "quickened with... incident, life, fire, feeling." Now the walls around her are less real, but no less confining. And, as she will discover later, Jane is not equipped to live if utterly free. Thornfield, if it is a prison, has soft shackles.

Jane finally gets to see that "busy world." After Mr. Rochester arrives, Thornfield becomes the first home that Jane has ever felt she had. Nevertheless, she is above being his mistress and leaves Thornfield. What she finds in the world she had heretofore only imagined is that she is ill-equipped to survive in utter freedom. At Thornfield, or even Gateshead, a mistake as simple as leaving her purse on a coach would not have meant she would be utterly destitute. The world outside any walls is not so forgiving. That world is not constituted to allow a woman with no salable skills or money to live and she lacks the knowledge necessary to try. She resolves to live with Nature, to "seek her breast and ask repose," but Want finds her "pale and bare" the very next day. She quickly ends up a common beggar, eating food given to her because "t’ pig doesn’t want it."

Still, Jane cries out to Providence to direct her, Aid to guide her and, it would seem, she is answered. She stumbles upon Moor House and is taken in. Soon she regains her health and is allowed to stay. The companionship of Mary and Diana is perhaps better suited to her intellect and temperament that any she has had before and the walls that she finds herself within are attractive. At Moor House, Jane is exposed to a way of living she had never quite seen before and, having seen the reality of the world she had previously only imagined, she is ready to accept it. Then, as she must do at some point, being who she is, she takes a job as a teacher -- the only skill she has.

She finds another home, and again it suits her prospects. The cottage is "a little room with white-washed walls and a sanded floor" and a bed to sleep in. The coziness, yet simplicity of the arrangement matches the eventual offer from St. John to marry him and join him in his mission. These are a set of walls she understands and feels comfortable within. However, just as she could not abandon her sense of self to be a mistress to Mr. Rochester, neither can she settle for a marriage to St. John that does not appeal to her.

In the end, she returns to Mr. Rochester and, she thinks, to the walls that suit her best. Only the circumstances have changed. With Mr. Eyre of Madeira’s death, Jane is wealthy for the first time in her own right. When she gets there, she discovers that Thornfield has burned to the ground and Mrs. Rochester has died. All the walls that had confined her are gone. She has moved beyond the walls and can be the person that she truly is.