"Mrs. Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me...she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her..." (26).
Jane is describing the attitude her aunt , Mrs. Reed, has toward Jane. Mrs. Reed does not like Jane and feels obligated to care for her only because of her husband's dying wish. Mrs. Reed has Jane sleep in a a small room described as a "closet", has Jane eat apart from the rest of the family, and separates her from Mrs. Reed's own children. Jane is not too broken up about being separated from her cousins though as they are often cruel to her. The childhood of a character named Harry Potter, from his own self-titled series by J.K. Rowling, is very similar to Jane's childhood. Harry lives with his aunt and uncle who were forced to care for him as his parents are dead and he was left on their doorstep as a baby. He is not given a room, he sleeps in the closet underneath the staircase, an area much to small for a child to be living in. Unlike Jane, Harry was allowed to eat meals with the family but these did not always turn out well as in one case he turned his cousin Dudley into a human balloon who then floated out into the sky. Neither did Harry's aunt and uncle send him to school, he stayed at home all day and did chores. Harry was not kept from his cousin Dudley but he did avoid Dudley as, like Jane's cousins, he was very cruel to Harry. Could J.K. Rowling have inadvertently incorporated these depictions of Jane's life into her story?