Jane Eyre
Eliza Reed
The austere cousin
Jane's stern, orderly cousin at Gateshead, the opposite of her vain sister.
Eliza is the elder Reed daughter, rigid, calculating and unsentimental. She runs her life by a strict schedule and values order. She and her sister Georgiana quarrel often.
She is a contrast to Georgiana. Where one is vain and idle, the other is severe and devout. Both look at Jane with little warmth, and neither seems to feel any guilt about how she is treated. Eliza keeps strictly to her own ideas of order and duty, and she has no softness to spare.
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Eliza is among the Reed children in the opening scenes at Gateshead and is present when Mrs. Reed is dying. She does not play a large role in the story.
Her role is to show a different kind of coldness in the household that raised Jane: not the open cruelty of John, but a stiff, joyless discipline that leaves no room for affection. She stands for the kind of life Jane is glad to leave behind.
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