When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole's laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh.
Chapter 12 · Narrator
Context
While alone on the third floor, Jane often hears Grace Poole's distinctive laugh echoing through Thornfield—the same unsettling sound she first heard earlier and cannot explain.
Analysis
The repetition 'the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha!' mimics the laugh's eerie regularity, as if it's mechanical rather than human. By breaking the laugh into syllables—'ha! ha!'—Brontë isolates and estranges it, making the reader hear it as Jane does: not as ordinary amusement but as something off, lacking the warmth laughter usually conveys. Calling the murmurs 'stranger than her laugh' hints that the laugh itself is a cover or distraction from something worse.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Brontë plants auditory clues that unsettle the domestic realism of Thornfield—the laugh's strange rhythmic quality makes it feel more like a Gothic intrusion than a servant's idle noise, preparing readers to suspect the house hides something.