Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.
Chapter 2 · Narrator
Context
Jane explains why the red-room is kept vacant: Mr. Reed died in this room nine years earlier, and since his body was carried out, the chamber has been treated as a kind of shrine that people avoid entering.
Analysis
Brontë organizes the sentence as a chronological sequence—'breathed his last,' 'lay in state,' 'coffin was borne'—that walks the reader through the stages of death and removal, making the room a container of linear time that stopped nine years ago. The final phrase personifies the room itself: 'a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it,' as if the atmosphere has become an active agent keeping people out, replacing human decisions with something closer to taboo.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that the red-room functions as a space where past trauma has solidified into present power—the language shows how Mr. Reed's death has been converted into an ongoing force that shapes the household, and Jane is now being locked inside that frozen past.