This was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door.
Chapter 15 · Narrator
Context
Jane is woken in the night by an eerie laugh outside her bedroom door. She describes the sound in detail.
Analysis
The adjective 'demoniac' anchors the laugh in the realm of the supernatural, but the following descriptors—'low, suppressed, and deep'—are acoustic details that ground it in physical reality. The alliteration of 'd' sounds ('demoniac,' 'deep,' 'door') adds a percussive menace. Brontë is doubling the laugh: it is both Gothic set-piece and real evidence of Bertha's presence, and Jane's inability to reconcile these interpretations mirrors the reader's experience of the novel itself—realism haunted by the uncanny.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Bertha's laughter functions as the return of what Thornfield's polite surfaces repress—it is domestic Gothic, the sound of a woman's fury breaking through the walls meant to contain her, and it announces that the house's secrets will not stay hidden.