FROM ELIZABETH GASKELL, THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE ¨ (London, 1857)

I do not know whether Miss Branwell taught her nieces anything besides sewing, and the household arts in which Charlotte afterwards was such an adept. Their regular lessons were said to their father; and they were always in the habit of picking up an immense amount of miscellaneous information for themselves. But a year or so before this time, a school had been begun in the North of England for the daughters of clergymen. The place was Cowan Bridge, a small hamlet on the coach-road between Leeds and Kendal, and thus easy of access from Haworth, as the coach ran daily, and one of its stages was at Keighley. The yearly expense for each pupil (according to the entrance-rules given in the Report for 1842, and I believe they had not been increased since the establishment of the school in 1823) was as follows:—

Rule 1. “The terms for clothing, lodging, boarding, and educating, are £14 a year; half to be paid in advance, when the pupils are sent; and also £1 entrance-money, for the use of books, etc. The system of education comprehends history, geography, the use of the globes, grammar, writing and arithmetic, all kinds of needle-work, and the nicer kinds of household work— such as getting up fine linen, ironing, etc. If accomplishments are required, an additional charge of three pounds a year is made for music or drawing, each.”...

Rule 3rd requests that the friends [those sending the child to school, generally her parents] will state the line of education desired in the case of every pupil, having a regard to her future prospects.

Rule 4th states the clothing and toilette articles which a girl is expected to bring with her; and thus concludes: “The pupils all appear in the same dress. They wear plain straw cottage bonnets; in summer white frocks on Sundays, and nankeen on other days; in winter, purple stuff frocks, and purple cloth cloaks. For the sake of uniformity, therefore, they are required to bring £3 in lieu of frocks, pelisse, bonnet, tippet, and frills; making the whole sum which each pupil brings with her to the school— £7 half-year in advance. £1 entrance for books. £1 entrance for clothes.”

The 8th rule is,—“All letters and parcels are inspected by the superintendent”; but this is a very prevalent regulation in all young ladies’ schools, where I think it is generally understood that the schoolmistress may exercise this privilege, although it is certainly unwise in her to insist too frequently upon it.

There is nothing at all remarkable in any of the other regulations, a copy of which was doubtless in Mr. Bronte ¨ ’s hands when he formed the determination to send his daughters to Cowan Bridge School; and he accordingly took Maria and Elizabeth thither in July 1824.... Miss [Charlotte] Bronte ¨ more than once said to me, that she should not have written what she did of Lowood in Jane Eyre, if she had thought the place would have been so immediately identified with Cowan Bridge, although there was not a word in her account of the institution but what was true at the time when she knew it; she also said that she had not considered it necessary in a work of fiction, to state every particular with the impartiality that might be required in a court of justice, nor to seek out motives, and make allowances for human failings, as she might have done if dispassionately analyzing the conduct of those who had the superintendence of the institution. I believe she herself would have been glad of an opportunity to correct the over-strong impression which was made upon the public mind by her vivid picture, though even she, suffering her whole life long both in heart and body from the consequences of what happened there, might have been apt, to the last, to take her deep belief in facts for the facts themselves— her conception of truth for the absolute truth. In some of the notices of the previous editions of this work, it is assumed that I derived the greater part of my information with regard to her sojourn at Cowan Bridge from Charlotte Bronte ¨ herself. I never heard her speak of the place but once, and that was on the second day of my acquaintance with her. A little child on that occasion expressed some reluctance to finish eating his piece of bread at dinner; and she, stooping down and addressing him in a low voice, told him how thankful she would have been at his age for a piece of bread; and when we— though I am not sure if I myself spoke— asked her some question as to the occasion she alluded to, she replied with reserve and hesitation, evidently shying away from what she imagined might lead to too much conversation on one of her books. She spoke of the oatcake at Cowan Bridge (the clap-bread of Westmoreland) as being different to the leaven-raised oatcake of Yorkshire, and of her childish distaste for it. Someone present made an allusion to a similar childish dislike in the true tale of ‘The terrible knitters o’Dent’ given in Southey’s Common-place Book; and she smiled faintly that the food itself was spoilt by the dirty carelessness of the cook, so that she and her sisters disliked their meals exceedingly; and she named her relief and gladness when the doctor condemned the meat, and spoke of having seen him spit it out. These are all the details I ever heard from her. She so avoided particularizing, that I think Mr. Carus Wilson’s name never passed between us.

I do not doubt the general accuracy of my informants— of those who have given, and solemnly repeated the details that follow— but it is only just to Miss Bronte ¨ to say that I have stated above pretty nearly all that I ever heard on the subject from her. A clergyman living near Kirby Lonsdale, the Reverend William Carus Wilson, was the prime mover in the establishment of this school. He was an energetic man, sparing no labour for the accomplishment of his ends. He saw that it was an extremely difficult task for clergymen with limited incomes to provide for the education of their children; and he devised a scheme, by which a certain sum was raised annually by subscription, to complete the amount required to furnish a solid and sufficient English education, for which the parent’s payment of £14 a year would not have been sufficient. Indeed, that made by the parents was considered to be exclusively appropriated to the expenses of lodging and boarding, and the education provided for by the subscriptions. Twelve trustees were appointed; Mr. Wilson being not only a trustee, but the treasurer and secretary; in fact, taking most of the business arrangements upon himself; a responsibility which appropriately fell to him, as he lived nearer the school than anyone else who was interested in it. So his character for prudence and judgment was to a certain degree implicated in the success or failure of Cowan Bridge School; and the working of it was for many years the great object and interest of his life. But he was apparently unacquainted with the prime element in good administration— seeking out thoroughly competent persons to fill each department, and then making them responsible for, and judging them by, the result, without perpetual interference with the detail. So great was the amount of good which Mr. Wilson did, by his constant, unwearied superintendence, that I cannot help feeling sorry that, in his old age and declining health, the errors which he was believed to have committed, should have been brought up against him in a form which received such wonderful force from the touch of Miss Bronte ¨ ’s great genius. No doubt whatever can be entertained of the deep interest which he felt in the success of the school. As I write, I have before me his last words on giving up the secretaryship in 1850: he speaks of the “withdrawal, from declining health, of an eye, which, at all events, has loved to watch over the schools with an honest and anxious interest”;—and again he adds, “that he resigns, therefore, with a desire to be thankful for all that God has been pleased to accomplish through his instrumentality (the infirmities and unworthinesses of which he deeply feels and deplores).” Cowan Bridge is a cluster of some six or seven cottages, gathered together at both ends of a bridge, over which the high road from Leeds to Kendal crosses a little stream, called the Leek. This high road is nearly disused now; but formerly, when the buyers from the West Riding manufacturing districts had frequent occasion to go up into the North to purchase the wool of the Westmoreland and Cumberland farmers, it was doubtless much traveled; and perhaps the hamlet of Cowan Bridge had a more prosperous look than it bears at present. It is prettily situated; just where the Leek-fells swoop into the plain; and by the course of the beck alder-trees and willows and hazel bushes grow. The current of the stream is interrupted by broken pieces of grey rock; and the waters flow over a bed of large round white pebbles, which a flood heaves up and moves on either side out of its impetuous way till in some parts they almost form a wall. By the side of the little, shallow, sparkling, vigorous Leek, run long pasture fields, of the fine short grass common in high land; for though Cowan Bridge is situated on a plain, it is a plain from which there is many a fall and long descent before you and the Leek reach the valley of the Lune. I can hardly understand how the schools there came to be so unhealthy; the air all round about was so sweet and thyme-scented, when I visited it last summer. But at this day, every one knows that the site of a building intended for numbers should be chosen with far greater care than that of a private dwelling, from the tendency to illness, both infectious and otherwise, produced by the congregation of people in close proximity. The house is still remaining that formed part of that occupied by the school. It is a long, bow-windowed cottage, now divided into two dwellings. It stands facing the Leek, between which and it intervenes a space, about seventy yards deep, that was once the school garden. This original house was an old dwelling of the Picard family, which they had inhabited for two generations. They sold it for school purposes, and an additional building was erected, running at right angles from the older part. This new part was devoted expressly to school-rooms, dormitories, etc.... The present cottage was, at the time of which I write, occupied by the teacher’s rooms, the dining-room and kitchens, and some smaller bedrooms....The other end forms a cottage, with the low ceilings and stone floors of a hundred years ago; the windows do not open freely and widely; and the passage upstairs, leading to the bedrooms, is narrow and tortuous: altogether, smells would linger about the house, and damp cling to it. But sanitary matters were little understood thirty years ago; and it was a great thing to get a roomy building close to the high road, and not too far from the habitation of Mr. Wilson, the originator of the educational scheme. There was much need of such an institution; numbers of ill-paid clergymen hailed the prospect with joy, and eagerly put down the names of their children as pupils when the establishment should be ready to receive them. Mr. Wilson was, no doubt, pleased by the impatience with which the realization of his idea was anticipated, and opened the school with less than a hundred pounds in hand, and with pupils, the number of whom varies according to different accounts: Mr. W. W. Carus Wilson, the son of the founder, giving it as seventy; while Mr. Shepheard, the son-in-law, states it to have been only sixteen. Mr. Wilson felt, most probably, that the responsibility of the whole plan rested upon him. The payment made by the parents was barely enough for food and lodging; the subscriptions did not flow very freely into an untried scheme; and great economy was necessary in all the domestic arrangements. He determined to enforce this by frequent personal inspection, carried perhaps to an unnecessary extent, and leading occasionally to a meddling with little matters, which had sometimes had the effect of producing irritation of feeling. Yet, although there was economy in providing for the household, there does not appear to have been any parsimony. The meat, flour, milk, etc., were contracted for, but were of very fair quality; and the dietary, which has been shown to me in manuscript, was neither bad nor unwholesome; nor, on the whole, was it wanting in variety. Oatmeal porridge for breakfast; a piece of oatcake for those who required luncheon; baked and boiled beef, and mutton, potato-pie, and plain homely puddings of different kinds for dinner. At five o’clock, bread and milk for the younger ones; and one piece of bread (this was the only time at which the food was limited) for the elder pupils, who sat up till a later meal of the same description. Mr. Wilson himself ordered in the food, and was anxious that it should be of good quality. But the cook, who had much of his confidence, and against whom for a long time no one durst utter a complaint, was careless, dirty, and wasteful. To some children oatmeal porridge is distasteful, and consequently unwholesome, even when properly made; at Cowen Bridge School it was too often sent up, not merely burnt, but with offensive fragments of other substances discoverable in it. The beef, that should have been carefully salted before it was dressed, had often become tainted from neglect; and girls, who were schoolfellows with the Bronte ¨ s, during the reign of the cook of whom I am speaking, tell me that the house seemed to be pervaded, morning, noon, and night, by the odour of rancid fat that steamed out of the oven in which much of their food was prepared. There was the same carelessness in making the puddings; one of those ordered was rice boiled in water, and eaten with a sauce of treacle and sugar; but it was often uneatable, because the water had been taken out of the rain tub, and was strongly impregnated with the dust lodging on the roof, whence it had trickled down into the old wooden cask, which also added its own flavour to that of the original rain water. The milk, too, was often ‘bingy,’ to use a country expression for a kind of taint that is far worse than sourness, and suggests the idea that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk pans, rather than by the heat of the weather. On Saturdays a kind of pie, or mixture of potatoes and meat, was served up, which was made of all the fragments accumulated during the week. Scraps of meat from a dirty and disorderly larder could never be very appetizing; and I believe that this dinner was more loathed than any in the early days of Cowan Bridge School. One may fancy how repulsive such fare would be to children whose appetites were small, and who had been accustomed to food, far simpler perhaps, but prepared with a delicate cleanliness that made it both tempting and wholesome. At many a meal the little Bronte ¨ s went without food, although craving with hunger. They were not strong when they came, having only just recovered from a complication of measles and whoopingcough— indeed, I suspect they had scarcely recovered, for there was some consultation on the part of the school authorities whether Maria and Elizabeth should be received or not, in July 1824. Mr. Bronte ¨ came again, in the September of that year, bringing with him Charlotte and Emily to be admitted as pupils. It appears strange that Mr. Wilson should not have been informed by the teachers of the way in which the food was served up; but we must remember that the cook had been known for some time to the Wilson family, while the teachers were brought together for an entirely different work— that of education. They were expressly given to understand that such was their department; the buying in and management of the provisions rested with Mr. Wilson and the cook. The teachers would, of course, be unwilling to lay any complaints on the subject before him. There was another trial of health common to all the girls. The path from Cowan Bridge to Tunstall Church, where Mr. Wilson preached, and where they all attended on the Sunday, is more than two miles in length, and goes sweeping along the rise and fall of the unsheltered country in a way to make it a fresh and exhilarating walk in summer, but a bitter cold one in winter, especially to children like the delicate little Bronte ¨ s, whose thin blood flowed languidly in consequence of their feeble appetites rejecting the food prepared for them, and thus inducing a halfstarved condition. The church was not warmed, there being no means for this purpose. It stands in the midst of fields, and the damp mist must have gathered round the walls, and crept in at the windows. The girls took their cold dinner with them, and ate it between the services, in a chamber over the entrance, opening out of the former galleries. The arrangements for this day were peculiarly trying to delicate children, particularly to those who were spiritless and longing for home, as poor Maria Bronte ¨ must have been; for her ill health was increasing, and the old cough, the remains of the whooping-cough, lingered about her. She was far superior in mind to any of her playfellows and companions, and was lonely amongst them from that very cause; and yet she had faults so annoying that she was in constant disgrace with her teachers, and an object of merciless dislike to one of them, who is depicted as “Miss Scatcherd” in Jane Eyre, and whose real name I will be merciful enough not to disclose. I need hardly say that Helen Burns is as exact a transcript of Maria Bronte ¨ as Charlotte’s wonderful power of reproducing character could give. Her heart, to the latest day on which we met, still beat with unavailing indignation at the worrying and the cruelty to which her gentle, patient, dying sister had been subjected by this woman. Not a word of that part of Jane Eyre but is a literal repetition of scenes between the pupil and the teacher. Those who had been pupils at the same time knew who must have written the book from the force with which Helen Burns’s sufferings are described. They had, before that, recognized the description of the sweet dignity and benevolence of Miss Temple as only a just tribute to the merits of one whom all that knew her appear to hold in honour; but when Miss Scatcherd was held up to opprobrium they also recognized in the writer of Jane Eyre an unconsciously avenging sister of the sufferer. One of their fellow-pupils, among other statements even worse, gives me the following:—the dormitory in which Maria slept was a long room, holding a row of narrow little beds on each side, occupied by the pupils; and at the end of this dormitory there was a small bedchamber opening out of it, appropriated to the use of Miss Scatcherd. Maria’s bed stood nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had become so seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side (the sore from which was not perfectly healed), when the getting-up bell was heard poor Maria moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she might stop in bed; and some of the girls urged her to do so, and said they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But Miss Scatcherd was close at hand and would have to be faced before Miss Temple’s kind thoughtfulness could interfere; so the sick child began to dress, shivering with cold, as, without leaving her bed, she slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs (my informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flushed out undying indignation). Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room, and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which the blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out into the middle of the floor, abusing her all the time for dirty and untidy habits. There she left her. My informant says Maria hardly spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm; but, in slow, trembling movements, with many a pause, she went downstairs at last— and was punished for being late. Anyone may fancy how such an event as this would rankle in Charlotte’s mind. I only wonder that she did not remonstrate against her father’s decision to send her and Emily back to Cowan Bridge, after Maria’s and Elizabeth’s deaths. But frequently children are unconscious of the effect which some of their simple revelations would have in altering the opinions entertained by their friends of the persons placed around them. Besides, Charlotte’s earnest vigorous mind saw, at an unusually early age, the immense importance of education, as furnishing her with tools which she had the strength and the will to wield, and she would be aware that the Cowan Bridge education was, in many points, the best that her father could provide for her.

Before Maria Bronte ¨ ’s death, that low fever broke out in the spring of 1825, which is spoken of in Jane Eyre. Mr. Wilson was extremely alarmed at the first symptoms of this. He went to a kind, motherly woman, who had had some connection with the school— as laundress, I believe— and asked her to come and tell him what was the matter with them. She made herself ready, and drove with him in his gig. When she entered the school-room, she saw from twelve to fifteen girls lying about; some resting their aching heads on the table, others on the ground; all heavy-eyed, flushed, indifferent, and weary, with pains in every limb. Some peculiar odour, she says, made her recognize that they were sickening from “the fever”; and she told Mr. Wilson so, and that she could not stay there for fear of conveying the infection to her own children; but he half commanded and half entreated her to remain and nurse them, and finally mounted his gig and drove away, while she was still urging that she must return to her own house, and to her domestic duties, for which she had provided no substitute. However, when she was left in this unceremonious manner, she determined to make the best of it; and a most efficient nurse she proved, although, as she says, it was a dreary time. Mr. Wilson supplied everything ordered by the doctors, of the best quality in the most liberal manner; the invalids were attended by Dr. Batty, a very clever surgeon in Kirby, who had had the medical superintendence of the establishment from the beginning, and who afterwards became Mr. Wilson’s brother-in-law. I have heard from two witnesses besides Charlotte Bronte ¨ , that Dr. Batty condemned the preparation of the food by the expressive action of spitting out a portion of it. He himself, it is but fair to say, does not remember this circumstance, nor does he speak of the fever itself as either alarming or dangerous. About forty of the girls suffered from this, but none of them died at Cowan Bridge, though one died at her own home, sinking under the state of health which followed it. None of the Bronte ¨ s had the fever. But the same causes, which affected the health of the other pupils through typhus, told more slowly, but not less surely, upon their constitutions. The principal of these causes was the food.


The bad management of the cook was chiefly to be blamed for this; she was dismissed, and the woman who had been forced against her will to serve as head nurse, took the place of housekeeper; and henceforward the food was so well prepared that no one could ever reasonably complain of it.... All this occurred during the first two years of the establishment, and in estimating its effect upon the character of Charlotte Bronte ¨ , we must remember that she was a sensitive, thoughtful child, capable of reflecting deeply, if not of analyzing truly; and peculiarly susceptible, as are all delicate and sickly children, to painful impressions. What the healthy suffer from but momentarily and then forget, those who are ailing brood over involuntarily and remember long,—perhaps with no resentment, but simply as a piece of suffering that has been stamped into their very life. The pictures, ideas, and conceptions of character received into the mind of the child of eight years old were destined to be reproduced in fiery words a quarter of a century afterwards. She saw but one side of Mr Wilson’s character; and many of those who knew him at that time assure me of the fidelity with which this is represented, while at the same time they regret that the delineation should have obliterated, as it were, nearly all that was noble or conscientious.... In the spring of [1825] Maria became so rapidly worse that Mr. Bronte ¨ was sent for. He had not previously been aware of her illness, and the condition in which he found her was a terrible shock to him. He took her home by the Leeds coach, the girls crowding out into the road to follow her with their eyes over the bridge, past the cottages, and then out of sight for ever. She died a very few days after her arrival at home. Perhaps the news of her death falling suddenly into the life of which her patient existence had formed a part, only a week or so before, made those who remained at Cowan Bridge look with more anxiety on Elizabeth’s symptoms, which also turned out to be consumptive. She was sent home in charge of a confidential servant of the establishment; and she, too, died in the early summer of that year. Charlotte was thus suddenly called into the responsibilities of eldest sister in a motherless family. She remembered how anxiously her dear sister Maria had striven, in her grave, earnest way, to be a tender helper and a counselor to them all; and the duties that now fell upon her seemed almost like a legacy from the gentle little sufferer so lately dead. Both Charlotte and Emily returned to school after the Midsummer holidays in this fatal year. But before the next winter it was thought desirable to advise their removal, as it was evident that the damp situation of the house at Cowen Bridge did not suit their health.” (47– 61)

Teachman, Debra. Understanding Jane Eyre : A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources & Historical Documents.
Westport, CT, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2001. p 55.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/kdupg/Doc?id=10005612&ppg=73
Copyright © 2001. Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

NATURE VERSUS CIVILIZATION

Civilized society in Jane Eyre is the place in which women are not free to express their feelings and experience their desires without risking being declared mad. And yet Nature dictates, so Bronte ¨ seems to say, that women will have the same feelings, dreams, and needs for activity that men have. To underscore this point, the novel associates images of nature with ideas and events that place Jane beyond the bounds of acceptable feminine behavior. Images of nature in general and the moon in particular occur on several occasions when Jane experiences more emotion than a respectable Victorian woman should. The first association of moonlight with Jane’s excesses of emotion occurs when she is locked in the red room at Gateshead. There, as she becomes more and more frightened of the possibility that her uncle’s ghost will visit, she sees, or imagines seeing, a streak of light move across the wall. “Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred: while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head” (13). Jane never finds out precisely what caused the light, but her association of it with the natural light of the moon introduces the idea of using images of nature to indicate feelings that are more in tune with nature than with societal expectations. Another image of moonlight follows Jane’s emotional speech about her need for more excitement and activity than her life has thus far provided. After she comes down from the roof, she goes for a walk under “the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily” (132). While walking under this moon, she hears the beat of horse’s hooves and sees, suddenly coming into view, a large dog followed by a horse and rider. In this moment of passionate otherworldliness, she meets Mr. Rochester, her future husband, for the first time. It is not moonlight, but thunder and lightning that accompany Jane’s excess of emotion when Mr. Rochester proposes marriage. Her joy is as overwhelming as the storm itself, but the storm is also destructive: lightning strikes the large horse-chestnut tree, causing it to split in two. Mr. Rochester’s proposal is likewise destructive. He asks Jane to marry him because of his passion for her, but he knows that he cannot be truly married to her in the eyes of the church or the law. The divided tree represents his divided loyalties, “blasted” by the violence of his passion. When Jane leaves Thornfield, with no friend to go to and no job to support her needs, she decides that Nature, “the universal Mother,” is now her only friend (394). She sees Nature as “benign and good” and believes that she will protect her in her time of need (394). This “mother,” she believes, “would lodge me without money and without price” (394). She sleeps that night in the bosom of her mother, Nature, trusting her more than she has ever been able to trust mankind to take care of her. In the light of day, however, Jane realizes that Nature cannot and will not provide for all her needs. She must find a way to survive that acknowledges the civilized world of humanity as well as Nature. Thus, Jane goes back into society to look for a means of supporting herself. The final image of moonlight associated with extremes of emotion for Jane comes when, having almost given in to St. John’s demands to marry him, she hears Rochester’s voice calling to her, seemingly from across a mysterious void. Her feelings intensely affected, she notices that “the room was full of moonlight” (513). Moonlight, associated in folk traditions with the emotional depths of the soul, here suggests an almost supernatural connection with Jane’s deepest feelings for Rochester. Such depth of feeling was not something that a proper Victorian lady could admit to. In fact, having such depth of feeling was considered to be a sin against propriety for such a lady. Much of the criticism directed at the novel when it was first published was directed at Jane’s feeling and expressing such depth of emotion. Charlotte Bronte ¨ , in trying to create a strong female character who feels “just as men feel,” creates a novel that was considered downright dangerous by some readers, but with which multitudes of Victorian women could identify and approve (130).

THE WOMEN IN JANE’S LIFE

Jane Eyre believes in her right to be a full and complete human being, to be treated as the equal of any other human being in terms of basic human rights. In the twenty-first century, this idea is commonplace. In Charlotte Bronte ¨ ’s time, however, it was quite revolutionary. Women were considered to be subordinate to men according to the laws of both God and Nature. Under the law, married women were unable to own property in their own name; they were not permitted to sue in their name or even to have legal rights to their own children. They were legally the property of their husbands, who could treat them as well or as poorly as they chose. A respectable woman was expected never to fall in love, but only to allow herself to grow to love the man she marries out of gratitude for his love of her. Respectable women were expected to service their husbands’ needs sexually and to give them children (preferably at least one son), but never to enjoy themselves sexually. To enjoy the pleasures of the body was considered coarse and disreputable for a Victorian woman. Nor were women expected to have a love of intellectual activity. In fact, most nineteenth-century doctors recommended against women receiving a classical education or reading in too much depth, claiming that it would make them “unwomanly.” Intellectual pursuits would, so it was believed, redirect a woman’s vital energies from the production of children and the maternal instincts. As a result, it was believed that her uterus and ovaries would atrophy, and she would not only be unable to have and/or to nurture children (the role a Victorian woman was supposedly born to play), but she would begin to act and look more like a man than a woman. For a woman like Jane Eyre, who felt and thought so deeply, such restrictions on feeling passion and thinking philosophical thoughts would be wholly intolerable.

In Jane Eyre ,Charlotte Bronte ¨ presents several women who represent one or another aspect of the early Victorian woman. Some coincide with the ideal of the “angel in the house,” a phrase coined by Coventry Patmore to describe the ideal Victorian lady. Others represent the shadow side of the Victorian woman, the energies and demeanors that must remain repressed if one is to be considered an ideal, or even respectable, lady. Not one of these singlefaceted individuals lives a fully productive or satisfying life. Only when all the qualities are combined and integrated into a single individual, the novel seems to say, can a truly satisfactory life result.

Helen Burns represents the extreme of amiability and selfdeprecation. She is the “good girl” who never has a bad word to say against anyone except herself. She is willing to accept any and all criticism of herself, believing that she is, in fact, a very slatternly and willful girl. She undergoes painful corporal punishment from Miss Scatcherd without a protest or a whimper, certain that she must endure the punishment in order to learn the lessons she is supposed to learn in life. She is continually shamed in front of the other students, often as punishment for circumstances beyond her control, and she takes her punishment in stride, as her due. Jane recognizes Helen’s essential goodness, but detests the fact that Helen refuses to stand up for herself. Such denial of one’s essential selfhood is beyond Jane’s understanding. It is also, the novel would seem to imply, something that cannot effectively be maintained for an entire lifetime. Helen dies young, seemingly too good for this world.

Blanche Ingram is another single-faceted individual in the novel, representing the antithesis of Jane in terms of wealth and beauty. Blanche is, outwardly, the perfect marital partner for Mr. Rochester. She is a dark beauty, solid and strong, a good horsewoman, and apparently a good match for him physically. She is also an heiress. She is born into his social class and would be able to bring her own fortune to his estate. She is, thus, exactly what a man in Mr. Rochester’s position is expected to desire in a mate. She is also, however, cold and haughty, especially where servants and children are concerned. She speaks in Jane’s presence of her opinion that all governesses are detestable women with nothing of substance to offer and of her determination to have Adele sent away to school the moment she becomes Mrs. Rochester. She displays no evidence of even the slightest warmth, human or compassion. In Blanche Ingram, Jane sees the kind of woman that society expects men like Mr. Rochester to marry. Similarity of vision, compatibility of character, and shared passions are qualities that Rochester shares with Jane, not Blanche, but they are not qualities that society considers to be important for a husband and wife. Since childhood, Jane has been told that she is nothing but a dependent, someone who will never be truly significant in anyone else’s life. In Blanche Ingram, she comes face to face with the kind of woman who is significant, according to the societal rules of the time, and finds her extremely distasteful. Jane finds Mr. Rochester’s apparent interest in marrying Blanche Ingram difficult to understand on a personal level, but she recognizes the practical and social aspects of such a marriage and assumes that he is behaving true to form for a gentleman of his time and class. In fact, he does not intend to marry Blanche, only to lead her on and, in the process, to try the heart and spirit of the woman he truly loves, Jane Eyre. But Mr. Rochester’s reluctance to marry Blanche Ingram does not come as a result of his intellectualizing about the possible problems involved in a marriage with someone so incompatible with his personality; it comes from actual experience. Rochester did, when he was younger, marry someone very much like Blanche Ingram, a woman of position and money with whom he had little in common intellectually or emotionally.

Bertha is the wife of Rochester at the time Jane comes to Thornfield to live. Jane, unaware that Bertha lives in the attic, or even of Bertha’s very existence, allows to fall in love her as they discover their essential compatibility. Bertha, in her present state, represents the shadow side of the proper Victorian lady, for Bertha has become a madwoman, kept locked away from sight and public awareness. All of the of about the of Bertha Jane and Adele. For Adele, the knowledge is considered too adult. is not told because Mr. initially Mason Rochester living Edward Fairfax herself with employer inhabitants Thornfield know existence except Jane Rochester feared she might not stay to teach Adele if she knew. But no one at Thornfield is aware of Bertha’s exact relationship to Mr. Rochester. Some believe she may be one of his former mistresses who has gone mad and whom he has chosen to care for. Others believe that she may be a bastard half-sister, or even a former employee. Some may suspect the relation to be marital, but no one living at Thornfield knows for sure. All they know for certain is that she remains locked in the attic under the watch of Grace Poole, the coarse woman who serves as her caregiver. By the time we see Bertha in the novel, she has degenerated into a creature with animalistic characteristics. She continues, however, to have great human cunning, as is apparent on those occasions when she manages to sneak away from her keeper and wreak havoc in select areas of the house. She attempts to burn her husband to death in his bed one night, only to have Jane wake him in time. When her stepbrother, Richard Mason, visits her, she attacks him with both a knife and her teeth, sinking her teeth so deeply into his shoulder that he requires medical attention. She visits Jane’s room on the night before her wedding to Rochester is scheduled, and destroys the veil that symbolizes their imminent nuptials. As the shadow side of the respectable Victorian woman, Bertha displays the rage and violence that women were required to repress in Victorian life. She was discarded by her family, essentially sold to a complete stranger for her fortune, then taken, against her will, to England, a land so different in culture and climate from the Caribbean Island on which she was born and raised that, had she not already been exhibiting serious signs of mental imbalance, the move itself would have likely driven her mad. When finally forced into revealing Bertha as his wife, Rochester describes her heritage: Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family:—idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a mad woman and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. (355) Bertha’s madness reveals itself to Rochester after their marriage through her drinking, her irrational (in his opinion, at least) behavior, and her lustiness. No respectable and responsible woman could, according to the standards of Victorian society, act as Bertha acted unless she were mad. In fact, madness in women was often described in the medical articles of the day as a tendency toward drunkenness and lascivious desires. Bertha indulges her desires; therefore, she must be ill. Such was the logic of Victorian social mores and medical practices. Bronte ¨ does not show the reader a young Bertha, capable of winning Rochester with her dark beauty and her fortune. We do not know, therefore, how Bertha interacted with the world before her marriage, whether her impending madness would have been apparent to a wiser man than her husband or not. Nor do we know how quickly her illness progressed or what her husband may have done to accelerate the process. Bronte ¨ leaves those details to the imagination of the reader. One may freely accept Rochester’s version of the story, or one may look beyond it, blaming, at least in part, the very essence of Victorian culture for Bertha’s degeneration into the mad creature we meet in the novel. But regardless of the course of her illness and the reasons behind it, once Bertha is defined as mad and locked away from the world, her condition worsens, resulting in the animalistic creature Rochester displays to his thwarted wedding party:

In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing; and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. (356)

Bertha represents that part of the Victorian woman that is not to be seen, not even to be admitted to exist. She reflects the instinctive animalistic part of the woman’s nature, filled with violent rage at being repressed. The consequences for a woman of showing her deepest passions publicly in Victorian England were severe. A woman could be considered “unnatural” merely for allowing anyone, including her husband, to be made aware that she enjoys sex or that she feels intense anger or frustration. The respectable woman of this time was calm, passive, and subservient. The only aggression she was permitted to show was passive aggression— illnesses (real or feigned) that prevented her from meeting her husband’s expectations, or indirect manipulations that enabled her to get her way without others being aware that they had been manipulated. Such “feminine wiles” were permissible, though dangerous in that they could easily backfire. Bertha’s aggression, however, is far from passive. She is the most direct female in the entire novel. Her emotions and desires are clear in each of her actions. She is not passive toward others; she is active. And the actively aggressive woman in Victorian culture is, by definition, a madwoman. The character of Jane Eyre strives to be a fully developed human being, instead of a mere Victorian lady. She recognizes the need of a human being to take action in her life, not merely to be reactive. She believes that, as a human being, she has a right to want more than the proper Victorian lady is expected to want. “Anybody may blame me who likes,” Jane challenges her readers, That, now and then...I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim skyline:

that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach.... Who blames me? Many no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; itagitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it...to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended— a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence. (129)

Jane, in order to feel fully alive, in order to dream the dreams and have the visions that keep her sane, must go to the third floor and into the attic (the floor, though not the room, where the insane Bertha is kept) and out onto the roof (from which Bertha eventually leaps to her death) to look out and experience the world that has, thus far, been closed to her. She knows that “many” will condemn her for even the need to dream such dreams, but she must dream them. And, when the frustration of having her vision and actions so restricted gets the better of her, she paces, “backwards and forwards,” along the corridor, just as Bertha runs “backwards and forwards” within her cell. And, in case the reader misses that particular connection, Bronte ¨ encloses Jane’s entire speech about desiring so much more than is available to her within two loud laughs, laughs that we discover later in the novel originate from Bertha Rochester herself. Bertha would seem to be laughing at Jane’s dreams and desires, the knowing laugh of one who has experienced those dreams and desires herself, but who has found herself, because of them, to be more greatly restricted than she ever could have imagined by the very man with whom Jane will soon fall in love. The Victorian woman can be imminently respectable, like Helen Burns, but be victimized by those in power over her. She can appear to be perfect in appearance and social position, like Blanche Ingram, but be cold, aloof, and haughty. Or she can be completely disreputable like Bertha, indulging her desires to the point of madness (at least as it was defined by the Victorians). Jane wants to do what is right; she wants to do her duty and to remain a respectable woman. But she also wants to experience the fullness of her humanity, with all its potential action and excitement as well. To find a means of doing both, in Victorian society, was extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for women.

THE MEN IN JANE’S LIFE

Jane spends much of her life under the thumb of various men, all of whom, to differing extents, bully her. John Reed believes he has a right to bully her because of her dependent status in his family. He will inherit everything at Gateshead, and she has no right even to be there, let alone to touch the books or anything else in the house. Such is his rationale. When he chooses, he hits her or pinches her, knowing that he will suffer no repercussions because of his importance and her complete insignificance to the household. When Jane does fight back, she is punished in a fear-inspiring manner; she is locked in the “red room,” the room in which her uncle died. Locked in that room for hours with the thought of her uncle’s ghost still haunting it terrifies young Jane so much that she falls seriously ill from the terror. This illness, while horrendous at the time, actually precipitates a positive outcome— her removal from Gateshead. Thus, Jane learns in this situation that rebellion can eventually work to one’s benefit where bullies are concerned— even if one must sometimes endure severe trauma in the process.


When Mr. Brocklehurst arrives at Gateshead to arrange for Jane’s admission to Lowood, he too bullies her. When Jane does not agree that she is the deceitful and morally corrupt girl Mrs. Reed makes her out to be, Mr. Brocklehurst threatens her with the full exposure of what he has been told are her misdeeds. When he follows through with his threats, Jane feels as though she has been branded for life, that no one will ever believe that she is, in fact, a truthful girl. She also watches as Mr. Brocklehurst berates Miss Temple for coddling the girls by giving them additional food when the porridge was badly prepared. She sees Miss Temple stand up to him, insisting that she had done what was right and taking responsibility for her own actions. From watching Miss Temple’s adult responses to Mr. Brocklehurst’s bullying, Jane learns that standing up for oneself and for what one believes to be right can, in fact, end in something other than pain and shame.

As Jane enters adulthood, she is faced with yet another man who, despite his love for her, at times, presents himself as a bully. Mr. Rochester, like most men of property in nineteenth-century England, is used to getting his own way in almost everything. Because he dislikes the bustle involved in getting the house ready for full occupancy after it has been closed up due to his absence, Mrs. Fairfax keeps the house ready for full occupancy at all times, despite the extra work it creates for her and the servants. When Mr. Rochester decides to take a trip at a moment’s notice, he does so. When he decides to return, he returns without notifying the staff. His comings and goings are completely unrestricted, despite the trouble that fact often causes others, especially the dependents of his household. For a man like Mr. Rochester, who is not used to restriction or argument from those dependent on him, a woman like Jane Eyre is an enigma. She performs her duties as Adele’s governess admirably and is a help to Mrs. Fairfax in other ways as well, but she does not show Mr. Rochester the degree of deference to which he has been accustomed. She shows him respect, but she does not try (initially, at least) to anticipate his desires and satisfy them before he is even aware they exist, as Mrs. Fairfax and many of the other women in his life do and have done in the past. As a result, he finds Jane fascinating, because she is different. He insists on having her company and often, when finding himself using the commanding tone with her that he is used to using with other women, apologizes for his rudeness to her. Most of the time his behavior toward her is respectful, but, at times, her rebellion and insistence on being treated as his equal as a human being (while recognizing her dependency on him as an employee) become serious irritants to him, causing him to behave in ways that cause her emotional pain. For instance, when Mr. Rochester wants to know whether Jane is as emotionally attached to him as he is becoming to her, he forces her to watch as he courts Blanche Ingram, a local heiress of great beauty who intends to marry him. He forces Jane into conversations about Blanche, trying to get her to feel (and admit) some jealousy over his attentions to the dark beauty. Jane is clearly pained by such conversation and struggles to get away from it and him, but Mr. Rochester refuses to allow her to leave him, sadistically enjoying, it seems, his ability to cause her discomfort at the idea of his marriage to Miss Ingram. When Jane discovers on her wedding day that Mr. Rochester is not free to marry her, that he is legally married to another woman, she is tormented by the thought of the cruelty of the deception Mr. Rochester has practiced upon her, as well as the moral degradation into which she has almost sunk (a woman of her time who had sexual relations without being properly married was considered “ruined” regardless of whether she has knowingly and willingly done anything wrong). Mr. Rochester does not, however, allow her peace and privacy in which to deal with her situation. Instead, he tries to bully her into staying with him, into going with him to the Continent where they could live as though they were married, with no one knowing the difference. Jane knows that whether others know the difference or not is not important. She and Mr. Rochester would know, and they would be living in sin; those are the important issues in Jane’s mind. Also, Jane is well aware, from the manner in which Mr. Rochester has spoken about previous mistresses, that he could not continue to respect her if she gave in to his demands. His attempts to bully her into agreement are so strong, however, that she finds it necessary to face the dangers of running from Thornfield in the middle of the night rather than staying to face Mr. Rochester’s coercive manipulations.

Whereas Mr. Rochester’s attempts to bully Jane into a semblance of marriage are based on the deep passions of the heart, St. John Rivers attempts to bully her into marriage with him by appealing to her sense of duty, honor, and gratitude. He uses the fact that he saved her life and provided her with a means of supporting herself as a way to try to make her feel guilty for refusing his proposal. He reminds her that there is something in her past (she has not told him the entire story, though he suspects it has to do with disreputable behavior on the part of a man) that she must avoid reverting to, something that had almost cost her her innocence and her honor. He reminds her of her duty to God and uses that reminder as a means of trying to force her into an acceptance of his advances. She assures him that she could never marry without love, but he insists that love such as she refers to is overrated, that it is, in fact, almost blasphemous in that it can get in the way of one’s service to God. Ultimately, Jane is able to resist St. John’s bullying, but only with great difficulty. She is influenced by his arguments; they make sense to her intellectually even though they leave her heart cold. In a time when many more marriages were entered into for practical reasons than for passionate love, St. John had every reason to expect that Jane would accept his proposal to marry him and share his missionary work in India. When she doesn’t, he takes it as an affront not only to himself, but also to God. He believes that Jane’s return to Mr. Rochester, albeit an honorable return after his first wife dies in the fire that destroys Thornfield, demonstrates a rejection of duty on Jane’s part to both God and propriety. St. John goes to India to perform his work as a missionary without her, but he is cold toward her and her marriage to Mr. Rochester for the remainder of his life. Jane Eyre was written in a period when men believed they had a right to determine what was best for the women in their families and under their hire. Women were taught that their duty was to submit. Jane Eyre is the story of a woman who is unwilling to submit to anything she perceives as wrong or unfair. She believes that she should have the right to determine her future for herself, that she should have the right to make her own choices, and that she should be considered the equal of any man as a human being, even if she is his subordinate in terms of money, position, or employment. Such a position was difficult for any Victorian woman to adhere to. For a woman raised as an orphan, dependent for her very existence on the compassion of others, it would have been quite remarkable. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the novel touched so many of its earliest readers so deeply.

THE DOUBLE

The literary technique of the double has been used throughout history for many purposes. In Shakespearean comedies, we see characters doubled (as twins, most especially) in order to achieve comic effects. In novels such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the double is used for more serious purposes, to demonstrate two sides of a single self: the civilized self and the primal being that lies just below the surface of civilization’s veneer. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte ¨ uses the technique of the double in several ways. Locations double one another (Gateshead and Thornfield as places to learn to be passionate and to indulge those passions; Lowood and Marsh End as places in which to learn and develop restraint of passion and self-sacrifice), creating a structure of the novel that has its foundation on the effects of doubling. But there are also doublings of characters throughout the novel. Sometimes those doubles operate on a surface level, demonstrating overt similarities. But the doubling effect also, at times, betrays the shadow side of characters, the actions and attitudes that characters sometimes feel tempted to display but cannot because of social mores.

THE COUSINS

Among the minor characters, the clearest set of doubles is Jane’s two sets of cousins. The Reed siblings and the Rivers siblings consist of three children each, an older brother and two younger sisters. The cousins of Jane’s childhood are selfish and spiteful, excluding Jane whenever possible and mistreating her whenever they are forced to be with her. The cousins Jane meets as an adult appear to be exactly the opposite. They take her into their home, not even knowing her true name and having no idea that she is related to them by blood. They nurse her to health, having saved her from an almost certain death, and provide her with a job and a place to live. Despite their money and position in the world, the Reed cousins are not, by the end of the novel, successful. John Reed, having gotten himself deeply into debt (with hints of more sinister troubles), kills himself. Of his sisters, one is a frivolous woman concerned only about appearances who plans to move to London and live the fashionable life after the death of her mother. The other is an austere spinster who intends to spend her life cloistered in a nunnery, as isolated as possible from the world. Her intent is not to be of service to God and to those in need, but to find a place of comfortable retirement for herself where she can indulge her desire to live a life of isolated contemplation. The world of the Rivers cousins is considerably more productive. St. John actively works at his profession. When we first meet him, he is a clergyman, serving a parish in the English countryside near his father’s home. After his father’s death, he goes to India as a missionary. There he spends the remainder of his life in service to God and humanity. His sisters, Diana and Mary, also work. When Jane meets them, they are visiting their late father’s home from the homes of the families for whom they work as governesses. Jane decides to share the inheritance she received from her uncle with her cousins, enabling Diana and Mary to resign from their positions in other people’s households so that they may create a household of their own from which they can do good in their home community. And yet the contrast between the Reeds and the Rivers is not complete. Jane faces difficulties in both cousins’ homes. Both John Reed and St. John Rivers attempt to control her. Both use coercion— the child John Reed resorting to physical coercion as well as emotional torment; the adult St. John Rivers to emotional and spiritual coercion. Jane suffers under the heat of John Reed’s passionate outbursts in childhood. As an adult, she suffers from the coldness of St. John’s determination to marry her (despite the fact that the only passion he feels toward her has to do with the work they could perform together) and take her to India as his partner in missionary work. With the Reeds, Jane is made to feel alone in the world— even while living with blood relatives. With the Rivers, Jane finds the family she had wished for as a child. Even before they know of the blood bond, the Rivers siblings accept Jane into their home and into their lives as though she belongs with them. St. John Rivers, like John Reed, believes that he, as the man of the family, has the right to determine how she should spend her time and her future, but unlike the young John, St. John eventually accepts Jane’s right to exist and to thrive in a world that had previously brought her little more than pain. With the Reeds, Jane’s orphan status and dependency are apparent at every turn; with the Rivers, she truly becomes a member of a close-knit and loving family.

TEACHERS

Since Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman, focusing on the education of a young woman, teachers abound in the novel. Some are teachers by profession, others merely individuals who teach Jane valuable lessons. Within the ranks of the professional teachers, Bronte ¨ depicts two specific individuals who provide Jane with models for her own behavior, both as a teacher/governess and as an adult woman. One is a negative model; the other positive. Miss Scatcherd is the epitome of the bad teacher in Bronte ¨ ’s work. Her emphasis is on punishment for infractions of the rules. The punishments she inflicts are painful both physically and emotionally. She uses corporal punishment (beating girls with birch branches) and shame (pinning signs on girls for sloppiness, making them stand on stools for all to see their shame, etc.) as ways of trying to change behaviors of which she disapproves. The reasons behind those behaviors are irrelevant to her. For instance, when Helen Burn’s fingernails are dirty because the water in the basin in the dormitory that morning was frozen, Miss Scatcherd refuses to hear the explanation. The fact of unclean fingernails is all she needs or wants to know before doling out punishment.

Miss Temple, on the other hand, is the epitome of the good teacher. As superintendent of the entire school, her responsibilities are far greater than those of any of the other teachers; yet she takes the time necessary to get to know her students, to provide for their needs emotionally as well as physically and, to the extent allowable, intellectually. When the porridge is so burnt at breakfast that it is inedible, she arranges, against the orders of Mr. Brocklehurst, the clergyman in charge of the school, to have the children fed a different, better meal. When Mr. Brocklehurst announces to the entire school that Jane is a bad and deceitful girl, based on information given to him by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, Miss Temple takes the time to hear her side of the story and to promise that, if her story is corroborated by the doctor who had recommended she be sent to school, her name will be cleared before the entire school. Miss Temple then follows up on the information and, when receiving corroboration from the doctor, does indeed announce to the entire school that Jane has been exonerated of the charges Mr. Brocklehurst made. Miss Temple teaches Jane that it is her present and future behavior that matter most, that if she behaves herself well at Lowood, her reputation will be based on that behavior, not on the criticisms of someone from her past. The intellectual rigor of Lowood, like that of most early nineteenth century schools for girls, is not strong. More attention is paid to suitable behavior and rote learning of basic information than to advanced knowledge or critical thinking skills. In the early nineteenth century, girls were not expected (nor desired) to have rigorous intellectual lives. Miss Temple does, however, make certain that those girls who are capable of learning basic intellectual (as well as practical) skills receive some education in them. As a result, by the time Jane leaves Lowood at age eighteen, she has sufficient knowledge and skills to be hired as a governess in a well-to-do family. Her knowledge of French, a requirement in most schools for those of genteel birth, is essential to her work with Adele Varens, the young French girl who is Mr. Rochester’s ward and Jane’s student. Her knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic is sufficient for Adele’s educational needs, and her understanding of and adherence to the rules of propriety for young women in society make her a satisfactory model of behavior for the young girl. These qualities and skills are ones that Miss Temple made certain Jane developed while at Lowood, not through punishment and shame (Miss Scatcherd’s means of teaching young women), but through of positive reinforcement of those qualities and skills whenever she saw them displayed. When Jane becomes a teacher herself, she models her own behavior on that of Miss Temple. She recognizes the potential loneliness and isolation a child like Adele can feel— alone in a strange country with people who don’t even speak her language— and she tries to provide comfort and security for the child, along with proper training of her morals and her mind. Miss Scatcherd is a good reminder to Jane of what she does not want to become as a teacher or as a woman. The small-minded, embittered spinster is not a happy person. Miss Temple, on the other hand, is that all too rare individual: a working woman with neither fortune nor strong family ties who, on the basis of her goodness and openheartedness, is found by a good man who marries her and provides her with a happy home of her own. Few women who were reduced to teaching or governess work in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries ever found their way into such domestic happiness as Miss Temple. Jane Eyre, like her creator Charlotte Bronte ¨ , was fortunate in finding such a felicitous domestic situation after having worked for years as a teacher and governess.

Rochester in "Jane Eyre"

Charlotte Bronte creates a conventional hero in the character in Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre." This traditional portrayal has a twist in that Mr. Rochester has a dark, secretive side.

To what extent has Bronte created a conventional romantic hero in the character of Mr. Rochester?

Mr Rochester has great importance in the book Jane Eyre. This is why throughout the book his character has a lot of emphasis on. His character begins to develop where Mrs Fairfax describes him, forming impressions to Jane and the reader before we meet him. This builds up suspense in the novel as the reader begins anticipating what he will really be like.
In some ways, he is described to be a traditional romantic hero by Mrs Fairfax. She says "he has a gentleman's tastes and habits" and that "he has always been respected." However, as Jane's curiosity tempts her to ask further questions regarding him it is noticed that Mrs Fairfax is trying to hide something. She tends to hold back and speak with hesitation. This is seen when she says" you don't thoroughly understand him, in short- well at least, I don't..." Also the answers that Mrs Fairfax provides Jane are particularly unusual and in some way equivocal. Her reply to one of Jane's questions was "I have no course otherwise to like him; and I believe he is considered a ..." Here the writer, Bronte begins to confuse the reader as to why Mrs Fairfax stresses the "I" and why it is that she seems to be hiding something from Jane. This brings forward many questions in the readers mind and also suggests that Mr Rochester is a man of mystery.

Mrs Fairfax later continues to show Jane around the house and she particularly fascinated in the decorations of the rooms. This fascination I think is linked to Mr Rochester's personality, as it is well known that the decoration of reflects the personality of the owner. Jane mentions the rooms being "dark and low yet interesting." These images I think Jane begins to assume that Mr Rochester will hold within. She assumes that Mr Rochester may have a dark, secretive side in his personality.

Mr Rochester's first appearance in the novel is when he meets Jane. This meeting is very unusual. Mr Rochester comes in galloping on a horse which is a romantic entrance as to walking, However, as he is galloping, the horse collapses and by chance Jane is conveniently available to help him. Mr Rochester enters as though a knight in shining armour would, but then Bronte inverts the process of man saving the girl from trouble, to the girl saving the man. She began by making his character look romantic and then suddenly it all goes wrong. As Jane begins to help Mr Rochester she describes him having "a dark face with stern features." This contrast between romantic and harsh opinions is what makes the character sound real and interesting.

From Jane's first meeting with Mr Rochester, the reader can see there is a subtle interest in between the two characters. Bronte does not write the novel as any romance novel would be written, as there is no love at first sight. However, because of Jane's persistence to help, takes a lot of notice of her. Still, he does not act as a very nice man to help out even though Jane is helping him, he wishes her to leave him alone. This is seen when he says, "You must just stand on one side." Despite this Jane continues to try and help. As I mentioned earlier, the meeting of the two lovers was fairly unusual. The fact that Jane does not know that the man she was aiding was in fact her master, Mr Rochester proves this. I think that this is effective because it is different to romantic novels and also leaves the reader to think throughout why he did not mention who he is to Jane.

As the novel progresses more of Rochester's character is developed. Again he is in some ways described romantically and in some harshly. Throughout chapters 13-14 Jane and Rochester have a very deep and sincere talk with each other. This talk emphasises on the relationship between the two and shows its peculiarities. Rochester shares his personal secrets with Jane, which is very rarely seen between a master and his governess. The secrets that Mr Rochester shares with Jane shows his behaviour in the past. These include him keeping a mistress, and his rivalry against her lover, which persuaded him to shoot the man. However, he also reminds Jane of Adele and how he came to look after her. This relates to the romantic ideal of his personality and shows Jane that even though he committed some bad sins he still is a good man.

As the relationship between Jane and Rochester develops we begin to see Jane's contradictory feelings towards him, because of the way Rochester behaves with her. Bronte keeps her consistency throughout, describing Rochester in two ways. Jane tells us that she feels Rochester's "presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire" and then continues by going back on her words in saying "he was proud, sardonic and harsh." This shows Jane's mixed feelings towards him. Later in the novel Bronte shows the love story being inverted which relates to Rochester's behaviour, as both in some way confuses the reader and both bring out suspense in the novel. This is seen when the fire breaks out at Thornfeild.

In the following chapters Jane and Mr Rochester continue to express their feelings in the same way. Both still unsure of where they stand and what relationship they have between them. Whenever Jane assumes something pleasant of Rochester, he always in some way manages to discourage her in thinking further. At one point Rochester insists Jane to stay with him whilst his guests are present. This shows that Rochester wanted to his guests to see that she was of his standards. However, despite this he attempts in making Jane to feel jealous and uncomfortable. This is shown whilst he is playing charades with his guests. He acts out a scene of a wedding with Blanche, encouraging Jane to feel he wants to marry Blanche and that they are a good couple together. However, Jane does not give up in feeling the way she does towards him she says,"I had learnt to love Mr Rochester; I could not unlove him now."

Another part of the novel which shows Rochester's contradictory behaviour is after the incident of his friend Mason. Firstly it is unknown as to why he chooses to share yet more of his secrets with Jane and no one else. His romantic behaviour after the incident is very unusual as he contrasts between romantic and harsh behaviour towards Jane. He starts by calling her his "pet lamb." As usual Rochester begins to show his mixed emotions which is seen when Jane describes him by saying "he hastily took my hand, and hastily threw it back." However, regardless of what he does, Jane does not give up and is left to anticipate in hearing what she wants him to say. The romantic mood is built up to a huge climax between him and Jane, with the readers foreseeing that he will now declare his love for her finally. Rochester exclaims that "I believe I have found the instrument for my use in-"and then spoils the whole mood by suddenly talking about Blanche. During this scene I think the reader is bought to a lot of excitement, and left with an unexpected turn. Whilst Jane is left disappointed and is disheartened yet again.

Before Mr Rochester proposes to Jane, Bronte again builds up to a climax by creating a romantic setting. She describes the surrounding of Thornfield being "green and shorn; the roads white and baked...."This is a very effective way of bringing the audience to a peak level of excitement and to get the audience eager to know whet event will take place next. Bronte uses a chestnut tree with a circular seat at the base where Rochester proposes to Jane and show his greatest hidden feelings towards her. I think the significance of the tree shows the future unity the marriage could possess.

When Jane and Rochester have their sincere talk with each other before the proposal, there true feelings are expressed. Jane mentions some unexpected feelings that she feels Rochester holds of her. She stands up for herself by saying things like," Do you think because, I am poor, obscure plain and little, I am soulless and heartless?." The rhetorical questions help emphasise the power of her emotions. The feeling that Jane wants Rochester to purpose to her persuades him to do so.
Nevertheless, Rochester is very romantic whilst proposing to her, he uses language such as"because my equal is here, and my likeness." Rochester shows that he sees a reflection of himself in Jane and he is treating her as his equal. This is quite unusual as in the earlier days of when this book was published men felt they were superior and held a higher status than women. I think Bronte chose to use this technique so that she could be unusual and different to peoples opinions.
Throughout this book Bronte constructs Rochester as a contradictory character hence when he shows an act of romance he also in some way says something harsh. Another form of this technique is used when Rochester proposes to Jane. He asks for forgiveness from God he says, "God pardon me" and "it will atone." This confuses the reader as to why he is asking for forgiveness and what will atone. The reader gets the impression that by marrying Jane he is committing a sin. This confusion shows Rochester's dark and secretive side.
Another factor that is seen whilst reading the novel which relates to this is, if the two do get married at this point what will the rest of the novel consist of? This factor reflects the end of the chapter where the pathetic fallacy is used. The chestnut tree under which the proposal took place had over night been struck by lightening. This again relates to the earlier significance of the tree, but this time in a opposite manner. The unity which was beginning to hold the two together had spilt even before it managed to develop, showing an ominous sign.

When Jane discovers the truth about Mr Rochester's first wife, she is left unsure and hesitant regarding what to do next. She finds it extremely hard to decide what the best option is. After long and hard thought she comes to a conclusion in which she is to leave Thornfield and Mr Rochester instantly. Mr Rochester persuades Jane to remain with him giving various reasons such as that without her he would become a bad man. Even though Rochester is aware that law wise he would not be able to marry Jane he abides by his words. If you look at when this book was published and compare what wrong doings where at that time, it is clearly seen that Rochester's persuasion was in the wrong. If Jane did decide to stay she would be degrading herself as she would not have any relationship with Rochester, other than the one of a mistress which was in those days frowned upon. Many people at that time would not even think of compromising with Rochester's needs and would certainly agree with Jane's conclusion of leaving Thornfield.

When Jane returns to Thornfield there is nothing there but a ruined house and an inn keeper nearby. She spoke to this innkeeper in great detail discussing what events took place after she left. This is where the reader discovers quite a heroic side to Rochester. The reader finds out that Rochester risked his own life to save the life of his mad wife. This showed that even though he refused to hear of her in the past he still held some inner feelings for her. Despite his effort to save Bertha she still was determined to commit suicide. This left Rochester all alone so he went to live far away from the world as he could with two of his servants.

After tracing Mr Rochester Jane turned up at his house finding him to be blind and having only one arm. This however did not discourage Jane to express her feelings towards him. Nevertheless it made Rochester feel uncomfortable. Towards the end of the book you again see Mr Rochester as a contradictory character, but this time the bad side had nothing to do with his personality but his physical disability, which perhaps stops him being such conventional romantic hero. However, after all the misfortunes that occurred in his life he changed the way he thought of things and believed he had learnt his lesson. Rochester stated that "I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower." This was referring to Jane. From this you can tell he now has realized that difference between right and wrong.

Mr Rochester began to bring religion into concern a lot, as he speaks words from the bible and believed that he began to feel "remorse, repentance and the wish for reconciliation" towards his maker. This specific line stands out due to the alliteration used. I think this was done to express Mr Rochester's feelings. From the religious views at that time it is seen Bronte tries to show step by step, that Rochester had first committed his sin, then suffered for it this is seen by the fire, which I think symbolically shows him being through purgatory after which he now was able to receive Jane's love. The religious imagery is used to describe Mr Rochester's feelings towards Jane more effectively.

Throughout the book Mr Rochester's character had a very interesting impact on the audience. Overall, I think he did prove to be a true romantic hero who deserved Jane. In the long run both characters showed their desired love for each other, even though they suffered a great deal. I think that true love never runs smoothly, there is always an obstacle in the way to which overcoming is the hardest part of life. As Rochester and Jane did overcome there obstacles there should be nothing to stop them living happily ever after.

Bullying in Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë was published in 1848, under the name of Currer Bell. Although the novel is over 150 years old, there are still themes that we can relate to today, such as bullying, prejudice and hypocrisy. In this essay, I am going to discuss the three themes mentioned and also consider admirable characters from the novel; the authors narrative technique and the part that I found appealing. The first issue that I will discuss will be on the bullying that Jane received at Gateshead Hall: the home of her Auntie and cousins.

She is bullied by not just her cousins, but her aunt as well. In Chapter one, it shows the bullying from her cousins and aunt, when she has begun reading and John Reed, her cousin, throws the book at her head, and she retaliates. But because she retaliated, John's sisters ran up to their 'mamma' and blamed the fight on Jane. She was then escorted upstairs and locked in the red room. This could be counted as a form of bullying, as she only puts her in the red room as a
punishment for attacking John, but we, the readers, already know that John started all of the commotion. Verbal bullying is also used in chapter one, where John Reed calls her names for throwing a punch at him

(QUOTE: CHAPTER1/LINE 16: "I don't very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me 'Rat!, rat! ')

During Jane's First term at Lowood, Jane is bullied out of food, when there was very little and the older girls wanted some more food to devour.

Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative, related in the voice of the protagonist, or heroine. Jane Eyre is the "I" of the story, the person whose voice we hear as we read, and everything that happens is seen from her point of view. Nowhere in the novel does the author break the flow of the narrator's voice to give us an objective view of her main character. However, she does remind us once in a while that the story is being told by Jane as a mature woman, looking back on events that
happened some years earlier. The mature Jane occasionally comments on the younger Jane's reactions to those events, and sometimes she even addresses you, the Reader, directly. You'll also find occasions where her narrative includes long stories told to Jane by other characters (such as Rochester's accounts of his past), conversations that Jane overhears between other characters, and even accounts of Jane's dreams. These not only add variety to the style but give the reader a chance to check up on the truthfulness of the narrator.

It's important to remember that in a first-person narrative like Jane Eyre we know only The Setting In the 1840s, when Jane Eyre was written, there were very few ways in which an educated woman could earn her own living. Poor girls might go to work as a house servant or in a factory, but the conditions in these jobs were so bad, and their status so low, that no young woman from a "good" family would consider these alternatives except in extreme desperation. That left teaching, usually as a governess with a wealthy family, as just about the only respectable occupation. Governesses lived with the families they worked for, so they lived in fairly comfortable surroundings. However, their cash wages were very low, so their work gave them no real financial independence. For the most part, they led lonely and unsatisfying lives. Their status was higher than that of the other servants--and too much mixing with the help was frowned on!--yet they weren't accepted as part of the family either. Unless a governess happened to be unusually attractive, her chances of finding a husband were slim. Most marriages at the time were based on family connections or financial considerations, and an educated woman with no dowry had almost no chance of getting married. Since they didn't have much hope of saving money out of their low salaries, all that most governesses could look forward to was a lonely and uncertain old age, dependent on the kindness of the families they had served. There had been governess-heroines before Jane Eyre, but they were portrayed as plucky and beautiful--an outsider's fantasy of the independent woman. Jane Eyre was the first successful look at the reality of the governess's life. It's not really necessary to know much about the 19th century in order to enjoy the story of Jane Eyre, but you'll understand some of Jane's actions a little better if you keep in mind that she's a governess. Jane Eyre is a plain-looking young woman who has been in an all-girl school since she was ten years old. She hasn't had any chance to learn about the ways of gentlemen like Mr. Rochester or about the male sex in general. By the standards of the time, Jane is quite bold in talking to Mr. Rochester as an equal. But when she realizes that his interest in her is romantic, she has to assume that it's not marriage he has in mind. This explains why she is very cautious about revealing her feelings for him. Also, although she works for Mr. Rochester for some months, Jane has very little cash of her own. When she goes to visit the Reeds, Rochester gives her extra money for the trip. And when she decides that she must leave Thornfield rather than become his mistress, Jane has only twenty shillings to her name--just enough money to pay her fare for a two-day trip to a distant part of England. Governesses were working women. But their security and freedom were very precarious. This is why Jane Eyre is powerfully drawn to the possibility of becoming dependent on a man--either through becoming Mr. Rochester's mistress or St. John Rivers' wife. Yet at the same time, she is also afraid, because her decision, once made, will be forever.

What the main character tells us. You may well suspect as you read that Jane's opinions aren't always entirely objective--another sort of person might see the events of the story and the personalities of the various characters in an entirely different light. This isn't necessarily a weakness in the novel; in fact, it may be one of its strengths. But you'll truly enjoy Jane Eyre only if you feel a basic trust in the narrator. For the novel to be a success for you, you must be able to imagine that, in Jane's shoes, you might well have felt and acted as she did. In this paragraph, characters who we admire will be brought up and good points about them will be mentioned. The first admirable person we meet would probably be Bessie, when she gets a doctor because Jane has some sort of fit when she is locked in the red room. Bessie had been following orders from Mrs Reed all the time, and didn't think of Jane's feelings at any time, until she had the fit. She was the first person to go and see why Jane is screaming and shouting so much.

Bessie ignores Mrs Reed's orders to ignore Jane's cries for help. Bessie and Jane get along much better after the red room incident. Another admirable person is Helen Burns, who we do not meet until chapter 5, who befriends Jane. She has a great impact on Jane, in what Jane does. The two become inseparable until Helen becomes ill, she disappears from the room, and is moved up to Miss Temple's room. Before Helen died, Jane had made her way up to Miss Temple's Room to be with her friend one last time. Earlier in chapter 6,Helen had flashed a smile at Jane when she had been accused of all the wrong doings her aunt told Mr Brockelhurst. The last admirable person that we meet between chapters 1 and 10 is Miss Temple. Helen tells Jane
that Miss Temple is the only warm hearted person at Lowood School. Miss Temple demonstrates how kind and believing she is when the accusations are thrown at Jane. She asks Jane if it is true, and Jane denies it. Miss Temple feels that Jane didn't do any of the things she is being accused of and she says to her, she is innocent and as soon as she has checked out Jane's version with the physician that treated Jane in the red room, she will be innocent to everyone, not just her.

Hypocrisy is also experienced within the book.Hypocrisy is saying that you should be one thing not another, when you actually are another yourself. In Chapter 6, Mr Brockelhurst is a hypocrite in everyday life, as his father created a school for poor children, and he demands that the children stay poor, but still he remains as rich as a celebrity.

Fire and Ice

The "fire" and "ice" merely acts as a symbolism for two main characters who hold these "elements" within their personalities: Edward Rochester (fire) and St. John Rivers (ice). The use of fire and ice in this novel serves to show Jane Eyre in a sort of intermediate position between the two men.

Which is more preferable: fire or ice? That would depend on the circumstances of which this question is being presented. It also depends on whom this question is being conferred upon as well. In this case, the "whom" is a young woman in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. The protagonist, Jane Eyre, faces this intriguing question of fire or ice. However, it is more complicated than that. The "fire" and "ice" merely acts as a symbolism for two main characters who hold these "elements" within their personalities: Edward Rochester (fire) and St. John Rivers (ice). The use of fire and ice in this novel serves to show Jane in a sort of intermediate position between the two men. Throughout the course of the novel the contrast between Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers becomes more eminent, putting forth the arduous decision of which man she should marry. She makes this decision through her attraction to the men's physical appearance, their intellectual/emotional stride, and what effect and relation they have to Jane.

An important part of the decision to embark on the journey of marriage is the human beings natural act of making a judgement and resolution upon physical appearance. The physical appearance of Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers are apparently shown to be quite different. At Jane's first meeting with Rochester she observes that "he had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow" (116). In this introduction she views Rochester to be cold in appearance. However, once the light of the fire illuminates his face she sees past his "not-so-handsome" features. Upon further observation in the novel it can be unveiled that Rochester possesses the warmness of fire within. Now on first glance upon the saintly St. John it is inevitable to say that he is very handsome. St. John "was young" (347) unlike Rochester. He was "tall, slender" and "his face riveted the eye...like a Greek face, very pure in outline" (347). Yet, does the warmness of this man's physical features reflect what is truly within? It can be stereotyped that when making a decision of matrimonial consequence one will first focus on the physical appearance of a probable spouse. Yet, is this so with Jane Eyre? Based upon Jane's personal view she has a "reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry and fascination" (117). Upon reading this one can decipher that Jane prefers St. Johns "pure" features compared to Rochester's "stern" features. Yet, Jane "instinctively knows" (123) that those with beauty and elegance could never "have sympathy with anything"(123) inside herself. She goes on to explain that she should "shun" them and anything "bright and antipathetic" (123), which introduces the possibility that St. John may be categorized into such a description. Looks are not what they seem to be, suggesting that there is more than the physical appearance of these two men being taken into consideration.

Another significant quality to be observed before a decision about matrimonial matters is the characteristics of a person, usually shown in their personality. Part of the personality is how one acts with the emotion of affection. Jane experiences two different types of affection from St. John and Rochester. Rochester, who is very much associated with fire, seems to have a "fever" for lust. On one level, this "fire" is the Romantic fire of passion that eventually seizes Rochester and Jane. His physical description is that of being dark in complexion, perhaps symbolizing that he has been "burnt" by his passions. His passion can also be seen in his figure with the "strange fire in his look" and with his flaming and flashing eyes", which symbolizes that he seeks passion. However, St. John's eyes are "large and blue" (347), representing endless depths of ice. Even in Jane's observation of him being "a statue instead of a man" (347) shows what ability St. John has to show or even hold passion. A statue is not living and unfeeling, therefore it cannot feel passion. St. John separates himself from the world to fulfill his "holy duty", including the strong emotion of passion. It can be noted that Rochester does in fact possess the love of passion through the symbolism of fire. St. John, however, seems to be devoid of the fiery hearth of passion. Jane makes note of his "coldness" when she felt as is she had "fell under a freezing spell" (270) cast by St. John. She knows that "the intimacy" she felt with Rochester will never "extend to him [St. John]" (353).

Jane is a transitional position between St. John and Rochester. She is more frequently associated with water (which is in part opposed to fire), but is nevertheless not immobile as ice, and is most of the time life enhancing. Fire cannot scorch water, yet ice can freeze water. From this reasoning it can be determined that Jane will not be affected negatively by Rochester's passion, however, with St. John, she will surely have her "inner flame" extinguished; the rushing waters of her soul frozen and immobilized. Rochester makes note of Jane's need of fire, as well as her inner flame: "You are cold, because you are alone; no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you" (198). Rochester knows of Jane's need for fire in her life, even is she does not yet realize it. Yet St. John knows not, nor cares for Jane's need of passion and love in her life. Jane knows that "as his wife" she will "always [be] restrained, and always checked" (410), which does not give her the independence and identity that she seeks. She further explains that she will be "forced to keep the fire" of her nature "continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital--this would be unendurable" (410). She realizes that St. John will not love her, and that he will destroy her spirit if she chooses to marry him. With Rochester at her side, she is much at ease. Jane comes to understand that she "was with an equal" (409) when she was in the presence of Rochester. Although fire and water are opposite in nature they well coincide to maintain a delicate balance in nature, as is true with Jane and Rochester. As her husband, Rochester will continually feed the fire of her soul and not let it die. His fire fascinates her and gives her a new meaning for life. For once in her life, Jane feels real love, and from someone she loves as well. At the same time, Jane will refresh Rochester, as water is usually a symbolism for cleanliness. Together they will live in harmony.
Which is more preferable: fire or ice? It has become evident that, to Jane, she favors fire. Jane makes a wise decision in choosing to marry Rochester. There is true love between them. With him she can grow and be unrestrained, which is unlikely to have happened had she chosen to marry St. John. Rochester needed not to be handsome in order for Jane to fall in love with him. She looked deeper than the skin to find the "real" person she wanted to marry. With St. John, she found ice and a stone wall, where inside there is not the warmth of passion at all. In Rochester she found the fire that she knew would keep her flame burning through the rest of her life.

Bronte's Use of Foils in Jane Eyre

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte uses several characters as foils to Jane to reveal Jane's true persona. Characters with strong personalities, such as Georgiana Reed and Blanche Ingram, show a significant contrast to Jane's more docile nature. Bronte also creates foils in the characters that interact with Jane, bringing forth different sides of Jane's personality.

In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë uses several characters as foils to Jane to reveal Jane's true persona. Characters with strong personalities, such as Georgiana Reed and Blanche Ingram, show a significant contrast to Jane's more docile nature. Brontë also creates foils in the characters that interact with Jane, bringing forth different sides of Jane's personality. Mrs. Reed and Miss Temple are used to employ this technique. Her reactions to these characters allow the reader to delve into her true nature.

One of the first foils the reader encounters is that of the young Georgiana Reed, Jane's haughty cousin. She is beautiful, spoiled, and selfish, and makes it known that she does not consider Jane as part of their family. They see Jane as "a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities" (17). While Jane tidies and dusts like a family servant, Georgiana is enraptured with herself, dressing her hair with flowers and donning herself with dressy attire. The differences found in their partialities and occupations characterize the young Jane as a docile, obedient child who constantly suffers under the dominating Reeds. Their next encounter occurs many years later when Mrs. Reed sends for Jane on her deathbed, and Jane consents. Upon arriving at the house, Jane discovers that not much has changed. Georgiana retains her beauty, and the house is just as Jane remembers it. A striking difference between the two at this period in time is how they interact with Georgiana's sick mother. Whilst Jane spends time to converse with a barely sane Mrs. Reed, Georgiana can barely allot five minutes a day for her own mother. Instead, she focuses on the trifling gaieties of life, shunning all gloomy thoughts that threaten to encompass her. When constantly hearing Georgiana's reminisces of better times, Eliza sums up her sister's essence: "you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered - you must have music, dancing, and society - or you languish away" (351). Jane's characteristics can be seen through the contrasting actions of her and Georgiana. She is seen as respectful enough to heed to her aunt's wish to see her again, and calm and collected when talking to her in her delirium. As a foil to Jane in both childhood and womanhood, Georgiana continues to bring out Jane's character as a foil until their final departure.

Another foil the reader encounters in Jane Eyre is that of Blanche Ingram. Like Georgiana Reed, Miss Ingram has a stunning beauty that contrasts to Jane's simple physical appearance. She uses this to her advantage, flaunting her good looks and graceful style to entice Mr. Rochester. Her ostentatious nature greatly differs from Jane's demure mien. Jane would rather sit undetected in a small corner, whereas Miss Ingram can be found flittering about to draw attention to herself, "evidently bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring indeed" (265). The two women also react to Adèle very differently. Since Jane first met Adèle, she has been consistently kind and patient towards her student. Upon Miss Ingram's first meeting with Adèle, she seems to mock her in a condescending tone. When Adèle accidentally gives her false information about Mr. Rochester's return, Miss Ingram snaps at Adèle, calling her a "tiresome monkey" (281). Another striking contrast between the two is how they express their feelings for Mr. Rochester. Jane speculates, "Surely she cannot truly like him...If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly; flash her glances so unremittingly; manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous" (277). This conjecture describes Miss Ingram's extravagant methods of capturing Mr. Rochester's attention. Jane, however, does not care about Mr. Rochester's money, and is only interested in his interior. As a strong foil to Jane, Blanche Ingram helps amplify her noble qualities. Jane is docile and modest; caring and tolerant; and is not affected by a character's lifestyle.

Although Jane is generally viewed as calm and serene, the foils of Miss Temple and Mrs. Reed bring out two very different sides of Jane's personality. Miss Temple acts as the chief maternal figure to Jane, providing love and support at a school where Jane has none. Jane described Miss Temple as always having "something of serenity in her air...which chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her, by a controlling sense of awe...I was struck with wonder" (104). This veneration of Miss Temple was well deserved, for Miss Temple helped clear Jane's tarnished name at the school. Contrasting to Miss Temple's generosity, Mrs. Reed, when on her deathbed, said, "I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity" (356). Since Jane was a young child, Mrs. Reed had always treated her as an inferior, never giving Jane the love every child should have. The animosity she received from Mrs. Reed eventually assimilated into an explosion of rage from Jane, her long suppressed feelings finally being released. Jane's reactions to Miss Temple and Mrs. Reed show very different sides of her personality. With Miss Temple, she is serene and calm; with Mrs. Reed, she is suppressed and angry.

Through the foils of Georgiana Reed and Blanche Ingram, Jane is depicted as a quiet and demure girl who is also compassionate and respectful. However, Brontë utilizes foils to bring out contrasting sides of Jane's personality. By employing this technique, she allows readers to see a different side of Jane; showing that Jane is a colorful character who will retain one's interest for the entirety of the novel.