Characters
Lowood School
The Guard- that drives her from Gateshead Hall to Lowood.
Maria Temple– Superintendent of the Lowood Institution- a charity school. Around 29 years old.
Miss Miller- perhaps 25 years old.
Other girl students- about 80 in all.
Miss Smith- teaches the girls to sew
Miss Scatcherd- teaches history and grammar, touchy and quick to be offended
Madame Pierrot- French teacher from Lisle, France
Helen Burns– Jane’s friend at the school. She is mercilessly picked on by Miss Scatcherd, but is calm inside and out in response. Helen is humble and acts as a counter to Jane’s rebellious attitude to injustice. Helen sees her own faults and accepts the rebukes as perfectly reasonable efforts to correct what is wrong.
Barbara- a servant at the school
Mrs Harden- the housekeeper at the school who is as stingy as Mr Brocklehurst.
Mary Ann Wilson- a close confidante of Jane’s at school.
Mr Bates- the doctor that pronounces Helen is not long for this world.
Rev. Mr Nasmyth- marries Miss Temple
Miss Gryce- another servant at the school.
Robert Leaven- coachman who married Bessie from Gateshead.
Bobby- Bessie and Robert’s son.
Mr Eyre- Jane’s father’s brother came to the Reed’s house looking for Jane but was told she wasn’t there. He looked to be a gentleman.
Jane’s Struggle during this period
Jane sees injustice particularly in the treatment of Helen Burns. But where she wants to fight fire with fire, Helen teaches her to accept things she can’t change. And accept the discipline as instruments to change character defects, and to learn Christian humility even in difficulty, because the thing that overcomes hate isn’t violence, but love. Vengeance only breeds more hatred and violence.
Helen notes that Jane has become consumed with remembering every injustice of Miss Scatherd, but suggests Jane would be much happier if she wouldn’t nurse animosity or register wrongs.
Brocklehurst, the patron of the school, explains his modus operandi to Miss Temple, the mission is to ‘mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh’. But his own family is richly arrayed in the kind of finery he wants the girls at the school to learn to do without. Ostensibly, this is for spiritual reasons, but clearly, if that were the case, he would be worried about his wife and daughters’ spiritual conditions as well.
Jane is subjected to public humiliation by Brocklehurst, when he repeats unjustly the condemnations he merely heard from Mrs Reed. But it turns out that Brocklehurst is seen by the teachers and girls at the school for the hypocrite that he is, and his condemnation has no real effect on Jane.
Helen tells her that even if everyone did hate her, if her own conscience was clean, she would have friends. Jane replies that she couldn’t stand being alone like that. Helen tells her that she worries too much about what people think, better instead to worry about what the Lord thinks.
Jane sees a beauty in Miss Temple that comes from the soul, not the physical appearance. Jane is cleared of all the charges Brocklehurst had laid on her, and she begins to grow in knowledge and acceptance at the school. She decides she would rather be there with love than in Gateshead where she was hated.
The particular struggle Jane faces at the first stage of the Lowood school is dealing with her own reaction to injustice. Helen helps her to see there is a better way to deal with injustice than rebellion, and Jane learns that others can see the same things she does, so she isn’t alone in her suffering.
After the Typhus epidemic, it was revealed that the unhealthy conditions foisted on the girls by Brocklehurst’s stinginess contributed to the devastation, and beneficial changes were made. Jane passes the rest of the time until 18 and becomes a teacher at the school for the last years.