Chapters Eight through Ten

Hey again,
Here are chapters 8-10.
In the beginning of chapter eight, Jane is released from her punishment of standing in the middle of the classroom for being declared a liar by Mr. Brocklehurst. At first, Jane is sure that she will never live this moment down and that no one will ever be her friend, until sweet Helen assures her that the girls felt nothing but pity for the way Mr. Brocklehurst treated her, and that they didn't believe him one bit. Miss Temple then comes to the rescue and asks Jane for her account of events, and Jane tells her sad tale of being raised by Mrs. Reed. After hearing this, Miss Temple writes a letter to Mr. Lloyd (the doctor that recommended that Jane be sent to school). When Mr. Lloyd affirmed Jane's account of events, Miss Temple immediately publicly announces that Mr. Brocklehurst was misinformed.

• How must Jane have felt to finally have an adult on her side, one that would stick up for her this way?
• At this time period, do you think it was more or less common for a woman in Miss Temple's place to treat children with such kindness?

Jane is so relieved that Miss Temple and her classmates believe her, and she begins to excel at her studies, especially art and French.
That is the end of chapter eight.
Chapter nine brings with it the start of spring, and with the warm weather comes an outbreak of typhus. Nearly half the girls become ill, but Jane stayed healthy. At first, Jane assumes that Helen is sick with typhus as well, and figures she will get better in time. Soon, Jane discovers that Helen really isn't sick with typhus, and is dying swiftly from consumption (an phrase used back then, meaning tuberculosis). Jane, terrified that she won't see Helen again, sneaks into her bedroom one night to see her. Helen assures Jane that she feels no pain and is glad to leave the world of sorrow behind. Jane is not comforted much, and holds Helen in her arms while they slept. Helen died that night, and was soon buried in an unmarked grave.

• After waiting so long for a friend, Jane loses her rather quickly. How must she feel at this point towards whichever higher power she believes in? Do you think she still has any religious faith at this point, if she ever had any to begin with?
• While Helen was sick, Jane made friends with another girl, Mary Ann. How do you think things will work out between Jane and Mary Ann? Will Jane ever be able to think of Mary Ann as being as much of a friend as Helen was?

Chapter ten tells about how (after the typhus epidemic at Lowood was over) there were officials that investigated the cause of the outbreak. They discovered that Mr. Brocklehurst's negligent treatment toward the girls was a large contributor to the issue, and he was fired. New officials were brought in to oversee the care of the girls, and conditions improved dramatically.

• Would the change have been as dramatic for Jane as it was for girls that had lived there much longer than Jane had?

The next six years skip by in the next part of this chapter, and Jane graduates from being a student at Lowood. She then becomes a teacher at Lowood and is there for two more years.  During these eight years, Jane becomes wonderful friends with Miss Temple, and when Miss Temple leaves Lowood to get married, Jane also decides that she needs a change. After all, she had been there for nearly half of her life.
So, Jane advertises as a governess, and quickly receives a job offer to go to a place called Thornfield. She accepts, and just as she is about to leave, BESSIE shows up! They catch up on what has been going on at Gateshead (the place where the Reed family lives). Georgiana tried to elope, but Eliza foiled the attempt. John has sunk very low, he indulges in all sorts of nasty things we won't go into here, and he has also found himself married and then just as quickly divorced. He is a disgrace to his mother. Bessie then tells a fantastic tale about a man named John Eyre who showed up at Gateshead seven years previously, claiming to be her uncle. When he was told where Jane was, he decided that he didn't have the time to travel to Lowood, and instead went off to Madiera (near Morocco), in search of wealth.

• How must that have made Jane feel, finding out that she did have relatives, but that he chose to search for money instead of coming to see her? Do you think it even mattered to her?

 Bessie also reveals that she has gotten married and has children. After they spend some more time catching up, Jane departs for Thornfield and Bessie returns home.
That is the end of chapter ten.

• Is it normal that Jane would want a change in scenery only after her dearest friend departs first?
• What do you think will become of Jane now?

Personally, I know that this is another huge and life changing event for Jane. She doesn't know it yet, but her life hasn't even begun to get good.
Stay tuned for the next post!

Chapters Six and Seven

Hello all,
The main point of these next two chapters was relatively the same, so they will both be covered in this post.
On the second day that Jane is at her new school, she learns that life here isn't going to be all peaches and cream like she thought it would. All of the girls are underfed, overworked, treated horribly, and Jane is no exception. And yet, Jane isn't frightened by the fact that she will be living in such harsh conditions. The girl she met in chapter five, Helen, has become good friends with Jane, and patiently explains a lot of the goings on at Lowood.
Better yet, Helen is a wonderful example of patience and endurance through the hardest times. Jane mentions time and again how amazed she was that Helen could withstand being made the fool of the class over and over again without fighting back, when she knows that, had it been her being made a fool, she would have thrown a tantrum to show her disapproval of the situation.
At one point in chapter six, Helen tells Jane about the religion she practices, and about how it teaches you to love your enemies and take your punishments in silence. When Jane vehemently tries to persuade Helen that these viewpoints are incorrect, Helen won't take notice, and continues to tell Jane about her beliefs. However, while being taught her religion, Helen became very self-critical, and can only see her faults. Ironically, she can see Jane's virtues very well and praises her often for them. Jane finds herself wishing that Helen could see her own virtues as clearly as she saw others.
That's pretty much the sum of chapter six.
I find it very interesting and enlightening that this subject was touched upon in this chapter. Isn't it so true that we clearly see our own faults and not our virtues when we self-examine? And aren't we sometimes better at seeing other people's virtues and not our own?

• Why is it that we do this?
• Why would this subject have been brought up in this book?

Chapter seven provides some details about a few of Jane's experiences at Lowood in her first month there.
Most of the time that Jane is there is uninterrupted by Mr. Brocklehurst, but when he returns, it frightens Jane, for she remembers that Mr. Brocklehurst promised Mrs. Reed that he would make sure everyone knew about Jane's personality according to Mrs. Reed. Upon Mr. Brocklehurst's return to Lowood, it scares Jane so much that she accidentally dropped her slate (personal chalkboard-type thing) while he was in the room. Mr. Brocklehurst gets very angry and calls Jane careless, then forces her to stand on a stool in the middle of the room while he tells everyone that she is a liar. He then forbids the other girls to speak to her for the remainder of that day.
Jane is obviously humiliated, and when she thinks she cannot stand it any longer, Helen walks past and gives her a sly smile. This perks Jane right up, and for the rest of the day, Helen would periodically walk by the place where Jane stood to give her some more silent encouragement.
Jane finds that this experience helps her to understand a bit more what Helen means when she says she should take her punishment quietly.
That's the end of chapter seven.
The thing I noticed the most in this chapter was Jane's fear of Mr. Brocklehurst. It's almost like he is the male version of the Mrs. Reed Jane used to be afraid of. And Jane was right to fear Mr. Brocklehurst, or at least at first, for he fulfilled his promise to Mrs. Reed and tried to get Jane shunned by all at Lowood. He couldn't keep Helen away though, and this was very encouraging to Jane.
I love that Jane has finally found a friend closer to her own age. It is revolutionary for her.

• What joy would a man like Mr. Brocklehurst find in making young girls feel inferior and stupid in his presence?
• Why would anyone want to bring a child's spirit down like that?

Sorry that the posts are less in depth now than they were before; I just don't have the time to go through it sentence by sentence anymore. :)
Keep up with the blog, though! Stay tuned for the next few chapters!

A Brief Note

I have honestly done my best to blog about each individual chapter, but time is swiftly running out for me to do this project, so from here on out, each blog entry will be about either 3 or 5 chapters, depending on whether there is a specific theme that takes place in the section and how many chapters are covered in that theme. I apologize if that is frustrating to any of you. Thanks for your cooperation!!!

Chapter Five

Here's chapter five!
The beginning of this chapter starts out with Jane preparing to leave for school. She is so excited that she is awake long before the coach is to arrive. She finishes packing and heads out to the front gates with Bessie to meet the coach. When it arrives, we find out that she is to travel 50 miles to her new school, completely alone.

• Why is it that there wasn't anyone besides Bessie that was bothered by the fact that Jane was going to travel so far alone at her age?

However, Bessie charges the driver of the coach with keeping Jane safe on the journey. He happily complies. At one point, when the coach stops in a small town, the driver tries to get Jane to eat, but she is too nervous, so the driver takes her to a large, comfy room to spend some time in while the rest of the passengers ate. The coach driver treated Jane with respect and kindness.

• I find it interesting that nobody close to Jane treated her kindly, but a complete stranger did. Obviously, Jane isn't as awful as Mrs. Reed claims she is, but why does everyone she knows refuse to believe in Jane's good nature?

Well, Jane finally arrives at her new school. It is late evening, and the girls living at the school are about to participate in their evening scriptures and snack. Jane is far too tired to do much of anything except sleep, so she waits patiently until all of the girls are excused for bed.
The next day, all of the girls are awakened before it is light out, and they hurriedly prepare for the day's lessons and activities. Upon arriving in the dining hall, they discover that the porridge has been burnt, and hardly any of them are able to ingest it. Nearly all of the girls go hungry.

• What kind of budget must the school have to burn the food and still serve it, without trying to make it taste any better, and not care that it would make the girls sick to their stomachs?

The lessons commence, and the headmistress of the school, Miss Temple, provides the girls with bread and cheese to make up for the awful breakfast they were served. Miss Temple is a wonderful lady. However, she will most likely get in serious trouble with Mr. Brocklehurst for this kind deed. Mr. Brocklehurst is a penny pincher, and doesn't care if the girls go hungry.

• How fair is it that a man who could care less about how young girls are treated gets to be the owner of a school designed to help those very girls?
• Why was that the norm back then?

Once the girls have been properly fed, they spend a few minutes outside in the gardens. Jane is left to wander around by herself, and does so, until she sees a young girl reading a book. Jane, intrigued, wanders over to the girl and engages her in conversation. The girl tells Jane all about what the school is like and all about the teachers there, effectively praising Miss Temple some more. Jane finds that she really likes the company of this girl, and can't help but notice when the girl gets in trouble during evening lessons.

• After spending so long being ignored and learning to cope on her own, why does Jane suddenly feel so close to somebody now?

And that is the end of chapter five. In this chapter, I thought that the most important thing that happened was that Jane, a little girl who was previously "lost" per se, became found when she was finally able to leave the shadow she was in when she lived with Mrs. Reed.
I found a song that clearly illustrates this point, at least to me, and I'd love your feedback on whether you think this song is appropriate, and if not, what song would be a better one. :)

That's all for this chapter! Stay tuned for chapter six.

Chapter Four

Hello all,
Sorry it took me so long to get to chapter four. This week has been crazy busy, and I've been distracted. Okay, here goes nothing:
At the end of chapter three, we learn that there is a strong potential for Jane to get sent away to school. Some children may find this to be a frightening prospect, but Jane is thrilled. It is because of this hope for change that Jane has that she is able to fully recover from her awful experience in the red-room. Jane states that she can sense a change coming.
Perhaps because of the change she knows is coming, Jane becomes more and more flippant with Mrs. Reed. And Mrs. Reed treats Jane worse than ever. She forces Jane to eat alone, sleep alone, and stay away from everyone in the house except for Bessie. Mrs. Reed even goes so far as to instruct her children to stay away from Jane.
At one point, John goes to try and tease Jane some more, but Jane makes as if to punch him in the nose, and John runs away, frightened.
For just about any other child, being treated this way by supposed family would crush them. HOwever, Jane is positively fine with being ignored in this manner, for it is preferable to how she was treated before.

• The fact that Jane prefers to be ignored by her family is quite sad. How must it feel to prefer such a thing over human interaction?

Jane and Mrs. Reed fight more than ever now. Jane continually reminds Mrs. Reed of her promise to Mr. Reed on his deathbed to treat Jane with kindness and love, and Mrs. Reed is ever more disturbed by Jane's comments. After one particularly flippant remark, Mrs. Reed slapped Jane across the face.

• Any other child would burst into tears at this point, yet Jane does not do so, at least in front of Mrs. Reed. Just how much abuse would a child have to suffer, whether physically, mentally, or both, to not cry when they were hit?
• What would happen in this day and age if someone were to treat a child this poorly?

We soon learn that Mrs. Reed keeps Jane from participating in the holiday festivities. I know that, for me, had I ever been kept out of something like this, I would be extremely disappointed, and very angry. Yet Jane is not. She says that she doesn't like to go into company, for she is persistently ignored by everyone around her.

• What kind of influence must Mrs. Reed have on her friends and associates to convince every single one of them to ignore Jane all of the time?

Something I found very interesting was the attachment Jane had to her doll. While it is perfectly normal for every young child to have such an attachment to something, Jane found it ridiculous. But she still couldn't help loving her doll.

• Does every young child find their attachment to their toy or doll as ridiculous as Jane did?

We soon learn (well, the knowledge is reaffirmed, anyway) that Jane prefers Bessie to everyone else in the household, simply because she was rude to Jane fewer times than everyone else. Soon after Jane's experience in the red-room, Bessie adopts Jane as a helper in the nursery. Jane finds some measure of enjoyment in the help she gives to Bessie.

• Most children hate cleaning things up. Yet Jane enjoyed it. It is presumable that she enjoyed it because it was the only activity she was allowed to do, and because it gave her more excuses not to be around Mrs. Reed and her cousins. How deprived must a child be to prefer cleaning over playing?

Soon, Jane is called into the drawing room to meet a man. Mr. Brocklehurst is the head of Lowood School for Girls. He came to the estate to "interview" Jane, and to decide whether she should come to school there. When Mrs. Reed claims that Jane is deceitful, Mr. Brocklehurst begins to question Jane about some rather peculiar things. First he asks her where the wicked go after they die, then he asks her what hell is like, and finally he asks her if she wants to go there. Of course Jane replies that she does not, and when Mr. Brocklehurst asks Jane what she can do to avoid it from now on, she has no reply.

• Does Jane really believe the lies that Mrs. Reed tells her about her character? Does she really believe she will go to hell when she dies?

I find this to be an extremely odd conversation to have when interviewing a child for a school. Next, Mr. Brocklehurst asks Jane if she reads from her bible. Jane says yes, she does, and then proceeds to list nine books that she really enjoys reading in the bible. That is impressive, to me, for a ten-year-old to enjoy the bible that much. Yet it is not enough for Mr. Brocklehurst. He inquires if she enjoys Psalms, and when Jane says no, that they "are not interesting"¹  Mr. Brocklehurst says that that is a sign of a wicked child and that she has to pray for a softened heart. I find this ridiculous, and so did Jane. Still, she doesn't say anything aloud to Mr. Brocklehurst, who continues on about how wonderful his son is because he loves to read out of Psalms.
Well, Jane is accepted to Lowood School, and Mr. Brocklehurst departs. When Mrs. Reed tries to send Jane away, Jane doesn't leave, and instead confronts her about all of the wretched things she told Mr. Brocklehurst about her. Mrs. Reed becomes frightened at Jane's accusations, and attempts to make her think that everything she did was for Jane's own good. But Jane doesn't buy it. Eventually, Mrs. Reed leaves the room, and Jane is left to do whatever suits her fancy.
So Jane wanders around outside. When Bessie comes to find her for lunch, after initially trying to scold Jane, they both end up declaring that they are more fond of each other than of anyone else in the house.  In fact, Bessie says that when her mother was visiting the previous week, they agreed that they wouldn't wish for any child to be in the position Jane was in, nor to be treated the way Jane was constantly treated. This made Jane very happy to know she wasn't the only one that thought Mrs. Reed treated her poorly. The rest of the afternoon passes in "peace and harmony"². Jane states that "even for me, life had it's gleams of sunshine."³
I find that I am thrilled that Jane has found some measure of peace where she is at, even if she is leaving for school in the next day or two. And so ends chapter four. It was a long one. But it was full of wonderful information, and quite a few answers to previous questions I have posed. Stay tuned for chapter five!


Footnotes:
1. Jane Eyre, Chapter Four, page 32, middle of the page.
2. Jane Eyre, Chapter Four, page 40, final paragraph.
3. Jane Eyre, Chapter Four, page 40, last sentence of chapter.

Chapter Three

Hello,
Here is my assessment of chapter three!
In this chapter, Jane recovers from her fainting spell in the red-room. For the first time in her life, Bessie is being kind to her, and yet she can't help but still be sad. The doctor comes for a follow-up visit later in the day, and asks Jane if she wants to go to school. She says yes she does, and little does Jane know, this moment will change her life forever.
I love this chapter because it is a new beginning for Jane, or very close to one. She has lived in a wretched state with her aunt and cousins for ten miserable years, and she is finally presented with the chance to be happy.

• What would you do if you were presented with an opportunity in much the same way Jane was?

I find it very interesting that Jane is offered a delicious pastry on a plate that she has admired from afar for a long time, and yet she is so depressed she refuses it.¹

Even stranger still, Jane goes to read one of her most favorite books, Gulliver's Travels (allusion, ya'll!), and she is again too depressed to read it.
The fact that Jane is this down in the dumps is rather huge, as she hasn't reacted this poorly to much of anything in the 10 years that she has been tormented by the Reed family.

• Why is it that thinking she saw a ghost has scarred Jane this badly?
• Have you ever felt this way?

While I really do love this chapter, it is rather short and relatively redundant. So, lets sum up by saying Jane is presented with an awesome opportunity, and it will change her life for good.

Till next chapter!

1. Jane Eyre, Chapter Three, page 17, a lot of the first paragraph describes this.

Chapter Two

Okay, I've finished chapter two. After I finished blogging about chapter one, I realized that it took a really long time to write it, and that it was extremely long. Therefore, I decided that I really need to condense what I write, so that people don't lose interest too quickly.
So here is my analysis of chapter two:
Jane has just been sent to the red-room by Mrs. Reed. At first, we have no idea what the significance of this room is, but we find out soon enough. This chapter talks about the experience Jane has in the room.
At first, in this chapter, Jane puts up a huge fight on the way to the red-room. She is called all sorts of names by Bessie and Abbott, and then she is belittled. She is told that John Reed is "her master" and that she is "less than a servant"¹ . This only serves to make Jane more irate and when she won't sit still in the red-room, the maids threaten to tie her up in order to make her sit still.
What a cruel situation to place a NINE YEAR OLD in. I can scarcely believe how badly Jane is treated.
Once she finally sits still in the room, she observes her surroundings. The room is freezing, and she soon "grew...cold as a stone."²  
What a way to ensure that a small child catches cold.
While Jane is stuck in the red-room, she muses about the fact that, while she has been treated horribly for her entire life, she knew from experience as a very young child what the people in the household thought of her, and how they would most likely treat her. Yet she can't help but wonder why exactly she is treated this way. What did she do to deserve her fate?
Jane is so miserable trapped in the red-room that she contemplates running away. She even goes so far as to consider starving herself to death just to evade her misery.

• How must it be to feel so alone and miserable and mistreated that you would consider dying that way?

Jane now recognizes the fact that if she were less reserved Mrs. Reed would most likely treat her better. And yet, she also realizes that if Mr. Reed hadn't died, he most definitely would treat her well, and that would nearly force Mrs. Reed to do the same. 

• If Mrs. Reed loved her husband as much as she said she did, why did she not honor his dying wish?

Now Jane remembers something she heard someone say once: that a spirit of a deceased person may return if their dying wishes aren't fulfilled. She immediately is frightened, and thinks she sees Mr. Reed's ghost. In a panic, she pounds furiously on the door, and the maids rush in. Mrs. Reed, unsympathetic forces her to stay in the room. Jane, so overcome with anxiety, passes out.

In order to show you a bit of what this may have been like, I looked up a video clip of what happened in this scene:

Okay, that's everything for this chapter. Tune in for chapter three.

Footnotes:
1. Jane Eyre, Chapter Two, page 7, top of the page.
2. Jane Eyre, Chapter Two, page 11, bottom of last paragraph.