Jane Eyre: Lowood

Jane left Gateshead in the dark, at five in the morning, alone in the coach for a journey of fifty miles.The afternoon came on wet and misty, and as the daylight failed Jane understood that Lowood must lie far from any town.It was quite dark when the coach at last stopped, and she was led along cold passages into a wide, dim room where about eighty girls sat in silence over their books.

A bell woke her long before daylight. The room was bitterly cold, and Jane dressed with shaking hands.There was water to wash in only where the ice on it had been broken, and often not enough of it to go round.By the light of dim lamps the girls filed into the schoolroom, said prayers, and went in to breakfast, faint with cold and hunger.

Breakfast was porridge, but it had been burnt in the cooking, and the smell alone turned the girls’ stomachs.Spoonful by spoonful they tried it and gave up, and the meal ended with almost nothing eaten.Miss Temple, the tall, calm head teacher, heard what had happened and quietly ordered bread and cheese for the whole school, though she was blamed for it afterwards.

Lowood was a charity school for orphan girls, paid for partly by kind families and partly by a Mr. Brocklehurst, who managed its money and its rules.His name was spoken in a low voice, and Jane saw that the older girls dreaded the day he would visit.The lessons were long, the rooms were never warm, and the girls were always a little hungry — yet the days had an order that Jane, who had known none at Gateshead, almost welcomed.

That afternoon Jane noticed a girl sitting apart, bent over a book as if nothing around her existed.The book was called Rasselas. Jane asked if it was interesting, and the girl — Helen Burns — said she liked it and let Jane look at a page or two.Jane found the pages dull and handed the book back, but something in Helen’s calm, tired face made her want to go on talking.

Helen told Jane that she was often punished for small faults — untidy hands, a wandering mind — and that a teacher called Miss Scatcherd was especially hard on her.Jane said that if she were treated so unjustly, she would hate that teacher and refuse to bear it.Helen shook her head. “It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to bear,” she said — and Jane, who had never heard anyone speak so, watched her a long time in silence.