Universities in nineteenth-century England had been brutal and uncompromising establishments. Lowood Faculty from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a common women faculty of that period, and its depiction was derived from the author’s possess ordeals at The Clergy Daughters’ College, situated in Cowan Bridge, a village in the county of Lancashire.
When the apothecary Mr. Lloyd inquires whether or not the youngster Jane would like to go to university, the protagonist recalls her nursemaid Bessie’s observations of university getting “a place where by youthful females sat in stocks, wore again-boards, and had been predicted to be exceedingly genteel and specific” (I, 3, p.25).
Bessie’s remarks echo the fact of a lot ladies schooling in the early nineteenth century, as perfectly as likely some way to anticipating Jane’s grueling ordeals at Lowood, in which the pupils are mistreated, and the lodging, sanitation, and provisions are all of a quite lousy good quality. These aspects are vividly illustrated in quite a few passages, this kind of as the serving of burnt porridge to the women at breakfast: “I noticed an universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of these destined to swallow it” (I, 5, p.45), and the building’s absence of heating: “this morning we had been obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing: the drinking water in the pitchers was frozen” (I, 6, p.52).
Quite a few of these incidents are drawn from Charlotte’s individual activities at Cowan Bridge school, as are many of the figures who determine in them.
Lowood School’s headmaster and treasurer is Mr. Brocklehurst, a grim and pious guy who operates the institution as cheaply as probable. When Jane initially encounters him the fleeting impact she receives at initial glance is that of “a black pillar!” (I, 4, p.31). Mr. Brocklehurst has an primary in the Reverend William Carus-Wilson (1791-1859), the founder of The Clergy Daughters’ School. Carus-Wilson was a Calvinist Evangelist, ordained in 1816. He was also the son of a prosperous landowner. Revelations regarding Carus-Wilson’s operating of the college brought about a lot controversy in afterwards decades.
The kindly superintendent Miss out on Temple who Jane develops a close friendship with has a true life counterpart in Ann Evans, who was the superintendent at Cowan Bridge faculty. Charlotte’s favourable depiction of Overlook Temple is deemed a ‘just tribute’ to Ann Evans’s character.
One more Lowood staff member who was modeled on an true person is Miss out on Scatcherd, the Historical past and Grammar trainer who mercilessly bullies Jane’s buddy Helen Burns. Pass up Scatcherd is evidently centered on a Miss out on Andrews, who taught at Cowan Bridge university when the Bronte sisters attended, and Charlotte’s portrayal of her is rather the reverse to that of Ann Evans. In fact, alongside with John Reed, Skip Scatcherd is arguably the most uncomfortable character in the novel. In her Lifestyle of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell alludes to the severe conduct of Overlook Andrews, cruelties echoed in the Lowood segment of Jane Eyre, these kinds of as when Helen is birched by Miss Scatcherd for acquiring soiled fingernails, despite currently being not able to clean them thanks to the drinking water currently being frozen that early morning.
The character of Helen Burns is normally assumed to be modeled on Charlotte’s eldest sister Maria, who died of consumption in 1825, aged only 11. She made the disease from her insalubrious environment at The Clergy Daughters’ Faculty. Charlotte herself maintained that the school’s privations completely impacted her wellbeing as nicely and that she did not exaggerate any specifics in her descriptions of Lowood in relation to the faculty at Cowan Bridge.
