After enduring the cruel taunts of her cousins and the neglectful indifference of her Aunt Reed, Jane leaves Gateshead for school at the suggestion of Dr Lloyd.
Importance of Education
Jane greets this new stage of her life with excitement, as it represents an escape from the family home where she has suffered such unhappiness. She has realised from an early age that for a poor and friendless girl like herself, life offers few possibilities: " ‘If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman’ " (chapter 3). Thus Mrs Reed, in her haste to be rid of the responsibility of a child she so dislikes, unwittingly hands Jane a priceless asset for the Victorian woman: an education.
Harsh Conditions at Lowood
Jane soon finds that the conditions at Lowood are unforgiving. The school is run by a Mr Brocklehurst, who believes that the lower class girls who constitute his pupils are unworthy of kind or generous treatment: “it was bitter cold, and I dressed as well as I could for shivering, and washed when there was a basin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there was but one basin to six girls, on the stands down the middle of the room” (chapter 5).
Food is also in short supply, “a thin oaten cake shared into fragments” or inedible porridge, “a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted” (chapter 5).
Miss Temple
Despite these privations, the superintendent of the school is kindly, providing the girls with bread and cheese after their inedible porridge, much to the horror of Mr Brocklehurst. Miss Temple treats Jane with love and affection, and continues Bessie’s role in building Jane’s confidence and self-esteem.
Helen Burns
Another character vital to Jane’s character development at Lowood is Helen Burns. She teaches Jane to bear the harsh conditions with dignity: Helen is continually humiliated and flogged by the teachers, but when Jane assumes she wishes to leave the school she replies: " ‘No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object’" (chapter 6). When Jane herself is made to stand on a stool for the day, she draws strength from Helen’s covert smiles and support.
Christian Forgiveness
While Jane is by nature too passionate to ever submit to the type of patient endurance Helen displays, she does learn much of love and forgiveness, qualities she has hitherto seen little of. Although Helen’s way of life is ultimately incompatible with Jane’s sense of justice and equality, we do see some of Helen’s spirit when Jane visits and forgives her dying Aunt Reed in chapter 21.
Helen soon dies, like many of the other pupils at Lowood: “That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog- bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into a hospital” (chapter 9).
A New Independence
Jane remains at Lowood for six more years as a student, and two more as a teacher. When Miss Temple leaves to get married, Jane decides it is time for a change, and her decision to place an advert in the paper and travel alone to work for a new employer marks the next chapter in Jane’s life: thanks to Lowood, she is now an educated and confident young woman.
See also: Jane at Gateshead, Mr Rochester as Byronic Hero, Gothic and Supernatural in Jane Eyre, and Charlotte Bronte biography.
Other Victorian fiction: Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford
