Mr. Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bront

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However, later in the chapter, the authenticity of his beliefs in living plainly and without luxury are called into serious doubt, as he describes a visit to Lowood by his wife and one of his daughters, saying that the girls looked at their dresses ‘as if they had never seen a silk gown before’. The fact that his family are wearing silk gowns yet his pupils ‘almost look like poor people’s children’ highlights an underlying hypocrisy in his schooling methods.
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Here the similarities with Gradgrind cease, as he can never be described as a hypocrite. Every piece of fact he taught to the children in his school, he also taught to his own children (although this eventually destroyed them). Another similar display of Brocklehurst’s hypocrisy comes later in the book, when he visits his school along with his daughters. After making strict orders that ‘each of the young persons before us that has a string of hair twisted in plaits… must be cut off’.

However, a mere few seconds later, his daughters enter with ‘a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled’. Again this shows the difference in treatment of his pupils and his family. This shows he has one of two frames of mind. Either he does not believe in the rules he is inflicting upon his pupils at Lowood and is telling them that they will go to hell unless they humble themselves merely for cruelty’s sake, or he believes that poor people are different to rich people in the eyes of God.

I believe the latter is correct, as he does speak very passionately and convincingly on the virtues of humility in the young girls who attend his school, for example, ‘Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese… in these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls’. Although this may be his religious belief, Bronti?? has no compassion for his character whatsoever and shows this in several instances. One is the cold and heartless way he wishes the girls to be treated if their food is spoiled.
Despite the fact that they are fed very little as it is, he thinks the girls should miss the meal in order to ‘save their immoral souls’. No such unbridled cruelty is ever shown by Gradgrind, who only ever does harm with good intentions. Despite all of his lecturing and preaching, however, Brocklehurst is little respected by his pupils or his teachers, merely feared. Helen teaches this to Jane just after Brocklehurst punishes her. Jane believes that her peers will hate her after Brocklehurst announced that she was a servant of Satan and a liar, but Helen responds saying that ‘Mr.
Brocklehurst is not a god; nor is he even a great and admired man; he is little liked here’. This is also dissimilar to Gradgrind, who is respected greatly within Coketown, being an M. P. and often being described as an ’eminently practical friend’. The lack of respect from teachers for Mr. Brocklehurst shown later in the book, when Miss Temple revokes his decision that no one should talk to Jane, saying to the school that she was ‘most happy to be able to pronounce her cleared from every imputation’.

Sylvester Robinson

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