This shows us that if children were adopted (they had no choice who they were adopted by), they were quite often treated badly and usually got beaten being treated with disgust.
The second chapter is about her time at Lowood School, she is sent there so that she is away from her aunt who in both their minds is a good thing.
The girls at this school are treated quite badly, there clothes are all rugged and ripped, it is very cold and the food is bad and they are beaten, Jane's best friend Helen Burns dies at Lowood. This indicates how there are no rules about safety of children in the 19th century.
In Lowood Jane answers back and try to do what she wants and not what she is told. But this is only in the beginning of here time there, as she gets on in the school she seems to learn a lot and becomes a tutor and works there and she and Mr Brocklehurst are neutral against each other. She became a teacher because in the 19th century for a middle class woman there was very few jobs available if you were lower-class then there were slightly more jobs, such as sewing, manufacturing etc, but these jobs very poorly paid. For a woman of Jane’s class (middle class), the only jobs really available were teaching or being a governess. So this shows how in the 19th century woman were extremely limited to there job situations.
If a woman has a child in the 19th century then the Father of the child has the right to decide if she can have anything to do with the child.
Chapter 3 discusses the life of the governess. Most middle class women who did not marry and did not have a family that couldn’t provide for them, most often went into teaching. A lot of women who could not afford to either start their own school or teach at home often became a governess, serving the needs of those wealthier than themselves. A lot of the women who became governesses were quite isolated. This chapter mostly addresses the problems and difficulties a lot of governesses encountered during their time as a governess.
Chapter four deals with the issue of ‘madness’, as Mr Rochester’s mother is hidden up in a room at the top of the mansion, this is how Jane relates the way people are treated in the 19th century, if a person had any thing wrong with their mind, as in they showed intellectual difficulties or a slight madness, people in the 19th century either put them in an institute where they would be poorly treated and locked away or the families of the ‘maddened’ person were advised to lock them away in the house. They should not be a normal part of society.
In chapter 6 Charlotte Bronte raises questions about the laws of the 19th century: How if a woman is married then she has no control over her money, the husband basically controls everything: Divorce was not allowed either, to get a divorce legally it would be a costly time consuming activity and a law had to be passed if you wanted to get divorced: This meant that a lot of people stay married, even if they can not stand each other. Also it portrays laws about the ownership of property, and the diagnosis of and the treatment of mental illness. Bronte is questioning the rightness of these laws, by making the reader feel sorry and sympathetic for the characters affected by them.
Education for children depended on your class, if you were lower-class then you were either sent to a charity school, church, or taught at home by your parents, Middle-class were able to go to a school where it cost little and the very basics were learnt, but if you were upper-class then you were able to go to the best schools or boarding schools.
To show the comparison between an upper-class person and a governess that works for them, I will compare Mr Rochester and Jane. Mr Rochester is older, he is male so has a lot more rights, he is well off, and so has no need to work for a living, and he has a high social position.
Jane on the other hand is young, female so she has little rights at all, she is poor and so has to work to be able to feed and cloth herself, and has a low social position. Most women were in Jane’s position except for those born in to a high-class family. Jane wants to get on in life even though all her situations are stacked against her (poor, young, female). The book is unusual for its time because she does get on and gets a better life.
It was extremely unusual for a low or middle class woman to marry an upper class man or the opposite, so when Mr Rochester and Jane try to get married Mr Rochester’s class would have been lowered in opinion according to other high class citizens. So this shows that in the 19th century there was an unwritten law that people could not marry into a class higher or lower than them unless if it is lower class and semi-middle class as this was seen as less unusual.
Edward Semprini Form 5 English Jane Eyre Coursework /
