Jane Eyre Blog #2

These next chapters of Jane Eyre start off with Jane talking to her friend Helen at Lowood about how Jane wants so dearly to be loved by people and Helen, the insightful young lady that she is, tells her that it only matters how she feels about herself rather than striving for the acceptance of human beings. Helen and Jane have become very good friends, they always find comfort in each other through the harsh conditions at the Lowood Institution. It is slowly becoming apparent to Jane that Helen is getting sick. As the cold winter season fades away along with the usual hardships of the institution, Helen grows even more ill. One night Jane saw that the doctor was with Helen and that she was very ill. Jane slept with Helen that night to comfort her and in the morning Helen was dead. 8 years went by with Jane still at Lowood; 6 of those years as a student and 2 as a teacher. She wanted to find something new to do withher life and wrote an advertisement to be a private teacher at a family's home for young children. She got a letter back from a housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax for a position at her home for a young girl Adela. She then accepted the offer and went to the house to begin her new servitude. She met that kind and warming Mrs. Fairfax and Jane's charming new student Adela. This new position looks like it is going to start some new friendships and a new positive outlook for Jane's life.



A few new characters have been introduced at this point in the novel. One being Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper of the new home she will be teaching at, Mr. Rochester, the owner of the home, and Adela, Jane's new student. Mrs. Fairfax is a very kind, warm-hearted elderly woman. She makes Jane feel welcomed and right at home as if she is a visitor as you can tell from her first meeting with her, "She conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shwal and untie my bonnet-strings: I begged she would not give herself so much trouble. 'Oh, it is no trouble; i dare say your own hands are almost numbed with cold. Leah, make a litte hot negus and cut a sanwich or two.'"Jane has never felt this way before at Lowood and especially not when she was living with Mrs. Reed. The novel does not show much about Mr. Rochester since the characters in the novel know little about him as well. Mrs. Fairfax only knows him on a very "business-like" level and describes him as a peculiar man. "I don't know--it is not easy to describe--nothing striking, but you fee it when he speaks to you: you cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest." Adela is a young native French girl who is extremely charming and from her chatty conversations with Jane, she loves attention from other people. I really like how Jane is getting tha kind attention that she deserves from Mrs. Fairfax. I can tell already that they are going to get along very well and Jane will get the same sort of comfort from her that she did from Miss Temple at Lowood. However, I am a little bit eery about Mr. Rochester since he was described as a peculiar person and he has sort of an unknown personality. Adela seems to be the complete opposite of him with her friendly, inviting, and bubbly personality. I think that Adela is a very likeable character. Jane has grown so much as a character. She has grown up to be a very polite young woman and did her best to excel at Lowood which she suceeded in very well. I am very happy that she was able to get a new servitude, as was said in the novel, that is outside of Lowood so she could grow even more as a person instead of being so restricted at the institution. This novel could be considered as a coming of age novel in some aspects. Jane is growing up in so many ways so far and is learning many things on her own. She is learning how to be the best that she can be. The common theme that I am seeing is acceptance. Jane keeps striving to be accepted by the people that she meets and cares so much about the impression that she gives. "It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance, or careless of the impression i made: on the contrary, I never wished to look as well as I could and to please as much as my want of beauty could permit." I think that in the next chapters Jane will be excelling as being a governess in the Thornfield house, due to her natural intelligence and all the things that she has learned at Lowood. I also think that Jane will thrive in the comforting environment that she is now in. So far, this novel suggests that many people's main purpose in life is to be accepted by other people. For example, Jane strived to do her best at Lowood, now she is striving at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax is striving to do her best at Thornfield as well to meet the expectations of Mr. Rochester. It shows that people sometimes care too much about what other people think of them than what they think of themselves. This novel also shows that in this time period you do what you are supposed to and expected to do. I have not seen any rebels in this novel so far. It shows that everyone has a boss under whom you abide by the rules no matter what. In these chapters the novel actually has reminded me somewhat of the book and movie Matilda. In Matilda, Matilda lives with her mom and dad who do not treat her well. Then she goes to school and is also mistreated by her gruesome principal. The equals between this novel and the Matilda are the mother and father would be like Mrs. Reed, the mean principal would be Mr. Brocklehurst, the harsh superintendent, and in both stories there is one sweet person that treats these girls with compassion which would be the sweet teacher from Matilda, and Miss Temple, a teacher at Lowood. I have learned from this novel that if you try your best at what you're doing, even if you can't stand it, you will always get a positive outcome from it.