Mr Brocklehurst Jane Eyre Analysis

Jane, the protagonist in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, is considered to be the strongest female character of her time period. However her road to becoming a strong, independent women is not smooth sailing. In the novel, male characters’ roles and interactions with Jane threaten her quest for equality throughout her life, the most prevalent being Mr. Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester, and St. John Rivers. To begin, in Jane’s rough youth, she left her abusive household to attend school where she meets the cruel Mr. Brocklehurst, the supervisor of her new school, Lowood. Lowood was a great influence on Jane but her time there was not always pleasant. When she attended Lowood, Mr. Brocklehurst attempted to interrupt Jane’s quest for equality from a very young age. Firstly, Mr. Brocklehurst’s humility towards not
This quotation is interesting because even though what he is doing sounds morally correct, later on Jane ironically describes Mr. Brocklehurst’s family as being elegantly clothed. The point is that Mr. Brocklehurst is purposefully degrading these females by forcing them into an environment where girls are lead to believe that if you are not of wealth, one is limited to a certain life. The reader can believe that Mr. Brocklehurst succeeded with this equality obstacle as the conflict of social class sticks with Jane, for it appears again later on in another stage in Jane’s life at Thornfield. Mr. Brocklehurst’s negligence and oppression of these young girls has created a new challenge towards Jane’s equality because Brocklehurst makes it shameful to be a true individual. When a student with naturally curly hair attracts his gaze he immediately confronts Miss Temple about the problem, he says, “I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely”. Again, this can be seen as reasonable by Brocklehurst in that he wants all the girls to be