Blackwell Reference Online

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boarding school for girls in Jane Eyre (officially Lowood Institution, and also referred to in ch. 9 as “the Orphan Asylum”), one of the many notable schools in Victorian fiction. Life at the school is spartan, discipline harsh, the philosophy behind it class-bound, Calvinistic, and hostile to all independence of thought and action. Jane refers to the “chilly harborage of Lowood” (v. 2, ch. 6), which sums up the physical and emotional atmosphere of the school. The son of the founder, Mr Brocklehurst, sets the tone, and he is obsessed by the damnation of wicked children. He also controls the regime of punishment which amounts to sadism, and he is followed in this by the worst of the teachers (Miss Scatcherd) and silently opposed by the best (Miss Evans). The school depicted, seen through the eyes of a passionate and imaginative child, was immediately recognized as being the Clergy Daughters’ School (Cowan Bridge). Even more tellingly, it was taken by many reviewers to be not just a study of one bad school, but to describe a typical charitable institution for girls. “How many similar establishments are there at this moment in ‘merry England’?” asked the Observer , clearly expecting the answer “many.” See also Clergy Daughters’ School ; Wilson, Rev. William Carus ... log in or subscribe to read full text