JE: Religion

Question 1

Brocklehurst:
1) “a pair of bushy brows…a bass voice”
2) “And what is hell?” … “A pit full of fire”
3) “Humility [is] cultivat[ed] at Lowood” vs “Oh dear papa, how quiet…silk gown before”

Answer 1

1) Big Bad Wolf
2) Catechism-like, restrictive and formulaic - William Wilsons’ “Child’s First Tales”
3) Hypocritical, while the girls at Lowood are plain, having each been silenced and stripped of individuality - they appear just like a mass of performative (for Brock.) religious modesty (“many voices…a congregation of girls…brown stuff frocks”).
- Performative Brocklehurst, show of religious moral sensibility: “you must shun her example” … “this girl is - a liar!”:
-> Overindulgence in his power - an ability to
manipulate language, playing on religious sensibility,
in order to show power and carry out a highly
rehearsed othering of Jane.

BUT! Jane doesn’t shy away from this fear-inducing method of religious doctrine - the fact that she stands on the “rug, where Mr Brocklehurst had stood” is almost confrontational in nature.
- Strong sense of her self and worth, even in youth.

Question 2

Bertha:
- “This was a demonic laugh”
- “Something gurgled and moaned”

Answer 2

• Animalistic, “monster”
• Antichrist, devilish
• Gothic -> devilish due to madness, mad due to the women’s gothic? -> WSS explores.

Question 3

Lowood and Helen:
1) “I dimly discerned a wall before me”
2) “no candle…uncertain light…” /
3) “We feasted that evening as on nectar…”

Answer 3

1) Lowood as an even more oppressive, restrictive world than Gateshead (which even had “Gate” in the name to show Jane’s confinement!) -> significant therefore that it represent religious thought:
- The confining, formulaic nature of Catholic religious doctrines - to freedom to form, as Bronte though important, a personal relationship with God?
2) Jane’s loneliness/lack of a community before (NO GUIDANCE) / which she then finds in this oppressive setting - sense of bonding/forming a collective.
3)
- “feasted” -> like Disciples, suggesting the two intelligent female role models in Helen and Miss Temple represent a pure, true form of Christianity?
- “nectar” -> like a hive of bees, suggesting a sense of community/forming of a collective identity (BILDUNGSROMAN).

Question 4

Rochester, Love, Religion:
1) “I waded knee-deep in its dark growth”

St. John:
2) “[He] had not yet found that peace in God”

! - “I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol”
-> Her temptation, BUT! Now she has done right by
God, but not by herself - must strike a balance, and
find her own personal relationship with religion and
God.

Answer 4

1) Her own dramatic Exodus, away from Roch, the idolisation of whom had rendered her unable to even pray, and back towards religion in St. John*.
-> A sense of protection despite this - God? Benevolent/doesn’t forget Jane, despite everything? Would explain the highly coincidental nature of the following events?
- “I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star
twinkled”.
2) *… represents an embodiment/personification of Evangelical Christianity.
-> YET! Jane is disappointed by his sermon (there is
nothing of what was actually said) - writes with “an
inexpressible sadness” about the references to “a
strange bitterness” and “points [which] sounded like a
sentence pronounced for doom”.
-> Not the personal religion she is searching for? St.
John trapped in Ev.Ch. role? (QUOTE)