Love Versus Reason in Jane Eyre

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Your browser does not support the IFRAME tag. ||||| | |0] | First Page[->1] | Next Page ->[->2] Free Barron's Booknotes-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte-Free Online Book Notes Table of Contents[->3] | Message Board[->4] | Printable Version[->5] | MonkeyNotes[->6] THE CHARACTERS MAJOR CHARACTERS/ANALYSIS (continued) MR. BROCKLEHURST When Jane Eyre was first published, the obvious resemblance of the character of Mr. Brocklehurst to the real Rev. Carus Wilson, whose school Charlotte and her sisters attended, created a sensation. Many of Mr. Wilson's friends and former pupils rushed to his defense, accusing Charlotte Bronte of exaggerating the hardships at the school and unfairly accusing Mr. Wilson of hypocrisy (particularly since, unlike the character of Brocklehurst, Mr. Wilson did not have a wife and daughters who lived in luxury). Whether or not Charlotte Bronte was fair to Mr. Wilson,- it would be hard to argue that Mr. Brocklehurst is a well-rounded creation. However, it is interesting to know that Bronte was being entirely realistic in the scene where Mr. Brocklehurst threatens ten-year-old Jane with hellfire for her childish misbehavior. In real life, the Reverend Mr. Wilson not only forbade his pupils to read novels, he expected them to read stories he wrote himself about the horrible things that happen to little boys and girls who disobey. In one typical story, a little boy violates the Sabbath by going ice skating on Sunday. What happens? He promptly falls through a patch of thin ice, drowns, and goes to hell. And in a true account of an eleven-year-old who died while a student at his school, Mr. Wilson wrote that his reaction was one of rejoicing that God had taken one of the best-behaved children in school-"the one for whose salvation we have the best hope"- since her death may "be the means of rousing many of her schoolfellows to seek the Lord while he

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