Today, we will be reading chapters 5 through 8 of Jane Eyre, Jane's introduction and

then orientation to her new home, the Lowwood School.

This section starts with Jane realizing that at Lowwood, she will be cold and hungry,

and ends with a sentence, I would not now have exchanged Lowwood with all its provisions

for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.

It's not because the provisions aren't brutal, the girl's underwear is counted and they

sometimes are so hungry they faint.

It's simply that at Lowwood people see Jane for who she is and how she actually behaves.

There is a hint of kindness at Lowwood.

At Lowwood, Jane meets two people who change everything, Helen Burns and Miss Temple.

Lowwood is also where different forms of religion are on display.

Charlotte Bronte was raised by a minister and she loved her father.

She married his mentee, but there were things about his church that she abhorred.

He sent her to a school much like Lowwood, the clergy daughter's school at Cowan Bridge,

and that school literally killed two of her sisters.

The idea of these schools was that you humiliate the body to save the soul.

Charlotte wanted bodies to be taken care of on earth, humiliating the body and meant

your sisters died.

And she had controversial ideas about salvation that are given voice by Helen Burns in this

chapter.

After negative responses to Jane Eyre, she wrote to a friend in 1850, I'm sorry the clergy

do not like the doctrine of universal salvation.

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