Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst

Respectable adults who fail a vulnerable child

Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst hold positions that should protect Jane. Mrs Reed is her guardian at Gateshead: her late husband, Jane’s maternal uncle, required her to bring Jane up as one of their own children. Brocklehurst is a clergyman and the manager and treasurer of Lowood, the charity school to which Jane is sent. Instead of offering security, both adults make her dependence a reason to demand obedience and deny her affection.

Brontë connects their domestic and institutional power. Mrs Reed’s accusations follow Jane from home to school because Brocklehurst accepts the respectable adult’s account without hearing the child fairly. Together, they expose the difference between a reputation for goodness and genuinely good conduct.

Mrs Reed makes belonging conditional

In Chapter 1, Jane reports Mrs Reed’s decision to “exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children”. The verb “exclude” establishes Mrs Reed’s power to decide who belongs. “Privileges” makes family companionship sound like a reward rather than something a vulnerable child needs. Her reasoning is circular: Jane must appear happy before receiving the affection that might make her happy.

Brontë makes this exclusion concrete. The Reed children gather around their mother by the fireside while Jane retreats behind a curtain. The arrangement places Jane outside the family’s warmth despite her presence in its comfortable house. Her financial dependence helps explain why others expect gratitude rather than recognise her mistreatment: material support is treated as sufficient proof of kindness.

Mrs Reed also fails to protect Jane from John’s violence. When Jane fights back, her guardian orders her confinement in the red-room in Chapter 2. This is the room where Mr Reed died, so the punishment brings together isolation, fear and the memory of the uncle whose promise should have protected Jane. The Gothic atmosphere makes an ordinary household feel terrifying from the child’s perspective.

The novel’s first-person, retrospective narration matters here. We experience the child’s fear, but the adult narrator can also consider Mrs Reed’s motives. Understanding her resentment does not excuse her cruelty; it makes the account more searching than a simple division between an innocent child and an incomprehensible villain.

An accusation that travels from Gateshead to Lowood

In Chapter 4, Mrs Reed tells Brocklehurst that Jane has “a tendency to deceit”. “Tendency” presents dishonesty as a settled feature of Jane’s character, not a particular action that could be examined. Mrs Reed speaks in Jane’s presence, but her social authority gives the accusation more weight than the child’s experience.

Structurally, this conversation carries Gateshead’s injustice into the next stage of Jane’s life. School seems to promise a fresh start, yet Mrs Reed attempts to determine how Jane will be treated before she arrives. She also asks that Jane be kept humble and remain at Lowood during the holidays, extending her exclusion from the family.

After Brocklehurst leaves, Jane challenges her aunt’s account. This resistance is especially forceful because a dependent girl is expected to submit to an elder. Yet Brontë does not make retaliation a complete solution: Jane’s initial triumph is followed by remorse and misery. Her growth will involve finding a response to cruelty that preserves both self-respect and compassion.

Brocklehurst turns religion into intimidation

When Jane first sees Brocklehurst in Chapter 4, she describes “a black pillar!” The architectural metaphor makes him appear towering, rigid and almost inhuman. His dark clothing contributes to the image, while the exclamation captures the small child’s alarm. He looks like an imposing support, but his conduct will show that he does not support the vulnerable.

Brocklehurst begins his interrogation with “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child”, adding particular emphasis to a naughty girl. His apparently sorrowful tone presents condemnation as concern. He assumes Jane’s wickedness rather than asking about her treatment.

When he asks what hell is, Jane answers, “A pit full of fire.” The simple, concrete image shows how readily a child can imagine the punishment he threatens. His questions lead her towards the prospect of burning for ever. Jane’s practical reply that she must stay healthy and avoid dying briefly punctures his solemn authority: she responds as a child concerned with survival, not as the obedient penitent he expects.

Brocklehurst was modelled on William Carus Wilson, founder of the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, which Charlotte Brontë attended in 1824–25. Wilson edited The Children’s Friend, using accounts of children’s deaths and warnings about disobedience in religious instruction. This background helps explain Brocklehurst’s emphasis on death, sin and punishment, including the warning pamphlet he gives Jane. Brontë turns this kind of instruction into a criticism of authority that frightens children instead of caring for them.

Hunger and luxury expose his double standards

In Chapter 7, Brocklehurst rebukes Miss Temple for providing bread and cheese when the pupils cannot eat their burnt porridge. He declares, “you little think how you starve their immortal souls!” The metaphor reverses the meaning of care: feeding hungry children supposedly damages their spiritual lives. His contrast between bodies and souls allows him to present avoidable deprivation as religious benefit.

Miss Temple’s practical kindness provides a brief but important counter-example. Alongside Helen’s compassionate faith, it prevents a reading in which Brontë simply condemns Christianity. Her sharper target is the use of religion to justify cruelty and social superiority.

Brocklehurst also demands that girls dress “not with braided hair and costly apparel”. This biblical allusion gives his restrictions an appearance of divine authority. His order to cut Julia Severn’s naturally curly hair shows how far his policing of appearance goes: even an involuntary physical feature becomes evidence of unacceptable worldliness.

Brontë then interrupts his lecture with the arrival of his wife and daughters, whom Jane describes as “splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs”. The list emphasises abundance and expense. Their elaborate curls also contradict his attack on the pupils’ hair. The timing creates irony: his own family visibly disproves the standard he has just announced.

This is a class-based double standard, not merely a personal inconsistency. Poorer girls must practise deprivation while the wealthy family enjoys display. Readers are invited to judge his religious claims against what he permits those closest to him.

Public humiliation extends Mrs Reed’s cruelty

In Chapter 7, Brocklehurst places Jane on a high stool and publicly brands her a liar, relying on Mrs Reed’s accusation. He commands the pupils to avoid her and orders that nobody speak to her for the remainder of the day. The spectacle threatens the friendships and good opinion Jane has begun to gain.

He calls her “worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma”. His religious comparison places Jane outside the Christian community he claims to represent. The language draws on a hierarchy in which Christianity is assumed superior to other religions; Brocklehurst uses that assumption to intensify her disgrace. This is his prejudiced judgement, not an objective description of Jane.

The episode develops the connection between the two adults: Mrs Reed excludes Jane from the family, and Brocklehurst attempts to exclude her from the school community. Yet Helen’s supportive smile shows that his command cannot control everyone’s judgement. Later, the exposure of Lowood’s conditions after the epidemic leads to reform and limits his unchecked power, although he remains treasurer. His authority changes more clearly than his character does.

Mrs Reed’s confession reveals the real deceit

Jane returns to Gateshead in Chapter 21 after John’s death and Mrs Reed’s stroke. The return revisits the setting of childhood oppression, but Jane now comes willingly, hoping to forgive. Mrs Reed is physically vulnerable; Jane has greater confidence and offers the care she once lacked.

Mrs Reed explains, “I had a dislike to her mother always”. Her confession reveals jealousy of her husband’s affection for his sister and then for the orphaned Jane. This delayed disclosure changes our understanding of the opening: hostility presented as correction of Jane’s faults began before Jane could be responsible for it.

Mrs Reed also reveals a letter received three years earlier from John Eyre, Jane’s paternal uncle in Madeira. He wished to adopt Jane and leave her his property. Mrs Reed concealed the opportunity and falsely told him that Jane had died of typhus at Lowood. The woman who accused Jane of deceit is exposed as deliberately deceitful herself.

Even now, she says, “You were born, I think, to be my torment”. “Born” suggests that Jane’s very existence is an offence. Mrs Reed shifts responsibility towards the person she injured, treating her own wrongdoing as something Jane tempted her to commit.

Her confession permits two connected readings. Fear of death and guilt bring some recognition of wrongdoing, so she is not wholly without conscience. However, her continued rejection of Jane shows that confession does not become full repentance or reconciliation. Brontë gives her suffering and complexity without disguising her persistent resentment.

Jane changes where her aunt cannot

In Chapter 21, Jane finally tells Mrs Reed, “Love me, then, or hate me, as you will”, before offering her “full and free forgiveness”. The balanced alternatives acknowledge that Jane cannot compel affection. Her forgiveness no longer depends on being loved in return.

This contrasts with Chapter 4, when Jane declares her hatred and promises never to return. As a Bildungsroman, the novel traces development through these repeated encounters: the same hostile relationship reveals a different moral response from the maturing heroine. Mrs Reed’s refusal to accept a kiss leaves the reconciliation incomplete, but Jane does not require her aunt’s approval to act compassionately.

Turning the evidence into an essay paragraph

A useful argument joins the adults through their misuse of respectability, then distinguishes their methods: Mrs Reed controls belonging within the household; Brocklehurst gives exclusion the authority of religion. Close analysis can then explain how Brontë exposes them.

Brontë exposes Brocklehurst’s hypocrisy by making his family contradict his religious demands. In Chapter 7, he insists that the pupils dress “not with braided hair and costly apparel”, using biblical language to make austerity appear a spiritual obligation. His lecture is immediately interrupted by relatives “splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs”. The luxurious list and the timing of their entrance turn his sermon into an ironic exposure of double standards: deprivation is imposed on charity pupils but not on his own family. Drawing on her experience of religious schooling at Cowan Bridge, Brontë challenges an authority that confuses control of vulnerable girls with Christian care.

Central argument

Mrs Reed and Brocklehurst use respectable positions to justify cruelty. Their power links family exclusion at Gateshead with religious condemnation at Lowood.

Mrs Reed: exclusion and concealed motives

• Chapter 1: “exclude me from privileges” — affection and belonging become conditional rewards.
• Chapter 4: “a tendency to deceit” — her accusation prejudices Brocklehurst against Jane before school begins.
• Chapter 21: “I had a dislike to her mother always” — delayed revelation exposes jealousy behind supposedly corrective treatment.
• She hides John Eyre’s offer of adoption and inheritance, falsely reporting Jane’s death: the accuser of deceit is herself deceitful.
• “You were born, I think, to be my torment” — she still blames Jane. Confession is not reconciliation.

Brocklehurst: fear and hypocrisy

• Chapter 4: “a black pillar!” — imposing, rigid architectural metaphor.
• “No sight so sad as that of a naughty child” — condemnation presented as concern.
• Jane’s “A pit full of fire” answers his threatening questions about hell.
• Chapter 7: “starve their immortal souls” — he presents feeding hungry pupils as spiritual harm.
• “not with braided hair and costly apparel” versus “splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs” — biblical authority contradicted by his family; their entrance creates structural irony.
• Publicly calling Jane a liar extends Mrs Reed’s injustice. Reform later limits his control, rather than demonstrating moral conversion.

Form, development and context

• combines childhood suffering with adult reflection.