从《简爱》看维多利亚时期的女性教育论文

从《简爱》看维多利亚时期的女性教育----论文

成都理工大学毕业论文

标题不要乱改，你的原始标题是

A Study on the Female Education in Victorian Period

— based on Jane Eyre (Education for Victorian Girls-Based on Jane Eyre)

Student: Liu Xia Class: 200711010106 Supervisors: Prof. Duan Chen; Ms. Chen Xingjun

Abstract

Jane Eyre was published in 1847, over a century and a half ago. It became popular immediately and has continued to find appreciative audiences throughout every decade since its initial release. A great number of scholars at home and abroad, have made a great deal of study of Jane Eyre, and some of them make detail analysis (of) on education Jane received in Lowood, on the basis of which they also have discussed the education for Victorian girls in the aspects of educational forms, purposes, contents, and so on. On the basis of Jane’s life experiences, by analyzing the terrible educational environment and condition, general educational contents of Lowood, this thesis briefly discusses the female education in charitable boarding school like Lowood in Victorian period. It also presents that female(s) of the lower classes, who have opportunities to receive education, could attend charity schools which (targeted) aimed to train(ing) their students to be good workers in factories, small businesses, and household servant staff, just as the village school established by St. John in Morton. In addition, for females from wealthy genteel families like Miss Ingram, two types of education were available. One was to attend fashionable boarding schools, which are targeted to train their students to be “accomplished” to attract men. The second type was to hire a governess, who was usually put into an embarrassing position between the employer and servants.

Key words: female；education；Victorian；Jane Eyre

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成都理工大学毕业论文

从《简爱》看维多利亚时期的女性教育

学生： 班级： 导师： 教授；

摘 要

《简爱》出版于1874年,一个世纪半以前。自从这本书首次出版，它就立刻收到了大众的欢迎，而且一直以来都不断收到各个时代的人的欣赏。许多国内外学者都对《简爱》作了大量研究，其中有些学者对简在洛伍所受的教育作了详细的分析，并在此基础上在教育方式，教育目标，教育内容等多方面做了很多关于维多利亚时期女性教育的研究，这篇论文根据简的生活的经历，通过对洛伍糟糕的教育条件和基本的教育内容的分析，简单地讨论了维多利亚时期女性在像洛伍一样的慈善寄宿学校所受的教育情况，本文还描述了有机会接受教育的来自下层阶级的女性受教育的情况，她们一般参加慈善学校，这些学校的目标是把它们的学生培养成工厂和小型企业里称职的工人，以及佣人，约翰在莫顿建立的乡村学校就属于这类学校。而像英格兰曼小姐一样出身于富裕的家庭的女性，她们一般可以通过两种方式接受教育。第一种是参加时兴的寄宿学校，这些学校的教育目的是把她们培养成“有修养”的人以便吸引男性。第二种方式是聘请家庭教师，这些家庭教师通常处于比佣人们高一等而却不能与雇主同等阶层的尴尬境地。

关键词：女性；教育；维多利亚；《简爱》

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Contents

Abstract ················································································· i 摘 要 ··················································································· ii Introduction ············································································1 1. The Victorian Era—the Pioneer of Modern Era ····························7 2. Girls’ Education in Schools like Jane ··········································8

2.1 Charitable Boarding Schools ······ 9

2.1.1 The Social Status of Jane ·································9 2.1.2 Education in Charitable Boarding Schools Based on Lowood ······························································9

2.2 The Charity Schools, or Sunday Schools and Schools of Industry ······ 11 2.3 The Genteel Boarding Schools ··· 12

3. Receiving Education at Home Through a Governess like Jane ········ 13

3.1The Social Status of Governesses · 14 3.2 Responsibilities of the Governess 15

Conclusion ············································································ 16 Acknowledgements ·································································· 18 Endnotes ··············································································· 19 References ············································································· 20

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Education for Victorian Girls-Based on Jane Eyre英

文标题同上修改

从《简爱》看维多利亚时期的女性教育

Introduction

Jane Eyre is an important works in the history of British literature. Jane Eyre is such a great novel that it holds an important position in the history of British literature. It has been translated into various languages and adapted for movie, dazzling generations of readers all through the world. This novel begins with little Jane as a despised orphan in the house of her uncle’s widow. Being rebellious, she is packed off to a charitable boarding school, which administers harsh discipline with especial vigor. Jane sets herself to learn, qualifies herself as a teacher, advertises for a post, and is employed as governess of the illegitimate French daughter of Rochester in his country mansion, Thornfield. A love relationship develops between Jane and Rochester. Jane’s resolute free spirit, her soul of fire, brings from the dominant Rochester a proposal of marriage. But at the very moment, the wedding ceremony was interrupted, for Rochester is discovered to have a mad wife who is hidden in that house. Jane doesn’t want to be Rochester’s mistress and subsequently leaves Thornfield, wandering far away. She is rescued by the Rivers family and urged to marry John Rivers in order to undertake missionary work at his side. Almost she consents, but as she ponders, Rochester’s voice crying her name resounds in her ears. Then Jane gains a large amount of inheritance from her uncle whom she has never known before. She

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returns to Thornfield, but the mansion has been destroyed by a fire set by the mad wife. In a scheduled country house nearby, she finds Rochester, blind and alone; they marry and find happiness together.

The author of Jane Eyre,Charlotte Bronte was born in a Priest’s family in York shire in 1816. She had two elder sisters, two younger sisters and one younger brother. Her mother died when she was five years old, leaving six children. Fortunately, her father was an intellect, so he often taught his children to read books and magazines and told stories to them. It influenced Charlotte in developing her interest in literature. When she was very young, she was sent to a boarding school with her three sisters. In 1825, her two elder sisters died of infectious disease in that school. Then, her younger sister Emily and she were forced to go back home and compile a journal named “Youth”, which laid a solid foundation for their later creation of literature. When she was 15, she went to another school to study. And in order to support her family, she became a teacher in this school after her graduation. After she left this school, she went to a rich family to be a tutor for twice, during which she (declined to)? men who wanted to marry her. In order to teach French, Charlotte and Emily went to a French school to learn French. In that school, Charlotte fell in love with her French teacher deeply, yet she didn’t tell him. 1847, under the name of Currer Bell, she published the novel Jane Eyre which was a great shock at that time and made her successful. Her two younger sisters also published their novels and succeeded at that time. The great success of the Bronte sisters brought great happiness to their family. But in the following years, Charlotte suffered from great sorrow: her younger brother and two younger sisters died one by one in two years. But she persisted in writing and published another three fictions. She got married with a priest when she was 38 years old. After she enjoyed happiness for six months, she died in the next year.

In the twenty-first century, girls are rarely educated differently from boys, unlike girls in the same era with Jane who received education in a single-sex environment. In fact, most formal education throughout the world at the present time is in the mixed-gender settings. Boys and girls are generally believed to need to learn the same basic information from elementary through high school, and are expected to have the same educational opportunities in college and other postsecondary educational environments. However, in Victorian era, people

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generally believed that men were superior to women in intelligence, and women were not worthy of any cultivation and taking up advanced studies. They also held the view that women’s inborn duty was to be understanding wives and loving mother. Even if women in that era received education, they were mainly taught to prepare for their future family life. Girls from low class generally taught labor skills and values to be punctual, hard-working, and obey their employers, which was more beneficial to employers than themselves. However, girls from wealthy families also received insufficient education. No matter attending schools or hiring governesses to receive education, they were taught a litter basic knowledge. Instead, they were taught to be “accomplished” which was targeted to attract genteel men, try to please them, and marry to them. Such education blotted out women’s qualities of innocence, honesty, sincerity, and so on. Those women perhaps couldn’t survive without men and they were just furnish(es)ed and decorated of men. The education system in Victorian period is totally different from that in modern society. Jane Eyre, by the story of the heroine Jane’s life of school, as student and teacher, and of governess work, demonstrates the fundamental situation of female education in Victorian era, which may help us deal with the concern of how to educate girls best in modern society.

The body of this paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, it talks about the society of the Victorian Era, which was an extraordinary age, and sometimes been called the Second English Renaissance. The second part primarily tells the fundamental situation of main schools in Victorian era based on Jane Eyre —(---)the severe conditions in Lowood such as inadequate food, clothes, and so on; the educational purposes of becoming good workers and servants, or becoming females like Miss Ingram who is graceful superficially but empty mentally in order to find a good husband respectively in terms of girls from poor family and girls from high class; and the educational contents of some skills such as sewing and weaving, household work, a little basic knowledge, of the like. The third part is about education given by a governess as Jane, whose family background, educational degree, and manners should be good and appropriate.

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1. The Victorian Era—the Pioneer of Modern Era

Victoria who ruled over the Britain Empire for 60 years was a well-known queen in English history. The Victorian era is generally agreed to stretch through the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). It was a tremendously exciting period when many artistic styles, literary schools, as well as social, political and religious movements flourished. It was a time of prosperity, broad imperial expansion, and great political reform. Undoubtedly, it was an extraordinarily complex age, which has sometimes been called “the Second English Renaissance”1. It was, indeed, the forerunner of the modern era.

Victoria’s time was full of tremendous changes in almost every aspect. The Industrial Revolution continued to develop in spite of the social evils that accompanied it. The emergence of locomotives threw Britain into a frenzy of railway building. Agriculture was further mechanized. Trade and commerce grew tremendously, driving more peasants, hand spinners and weavers to the crowded factories of the smoky cities. England was almost arriving at the age of machinery.

Development of productivity enlarged men’s vision and increased their interest in scientific knowledge. In 1859, Darwin published his Origin of Species in which he proved that the physical species are not fixed, but changing by natural selection in which the fittest survive. It also provided material evidence to justify the theory of free competition, as had been raised by Adam Smith concerning production and trade. Free competition and individualism became a more important element in British values.

The change in outlook and eagerness to gain useful knowledge made it possible for a group of famous writers to appear, with Thackeray, Bronte, Dickens, and George Eliot among the most famous. Their works either exposed social evils in an effort to promote social reforms, such as the novels of Dickens, or sought to establish guiding values for the relationship of the individual to himself, to other individuals and to society at large, such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Their works played an important role in pushing forward social reforms and establishing the British rules.

Secret voting was introduced in 1872 and male members of the working class in the towns got the right to vote in 1876. The rural working class was also enfranchised in 1886. Compulsory education was adopted and universities began

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to admit women students. Oxford and Cambridge got their freedom to enroll students who were not Anglican Church believes and the college fellows were allowed to get married.介绍维多利亚时期的重点应放在教育现状方面，如教育取得了哪些进步，还有哪些缺陷等。而这一部分在整个第一章中涉及到的只有这短短三行。思考一下。

2. Girls’ Education in Schools like Jane

In Victorian period, the form and content of one’s education depended largely on one’s economic and social standings.

Women of the upper classes were usually educated at exclusive boarding schools, which focused more on the “accomplishments” the girls could attain( that might attract the notice of a wealthy mate) than on intellectual stimulation and knowledge. Those who did not attend such boarding schools generally were educated at home by a governess and a series of “masters” in various fields such as music, drawing, dancing, and the like. Among the lower classes, most girls attended no school, but those who had the chance to receive education generally attended three varieties: a charity school, in which the girl’s needs for food, clothing, and occupation were taken care of as she was trained to be a good worker of the servant class or a worker in industry; the industrial school, in which a girl was trained in the principles and activities most useful to the owner of the industry in which girls who worked the other six days of the week came for religious instruction as well as to learn basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Middle-class girls, like the Bronte sisters, tended to attend either boarding schools or day schools where they learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Many were also trained in many of the “accomplishments” of the upper classes, especially those girls like Jane who were expected to make their own living, since teaching was the only occupation most girls of the middle classes were permitted to consider entering. Those who did not attend school generally were taught by their mothers to run households, the expectation being that most girls would marry and have husbands who would provide for their basic needs.

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2.1 Charitable Boarding Schools

2.1.1 The Social Status of Jane

The school the character of Jane Eyre attends is neither the lower class’s charity schools nor the wealthier boarding schools. Her path, like that of many girls born into genteel families with little money, integrates aspects of both. Jane is born into an impoverished, but genteel, family. Her father is a clergyman and her mother the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. Therefore, despite the fact that Jane is an orphan and left with no money of her own because her parents have lived on the income from Mr. Eyre’s church and have no savings to leave to their daughter, Jane’s aunt doesn’t send her to a poor working class charity school or a school of industry. By reason of her birth into the genteel classes, Jane is entitled to a life within that level of society. Therefore, Jane is sent to Lowood, an institution established for the education of daughters of clergymen.

2.1.2 Education in Charitable Boarding Schools Based on Lowood

Jane’s move to Lowood is the result of one of her hopes that “School would be a completely change, it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead life.”2 Jane is sent to the school on the advice of a doctor Mrs. Reed calls in to take care of her when she becomes ill after a particularly cruel and unfair punishment. The doctor understands that Jane’s life at Gateshead is a life of torment and hopes that getting her away from the Reed family will make her life easier. However, Mrs. Reed’s choice of Lowood as the school to which Jane is sent doesn’t fulfill Jane’s need for a less tormented life.

Lowood is a charity school for girls of lower genteel standing whose relatives do not have the means or the desire to care for them. The families of the girls can provide only a small amount toward the total required to lodge and teach the girls, but it is not what was traditionally referred to as a charity school.

According to Mr. Brocklehurst, “Plain fare, simple clothing, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits, such is the order of the day at the school.”3 In fact, the situation and environments of charitable schools, like Lowood, are indeed severe.

The food provided for the girls is limited in quantity and poor in quality. When it’s time to have breakfast, despite the fact that they are hungry, girls in

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Lowood don’t seem happy with the food because the taste is quite disgusting. When Miss. Temple provides a lunch of bread and cheese for girls on her own responsibility, Mr. Brocklehurst criticizes her and says that his plan in bringing up these girls is to render them hardy, patient, self-denying rather than to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence. Their dinner also just consists of a cup of coffee and a half-slice of brown bread, which are really insufficient. There is generally too great a disproportion between the meat and the vegetable and farinaceous food provided. It’s well–known fact, that most girls, in their first initiation into school, get ill, from a diet so different to what they have been accustomed to. Helen Burns may be one of these victims.

Their clothing, which they take every Sunday throughout the winner as they walk miles to and from church, is inadequate for long walks in cold temperatures. They remain at unheated stone church in that inadequate clothing throughout the long day, eating a skimpy, cold-packed lunch as they wait for second service. In addition, a long, cold walk home follows it.

Punishments for infractions of the rules at Lowood are cruel, both physically and psychologically. When Jane doesn’t agree that she is the deceitful and morally corrupt girl Mrs. Reed makes her out to be, Mr. Brocklehurst threatens her with the full exposure of what he has been told are her misdeeds, and warns other girls to avoid Jane’s company, exclude her from their sports, and shut her out from their converse. In addition, he also asks teachers to keep eyes on her movements, all of which are called to“punish her body to save her souls”4. What’s the worst is that he even let Jane stand half an hour longer on the stool and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day. It’s hurt Jane who is just a little girl. Most teachers in charitable boarding schools like Lowood are excessively harsh. Just as Miss Scatcherd, they often try to change girls’ behaviors which they disapprove by means of physical punishment (beaten girls with birch branches) and shame (pinning signs on girls for carelessness, making them stand on stools for all to see their shame, etc.). For instance, when Helen Burns’ fingernails are dirty because of the water in the basin in the dormitory that morning was frozen, Miss Scatcherd refuses to hear the explanation. The fact of unclean fingernails is all she needs or wants to know before giving punishment. She is the epitome of the bad teacher in most schools. There are still good teachers as Miss Temple, but just a little percentage.

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At charitable boarding schools like Lowood, girls are trained to fit into the world of their betters in order that they may become governesses, school teachers, or lady’s companions as a means of providing for themselves when reaching adulthood. These schools provide girls with basic knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Jane in Lowood has even learned geography, music, history, grammar, and so on. Many of the “accomplishents” taught at the schools for girls of wealthy families are also taught at the schools like Lowood, but they are taught with the intent of providing the girls with the ability to teach those accomplishments to wealthier girls rather than to use them to attract husbands for themselves. As a matter of fact, they are trained to believe that they will never find husbands since they have no financial assets to offer. They are taught at these schools to be self-effacing, to endure deprivation without complaint, and to expect little out of life. Helen Burns represents the extreme of amiability and self-depreciation. She is “good girl” who never has a bad word to say against anyone except herself. She is willing to accept any and all criticism of herself, believing that she is virtually a very slatternly and willful girl. She undergoes painful corporal punishment from Miss Scatcherd without a protest or a whimper, certain that she must endure the punishment in order to learn the lessons she is supposed to learn in life. She is continually shamed in front of the other students, often as punishment for circumstances beyond her control, and she takes her punishment in stride, as her due. Yet, as poor girls depend on “charity”, they are expected to be grateful for everything they receive. At schools like Lowood, they are trained to support themselves through teaching and sewing, the two professions by which a single, genteel woman without other means of support could manage to sustain herself. Jane learns her academic lessons well and is qualified, by the end of her training at Lowood, to hire herself out as a governess, by which means she is convinced that she will be able to earn her livings and, thus, take care of her future.

2.2 The Charity Schools, or Sunday Schools and Schools of Industry

For girls from the lower classes, if they have chances to attend school, they can attend the charity schools, or Sunday schools and schools of industry that are geared toward training their students to be good workers in factories, small

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businesses, and household servant staffs rather than making their students be intellectual in mind. Most of these schools teach a minimum of what we consider to be educational subjects today, instead of focusing on training the students in tasks such as sewing or weaving. They are also taught in the kind of values that will be most beneficial to their future employers. The schools teach girls to be prompt, to be thorough, to keep themselves clean, and to obey authority without any complaints. These schools are supported through subscriptions paid by industrialists and charitable wealthy individuals, whose primary interest is that these girls will be trained to be productive workers, not that they will receive an education in the intellectual sense. The teaching of these values is probably the most important aspect of the schools from the perspective of those who support them with money and who employ them later in life. Many of the girls who attended these schools go on to apprenticeships as servants or factory workers when they are old enough.

The school in Morton established by Mr. St. John is such a school. According to Mr. St. John, when he came to Morton two years ago, there had no school and the children of the poor had no chance to receive education, even boys, let alone girls. Then he established a school for boys, and later he decided to establish another school for girls supported by the kindhearted Miss Oliver. Naturally, Jane became a teacher of this village school. Unlike the epitome of the bad teacher, Miss Scatcherd, Jane spared no efforts to teach those girls, and she became a favorite in the neighborhood. Whenever she went out, she heard cordial greetings on all sides and was welcomed with friendly smiles. However, Jane is just an exception as most of teachers in Victorian era are excessively harsh，fail to distinguish right from wrong, and especially like to use corporal punishment and shame to change girls’ behaviors of which they disapprove. What’s more, it’s predictable that this school still attaches greater importance to skills such as weaving and sewing rather than intellectual training.

2.3 The Genteel Boarding Schools

For girls from wealthy families, one of the educational forms is to send them away to fashionable genteel boarding schools. Often the intellectual content is only just slightly more rigorous than that of the industrial school curriculum, but women from this level of society are not expected to have to earn their own

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livings; therefore, the emphasis on learning marketable skills is negligible. Instead, they focus on becoming “accomplished”: learning to dress appropriately, discuss appropriate subjects, play musical instruments, sing, dance, speak French, and read fashionable works of both fiction and nonfiction5, all of which are just targeted to show up in the face of gentlemen to find a wealth genteel husband for themselves. They are not expected to be put into the position of having to support themselves, nor are they expected to have to do any of the real labor of household work, since they will have servants to perform those services for them. In these schools, they are taught by a variety of different teachers along with other girls approximately of the same social class. This form of education has two advantages. In the one hand, it can keep the daughters out of the house which provides the parents with greater freedom and fewer obligations. On the other hand, it enables the girls to meet girls from other families in the same class-girls who may have brothers at home who are in the market for an appropriate marital partner. Such schools, therefore, often become a kind of market place where wealthy young men may find suitable marriage partners.

One of Mr. Rochester’s guests at a party, Miss Ingram, might have attended such genteel boarding schools. She was beautiful in appearance and well “accomplished”: playing piano, singing, and other brilliant abilities, which were (was) the most important educational purpose of these genteel schools. She was showy and not genuine, poor in her mind, and empty in her heart. During her stay in Thornfield Hall, she tried her best to show her brilliant abilities and graceful genteel family background to draw Mr. Rochester’s attention, in order to get married with him. It seems that those girls from wealthier family receive education just for the purpose of being “accomplished” to find a good, genteel, and affluent husband, which is quiet contrary to the values of schools in modern society.

3. Receiving Education at Home Through a Governess like Jane

When Jane leaves Lowood, she is eighteen years old and ready to enter the world as an adult. She advertises for a position as a governess and is hired by Mrs. Fairfax of Thornfield Hall. It indicates the second method of educating daughters of wealthy families — (----) to hire a governess, usually a woman,

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whose pedigree is genteel, but who had fallen on hard times, which may because her father’s income was not large enough to support her.

3.1The Social Status of Governesses

In British society in Victorian era, a governess has special status — (----) she is a middle-class woman with salary. In society at that time, the middle-class women were referred to women who were dedicated to domestic chores and didn’t work in the laboring market in public. Therefore, the governess becomes the most appropriate heroine for authors to deal with the topics of family, education, and social issues. In the year of 1850, it’s recorded that there were about 21,000 governesses in the UK, and most of them had received good education but fallen on hard times. A great number of women wanted to do this job, which resulted in the quite low salaries.

Governesses are females who teach children at children’s home. Some governesses go to the children’s home to teach certain courses, which often can be seen in cities. Other governesses are living with their employers, just like Jane. They don’t stop teaching until the boys reach the age of going to attend the public schools or primary schools which are private schools with high tuition and which are special schools targeted to make students be admitted to famous universities. However, for those girls, governesses will continue to teach them until they reach the adolescence, that is, the age of entering social communication. A few middle-class females who need to support themselves on their own regard the position of governess as an appropriate job. Though a governess must have received a good education and have a manner similar to noble woman, they are still thought of as servants.

Similar to nannies, governesses have been regarded to be representatives of mothers. Therefore, the question whether the governess is competent for this job or not doesn’t (don’t) just depend on the governess’s intelligence. The employers expect that governesses should be good exemplars, and that they should have decent values and behavior. What’s the most important is that they must have genteel social status. According to the definition of a book called The Victorian Governess, “a governess is a person whose family background, behavior, and degree of education should be similar to ours. No other classes require so strictly to their members on family background, mind, behavior, and so on.”6 A perfect

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governess can be the orphan of a clergyman and officer, or other woman who has good family background but who has to hunt for jobs to support themselves. Their salaries can be very low to about eight pounds. For example, when Charlotte Bronte was a governess, once she had got the salary of twenty pounds a year (but in fact, it’s sixteen pounds because she had to pay the washing fees).

The governesses living with their employers have stable settlements, and can enjoy the comfort once they have been accustomed to. Theoretically, governesses should be equally treated with their employers of the same class. As a matter of fact, when Jane becomes a governess in Thornfield Hall, she receives an unexpected ardent reception and has been treated with much respect which she had never received before. In general, these governesses have their own bedrooms, on the same floor with children. A nanny is called “wet-nurse” or “nanny”, but a governess is “Miss”. The nanny should call children “Miss” or “Mr”, but the governess can call children by their names directly. However, the governess’s status is still obscure, because she is neither a member of the family or a servant. She has meals with children rather than the adults. Though she can be invited to a party of family members after dinner, she would think herself to be an unexpected guest. Once there is a party of high-class guests in the Thornfield Hall, Jane is invited to attend with Adele. Those wealthy women pay no attention to Jane. What’s more, Miss Ingram, at the party, says to Mr. Rochester, “You should send your girl your girls to school. I suppose you have a governess for her. You should hear mother on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them extremely unpleasant and the rest ridiculous. They are a nuisance.”7 Absolutely, she looks down upon the governesses. Still, Jane believes that she is not of their kind and slips away in the midway. Nevertheless, a governess will also feel unease in the bedrooms of servants. Especially, some servants may hate her because of her good education and genteel class background. Such isolation and separation renders the governess feel lonely and upset.

3.2 Responsibilities of the Governess

Girls taught by private governesses will receive a quality education if their governesses are well-trained and their parents allow the governesses a free hand in teaching. But often the governesses are not well-trained and /or the parents

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interfere with the progress of their daughters’ education to the point of making hiring a governess more of a status symbol for the family than an educational advantage for their daughters.

However, Jane is not the case. Though the intellectual rigor of Lowood, like that of most early nineteenth-century schools for girls, is not strong, and more attention is paid to suitable behavior and rote learning of basic information than to advanced knowledge or critical thinking skills, Miss Temple does make certain that those girls who are capable of learning basic intellectual as well as practical skills receive some education in them. As a result, by the time Jane leaves Lowood at the age of eighteen, she has sufficient knowledge and skills to be hired as a governess in a well-to-do family. Her knowledge of French, a requirement in most schools for those of genteel birth, is essential to her work with Adele Varens, the young French girl who is Mr. Rochester’s ward and Jane’s student. Her knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic is sufficient for Adele’s educational needs, and her understanding of and conformity to the rules of manners for young woman in society make her a satisfactory model of behavior for the young girl. These qualities and skills are ones that Miss Temple made certain Jane developed while at Lowood, not through punishment and shame(Miss Scatcherd’s means of teaching young women), but through positive reinforcement of those qualities and skills whenever she saw them displayed. When Jane becomes a governess, she models her own behavior on that of Miss Temple. She recognizes the potential loneliness and isolation a child like Adele can feel, because Adele is alone in a strange country with people who don’t even speak her language. Jane also tries to provide comfort and security for the child, along with proper training of her morals and her mind. Apart from teaching Adele intellectual knowledge, Jane, as a governess, still (the representative of) represents the child’s mother. She has meals and plays with the child, and takes the child to bed every night.

Conclusion

Jane Eyre is an excellent autobiographical works. It tells the story of the heroine Jane’s life of school, as student and teacher, and of governess work, which were based strongly on the experiences of the author Charlotte Bronte, her sisters, and her female friends.

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In the Victorian period, women from poor families, if having a chance to receive education, often attended charity schools, Sunday schools or schools of industry, which were targeted to train females to be good, responsible, and obedient workers in factories or servants in wealthy families. Such education was essentially beneficial to the employers rather than the women themselves. Women of the genteel classes like Miss Ingram, were trained to be “accomplished” rather than “educated”. Their education generally consisted of a minimum of reading, writing, and very basic arithmetic, along with training in music, drawing, painting, dancing, speaking, and reading French, needlework (the higher the social status of the students, the less practical the kinds of needlework taught), and, in a very few of the more responsible schools, some basic household management, all in a single-sex environment. Too much intellectual training, it was thought, would make a woman unfit to fill a woman’s proper role. It would distract her attention from the important things in life: finding a husband, having children, managing a household, because of which, men at that time were even afraid to marry a well-educated and independent woman. The education for girls from middle class like Jane, might be a little good, for they learned not only some basic knowledge, but also practical skills, which enabled them to support themselves. The experiences of Jane in Lowood demonstrated that even though those girls in the Victorian era may be lucky to receive education, they can’t learn virtual intellectual knowledge. The purposes and courses for females may not be regarded to be reasonable. In the education of females in that period, so much attention is paid to externals, and so little to the regulation of the heart and the improvement of the understanding. It’s because the superficial mode of their education furnishes them with a false and low standard of intellectual excellence, that women sometimes become ridiculous by the unfounded pretensions of literary vanity. As far as modern people are concerned, education should attach importance to various courses, intellectual training and practical application.

In addition, the role the governess filled in Victorian era was usually a very lonely one. As a woman of genteel birth and education, she did not fit in with the servant class and therefore rarely received friendship and comfort from the family’s other servants. On the other hand, her poverty and need to work for her living prevented her from being on terms of equality with her employers. And,

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regardless of her skill as a teacher, she was rarely allowed the freedom to teach without some measure of parental interference. The content of her students’ education as well as the methods by which they were educated and disciplined were usually dictated by their mothers, who often encouraged the children to think of the governess as merely another servant deserving little respect or deference. Governess, as a teacher, should be given enough respect and freedom to teach the children. The governesses are worth much more than they are paid. In modern society, a teacher is an engineer of people’s soul and occupies one of the most respectable positions.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the

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writing of this thesis.

My deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisors Professor Duan Chen and Ms. Chen Xingjun, for their instructive advice and useful suggestions on my thesis. They had walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. I am deeply grateful of their help in the completion of this thesis.

Second, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the professors and teachers at the Department of Englis h (: Professor)?. They had instructed and helped me a lot in the past three years.

Last my thanks would go to my beloved parents who have always been helping me out of difficulties and supporting me without a word of complaint all through these years. I also owe my sincere gratitude to my friends, my classmates and roommates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis.

Endnotes

1. 常俊跃，夏洋，赵永青. 英国历史文化 [M]. 北京：北京大学出版社. 2010:151.

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2. Rachel Barton. Jane Eyre [M]. 北京：航空工业出版社. 2008: 24. 3. Rachel Barton. 28. 4. Rachel Barton. 46.

5. Debra Teachman. Understanding Jane Eyre[M]. 北京:中国人民大学出版社. 2007: 28.

6. Kathryn Hughes. The Victorian Governess[M]. London: Hambledon Press. 1993: 334.

7. Rachel Barton. 120.

References

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University Press, 19.

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[3] Barton, Rachel. Jane Eyre [M]. 北京：航空工业出版社，2008.

[4] Berton, Pierre. The Royal Family: The Story of the British Monarchy from Victoria to Elizabeth [M]. Westminster: Knopf Publishing Group, 1953. [5] Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre [M]. 北京：外文出版社，2001.

[6] Hughes, Kathryn. The Victorian Governess[M]. London: Hambledon Press, 1993.

[7] Lewis, Sarah. “On the Social Position of Governess.” Fraser’s Magazine[J]

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[8] Streitmatter, Janice L. For Girls Only: Making a Case for Single-Sex

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[10] Zanelli, Susanne M. “GIRLS: Gifted, Intelligent, Real-Life Scientists.” The Science Teacher[J] vol. 67. No. 5(2000):46-47.

[11] 常俊跃，夏洋，赵永青. 英国历史文化[M]. 北京：北京大学出版社，2010. [12] 纯志. 外国文学名著导读[M]. 成都：成都四川人民出版社，2001. [13] 丁芸. 英美文学研究新视野[M]. 杭州：浙江大学出版社，2005. [14] 蒋孟引. 英国史[M]. 北京：中国社会科学出版社，1995. [15] 刘炳善. 英国文学简史[M]. 河南：河南人民出版社，2001. [16] 毛竹生. 英美文学名作欣赏[M]. 北京：科学出版社，2004.

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