Lowood School

[kev67]

Jane's experience at Lowood School seem very different to Tom Brown's in Tom Brown's School Days. Tom Brown only had the bully Flashman to worry about, not semi-starvation, cold and rampant tuberculosis. Tom Brown and his friends certainly had enough energy to go raiding farms, playing sport and going on ten mile cross country runs. Lowood School seems more like a concentration camp.

Helen Burns said that Lowood was a school for girls who had lost one or both parents. She said the fees were £15 a year and that that was not enough so it was topped up, by subscription I think. I have been trying to work out whether £15 a year was enough? I think we found out before that money was worth 80x more then than now going strictly by inflation, but more like 250x more going by comparative earnings. In today's money, £1200 per child does not sound anywhere like enough to cover food, clothing, teachers' salaries, learning materials and building maintenance. Even £3750 seems very low (although I have no idea what boarding school fees are like now). I tried to look up what was the going rate for school fees in 19th century Britain, but I could not find many figures and the school system seemed as complicated then as now. However, the majority of children received some education. Quite often the schools were run by the church, and funded partly by fees, the church itself and government contributions. However, I think they were mostly day schools for the poor, in which only the three R's were taught: reading, writing and arithmetic (and a fourth R, religion). I am not sure boarding schools, or schools to which middle class parents sent their children were subsidized by the church and the government. However, Lowood School is governed by a clergyman for the benefit of orphans, so you would think it would have been at least subsidized by the church.

I did find a couple of examples of school fees on the internet last night. There was a school somewhere that charged from £6 to £9 annual fees in the early 1900's, but I think that was a day school, so didn't cover food and clothing. There was a boarding school in Soho that charged £30 school fees annually in the 1750s plus an extra £1 for each additional subject. That seems to have been a relatively nice school because they offered activities such as fencing to their pupils.

Helen Burns said that the governor, Mr B, lived in a big house, so I suppose the implication was that he was diverting money away from the school.

[kev67]

I can't see Lowood School passing its Ofsted inspection, and I think Jamie Oliver (celebrity cook) would have something to say about the school meals. I can't see how they're enough to survive on:

• small dollop of porridge for breakfast
• bit of bread and draught of coffee at 5pm
• glass of water and an oatcake at bed time

I think they also had a small amount of cold meat and bread for lunch, at least they did on Sundays.

I am a little surprised to read they were given coffee. Mind you, I suppose coffee had been around a while. Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin drink enough of it in those Patrick O'Brien novels. Locke, Boyle and all those clever 17th century thinkers (except Newton) seemed to spend most their free time in coffee shops. No beer though, like Pip is given in Great Expectations or Tom Brown drinks in Tom Brown's School Days. I wonder why that was. Was it because it was a religious institution, or because it was a girls' school, or because it was more expensive, or just not common practice? I seem to remember hearing beer was safer to drink than water at the time.

The point in chapter 7 when Mr Brocklehurst visits seems completely mental. The thing I found hardest to believe was him dressing down the principal in front of the other staff and pupils - never happened when I was at school.

Anyway, it seems this sort of thing did go on because Charlotte Bronte based it on the school she and her sisters were sent to, Cowan Bridge School. Charlotte insisted the conditions described were true, and that if anything she toned it down because she did not want to appear exaggerating. This is crazy because in reality it was a school for clergymen's daughters, not a dumping ground for unwanted orphans as in the book. Wouldn't clergymen want their daughters to thrive and survive, not come home stick thin and ill? Two of Charlotte's sisters contracted tuberculosis at Cowan Bridge and subsequently died, including Maria, who was the model for Helen Burns.

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte must have have caused quite a stir, because two clergymen brought out books defending the staff at Cowen Bridge School. One of them was A Vindication of a Clergy Daughters' School by Revd. H. Shepheard, and A refutation of the statements in 'The life of Charlotte Bronte,' regarding the Casterton Clergy Daughters' School, when at Cowan Bridge by Revd. Carus Wilson himself, whom Mr Brocklehurst is based on.

[kev67]

One thing they do seem to be spared though is corporal punishment. The main form of punishment seems to have been being made to stand on a stool in the middle of the room for ages.

[kev67]

I have been reading a book called Understanding Jane Eyre by Debra Teachman about Victorian schooling for girls.

Apparently Charlotte Bronte told Mrs Gatskell that she would not have written all she did about Lowood school if she knew it would be so quickly identified with her own school at Cowen Bridge. I think she did take a bit of artistic licence because it was fiction. Nevertheless, other girls who went there recognised Miss Scatcherd and Miss Temple. Charlotte Bronte saw one side of Revd Wilson Camus, but there was a more conscientious side to him. The school charges amounted to £14 per year which only covered food and lodgings. In addition £1 was charged for book and learning materials and £3 for clothing. Subscription paid for the education, but it was not easy finding wealthy donars for what was an experimental school. I don't think there is any suspicion of funds being skimmed. The food allocation was economical but not parsimonious. The bigger problem, according to Gaskell, was that the cook was so shockingly slovenly that much of the food was inedible. This was a cook who had worked for Camus for a long while, so was reluctant to get rid of. Apparently, a doctor who tasted some of the food spat it out and condemned the meat immediately. Another problem was the location of the school was rather damp and not conducive to good health. The excerpt said that during an outbreak of typhus, a local woman was induced by Revd Camus to nurse the sick children, which she was reluctant to do because she did not want to pass the disease to her own children. Still, she nursed them so well, that they sacked the cook and gave her the job, prompting an immediate improvement in the food. Later, they moved the school somewhere a bit healthier.

It seems like Charlotte's older sisters, Maria & Elizabeth(?) maybe should not have been sent to the school anyway. Neither of them suffered from the typhus outbreak, but they were still weak from a bout of measles and whooping cough when they first went there. The cold and the poor food would not have given them much resistance to an illness like TB. It seems pretty surprising that Patrick Bronte sent his surviving girls back there after his two oldest girls died.

[kiki1982]

Yes, I think she will have used artistic licence a bit, not least because she was only a child when she exerpienced this. She probably experienced it worse or more black and white than it was. It must have been pretty bad, but a child always makes it worse than it is.

The corporal punishment also surprises me a little, but not all school masters/mistresses used the rod too much... But isn't there a bit where little Jane is talking to Helen about this. I think Helen had been beaten by the French teacher or something.

Besides, standing on a stool for ages would start to hurt after some time, because your back can't take it, your legs start to tire etc. Try it.

As to Mr Brocklehurst creaming money off the school. That could have been based on soemthing else than reality. Beside of course the perception of a child who sees nicely dressed people and wonders why they've got lots of nice things and she herself has to wash in frozen basins of water in the morning...
During the first half of the 19th century (before JE was written or published) there were a few horror stories in the paper, Daily Mail type stuff, which discovered irregularities in the books of workhouses and prisons. Mainly workhouses. A few were pretty bad. The bottom line of it was that the wardens involved got an allowance which wasn't too much because it was a charity thing they managed and of course the money was for the poor/prisoners, not for the warden (a similar issue was raised in a comical way in Trollope's The Warden). However, the wardens had a managerial job, were sometimes of religious stock like Brontë's father, and did not have much of a fortune of their own. Otherwise they wouldn't need to have a job, after all. Hence why Mr Elton in Emma needs a rich wife like Emma Woodhouse: her dowry would provide him with a middle class income (à la the Bennets). The prosition of clergymen was ambiguous: they mixed with the great and the good in the parish (the squires, schoolmasters, lawyers, etc.), their daughters were a good catch, but they had no money from their jobs. Patrick Brontë himself was living on a very tight budget. Hence why he had to send his daughters to a charity school.
The point was that these people had to live their status, but did not have the money to do so and so, they saw all the money that went into their charity and creamed some of it off for their own purpose, out of sheer necessity sometimes.
Of course that caused huge outrage amongst the Victorians who were desperate, out of Enlightment feelings (pre-Darwinian of course) to improve society and improve the plight of the poor.

It would not surprise me that she got her inspiration for the evil and hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst from there, loose from the orginal school master.

As to TB:
It seems strange these days, yes, to send your (remaining) kids to the same school as one died in, from some kind of neglect. Although, I think TB was so rife back then and death so commonplace that people didn't really think about it. At least not in the same way.
I read somewhere (have forgotten where exactly) that Haworth was one of the worst affected areas for TB, because it was very poor and also very damp, dark and dingy in winter. Not sure whether that's true, but it is worth thinking about it. Children died of all kinds of things and I don't think they knew how TB actually spread or how it could be prevented (already a better immune system, i.e. better food and enough vitamins helps you). They knew sanatoriums worked (at least later on), but they didn't know why.
It's quite evident why starting AIDS patients display more cases of TB.

If you then put a child that is recovering from whooping cough and measles in a damp environment where everthing is cold into the bargain and where it doesn't get enough fresh stuff and one TB bacillus comes past (very likely), then it's not going to have the strength to fight it.

Although, it's pretty 'normal' for a child to die in those days. Sad, but true. Although Patrick Brontë's is pretty sad, as all his children died before he died.

As to money:
Later on in JE, Jane is getting wages of Mr Rochester at £35 per annum which she deems well paid. I think she was paid £20 per annum or something in Lowood.
Usually the parish or Union provided the house, I think. Similar to St John Rivers and Rosamund providing the school building later in the book. But upkeep of all the children and things also costs money, plus all the staff involved in it.

[kev67]

The position of clergyman seems to have been an odd profession. It was one of those professions open to second sons of rich men, whose title and estate would pass onto their elder brothers. I suppose plenty of other middle class gentlemen would have been interested in applying for the role too. Downward mobility must have been a cause for much anxious concern for the children of professional, but not wealthy gentlemen. The book I was reading yesterday said that in a school like Jane's the girls would have been brought up to believe they may never marry.

I wondered about Patrick Bronte's finances. The average income for a clergyman was apparently £250 a year, and that did not seem to change much over the entire nineteenth century. The Bronte children's school fees and expenses amounted to about about £100 for the six of them I reckon. That still leaves £150 which was pretty good for then. I suspect that incomes may have varied quite widely. In Tess, Angel's funds seem unlimited, yet he presumably relied on an allowance from his clergyman father, who had two other sons to put through university and maybe a dowry to pay for his daughter. Apart from wanting his daughters to get an education, maybe another reason for Mr Bronte sending his children to boarding school was that since their mother had died and he did not feel up to the task of looking after them.

TB is an awful but strange disease. It can take years to kill you, can go into remission, but then come back. George Orwell died of the disease, as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's wife, if Julian Barnes' book Arthur and George is to be believed. Robert Tressell, who wrote The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, died of it. In his book, the main protagonist, who was obviously based on the author, visited his doctor who told him to eat good food and drink milk (iirc), but he was so poor he could not afford to.

It was a terrible disease, a death sentence. No wonder Helen was so fatalistic and other worldly. What choice would she have? If she had not gone to the school, she may not have contracted it. If the food and conditions had been better, she may have fought it off. Who knows? According to the notes at the end of my copy of JE, Charlotte said she did not exaggerate at all when describing the character of Helen Burns who she based on her sister Maria. Maybe Maria would have gone on to be a great author too.

[kev67]

I am glad I did not read chapter 9 in a public place. It was a choker.

One thing that bothered me in the first part of the book is that Jane seems very grown up for a ten-year-old. No doubt Jane was precocious, but was she plausible for someone that young? Jane says her friend Helen was fourteen, so I can believe her character. It seems slightly odd that a fourteen-year-old would be best friends with a ten-year-old.

Another thing that bothers me is that if Helen Burns is Maria Bronte and Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte, why isn't there a character based on Elizabeth Bronte? She contracted tuberculosis at that school too, and died shortly afterwards. Apparently, she was not as precocious as Maria and not as unique a character. Perhaps Jane's other friend, Mary Ann Wilson is based on Elizabeth.

I read somewhere else on the internet that Charlotte Bronte was tiny, only 4'9" (1.45m) tall. That had to be partly the result of being starved at Cowan Bridge school.

Another thing I found interesting in chapter 9 was that Jane is surprisingly agnostic for a child living in the 1820's. I would have assumed all children living there and then were unquestioningly Christian. It is especially surprising considering the author was the daughter of a clergyman and eventually married a clergyman.