Mr. Brocklehurst's Family

There is only one scene in which we see Mr. Brocklehurst’s family and that sheds great light on the hypocrisy of his character, he chooses a different kind of life for himself and his family and a different one for the students at Lowood Institution. His pupils become a victim of his Christian preaching while his family seems free from the restrictions he imposes at Lowood. His plan “in bringing up these girls is not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient and self-denying”; this very agenda baffles and infuriates the reader because such abstinence from luxury only applies to the weak, orphaned children and not to his own family.

While the students are fed burnt food that smells like “rotten potatoes” such that the idea of bread and cheese seems like a feast, Mr. Brocklehurst is well-fed as Jane finds him tall and large like “a black pillar”. Then coming to his family, Mrs and Miss Brocklehurst adorn themselves with “a false front of French curls”. On their arrival at Lowood, the young girls are attired in “velvet, silk and furs” while their mother was “enveloped in a costly velvet shawl”. With such a well-kept family image, one would expect Brocklehurst to provide the school children with similar liberties as he himself says to Mrs. Reed, “consistency, madam, is the first of the Christian duties”. However, we find his rule of consistency only applying to girls within Lowood and not to his own daughters. Thus, when Julia Severn’s naturally curling hair become a bone of contention between him and Miss Temple, his hypocrisy becomes very clear to the reader. He suggests that the hair should "not conform to nature" and argues with Miss Temple to arrange them plainly and modestly. But such modesty is not found in the ladies of the Brocklehurst family for their entry into the room immediately calls for silence and all eyes turn to look at the well-dressed women who are attended by the teachers. The detail with which the narrator (in this case Jane herself) describes the women highlights the complete lack of simplicity, something that the male figure forces on everyone at Lowood.

It seems that Brocklehurst’s pretentious Christian values also seem to have seeped into his family for when he accuses Jane of being a liar without giving any background and tagging her as the “alien”, the “interloper”, the “castaway”, there the three women mimic him. They look at Jane with contempt while one exclaims, "How shocking!" to show that whatever allegation Mr. Brocklehurst has placed on Jane must indeed be correct. Unlike Miss Temple who tells Jane, "Continue to act as a good girl and you will satisfy me", these women do not contest the words of the patriarchal figure of their household and believe them to be true. They all therefore, join Mr. Brocklehurst in the group of hypocritical Christians within the novel.