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The Importance Of Education In Jane Eyre

Decent Essays

Education serves as an influential period in every child’s life, as it teaches young adolescents skills and principles that allow them to prosper as an adult. The importance of education transcends through time periods, apparent in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë in which the eight years Jane spends at Lowood Institution plays an undeniable role in her character development. Jane’s time at Lowood inculcated values of modesty and restraint into her lifestyle and also caused her to view God as a guardian figure.
Jane entered Lowood as a stubborn and outspoken child but left as a mature and independent young adult. The overarching ideology of the school likely explains her drastic personality change. Mr. Rochester describes Lowood as a Christian charity school that internalized the value of uniformity such that it was “observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, [and] unsophisticated accommodations” (42; ch. 4). As all the students were subject to the systematic and mundane nature of the school, Jane is also forced to adapt by suppressing her passionate temperament. Over the course of her years at school she learns to be “hardy, patient, self-denying” and eventually “appeared a disciplined and subdued character” (75; ch. 7, 100; ch. 10). The Lowood values of modesty and restraint later prove to be deeply ingrained into Jane’s personality when she describes her comparatively smaller room as a “safe haven” in the

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