Canterbury Jane and Eyre Tales

Response to Statement Number Five:

The author creates contrast through the description of the members of his family by having them come in after he lectures Miss Temple. He is lecturing her on how the orphan girls should look and what privileges they should have access to. He says that the girls should not have long or curling hair and that they should not have their clothes washed too often.  There is contrast in this because Mr. Brocklehurst’s family members are all doing precisely what he said the orphan girls should not be allowed to do. One of Mr. Brocklehurst’s family members was described like this: “from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled.” This aspect of his family member was the exact same thing that he had denounced moments before, “Why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?”

Mr. Brocklehurst makes it apparent that he wants all of the orphan girls to live very modestly because they are “the children of Grace,” but he does not even seem to hold his own family members to the same standard. This shows irony because Mr. Brocklehurst’s family members are all shown to be living very luxurious and privileged lifestyles even though Mr. Brocklehurst made it clear that he values modesty. This is a way for the author to comment on the differences in classes by showing the upper class (Mr. Brocklehurst) and its hypocrisy through the way that the upper class says others should live, and how they live the exact opposite way.