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1Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have
2given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography: I am only bound to invoke Memory where I
3know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence:
4a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of connection. When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of
5devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims
6had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts
7came out which excited public indignation in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality
8of the children's food; the brackish, fetid water used in its preparation; the pupils' wretched clothing and
9accommodations--all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst,
10but beneficial to the institution. Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the
11erection of a more convenient building in a better situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and
12clothing introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who,
13from his wealth and family connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of treasurer; but he was aided
14in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of inspector,
15too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with
16uprightness. The school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution. I remained an inmate of its
17walls, after its regeneration, for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both capacities I bear my
18testimony to its value and importance. During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not
19inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a
20desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on:
21I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class; then I was
22invested with the office of teacher; which I discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I altered.
23Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the
24best part of my acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of
25mother, governess, and, latterly, companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a clergyman, an
26excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me. From the day she left
27I was no longer the same: with her was gone every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree
28a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what
29seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was
30quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued
31character. But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and Miss Temple: I saw her in her
32travelling dress step into a post-chaise, shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill and
33disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the
34half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion. I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to
35be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found
36that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I
37had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple--or rather that she
38had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity--and that now I was left in my natural
39element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as
40if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no
41more. My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that
42the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who
43had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils. I went to my window, opened
44it, and looked out. There were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood;
45there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those
46I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white
47road winding round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed to follow it farther! I
48recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at twilight; an age
49seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations
50had all been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever
51been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties,
52school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies--such was
53what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.
54I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly
55blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off
56into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me at least a new servitude!" Here a bell, ringing the hour of
57supper, called me downstairs. I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime: even then a
58teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion
59of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had last
60entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief. Miss Gryce snored at last;
61she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light
62than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my
63half-effaced thought instantly revived. "A new servitude! There is something in that," I soliloquised (mentally, be it
64understood; I did not talk aloud). "I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as
65Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that
66it is mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any one may serve: I have served
67here eight years; now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing feasible?
68Yes--yes--the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it." I
69sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I
70proceeded to think again with all my might.
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