Lesson video

- Hello everyone.

Welcome to our next lesson of Jane Eyre.

In today's lesson, Jane makes a huge decision.

The whole way through her life, Jane has not had freedom.

She was denied a voice in the Reed household, she was imprisoned in the Red-Room, she lived under a tyrannical regime at Lowood School.

Well, in today's lesson, Jane has had enough.

She decides that she's going to leave Lowood School and take control of her life.

Let's see what happens.

[Mr. Johnston] For today's lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper and a pen.

If you do not have this equipment press the pause button on your video now, go and collect this equipment, and then we will begin our lesson.

Let's begin with a recap from our last lesson.

What is the greatest love of Helen's life? Option one, her God, option two, success, option three, her family, or option four, pleasure.

Press the pause button on your video now and tell the screen the right answer.

I will now tell you the right answer which is of course, option one.

The greatest love of Helen's life is her God.

Helen has been devoted to God the whole way through her life.

She takes her religion very seriously.

She is devout.

Helen is not afraid of death, because she expects to go to heaven and when she gets to heaven, she will finally be able to meet God for herself.

So, well done if you got that right.

Now, some of you may have chosen one of the other options, you may have chosen option two, the greatest love of Helen's life is success, but that's not quite right.

Remember, Helen does not, Helen never expected to experience success in her life.

She never thought that she had the abilities or the talents to enjoy worldly achievements.

So option two is not right.

You may have chosen option three, her family, but remember, Helen only has a dad.

And she says that her dad, will not regret her death very much because he's just got married.

So I wouldn't suggest that the greatest love of Helen's life is her family.

And you may have chosen option four, pleasure, but remember, Helen is not focused on worldly pleasure.

Instead, she is focused upon the pleasures and the happiness that she will experience once she gets to heaven.

Well done again if you got that right.

I will now tell you my plan for today's lesson.

First of all, we're going to think about this.

What happens in Jane's life after Helen's death? We'll then think about this question.

How has Jane changed throughout the novel? And then we'll look at our final idea.

Why does Jane decide to leave Lowood? So without further ado, let's begin.

Let's ask ourselves this question.

What happens in Jane's life after Helen's death? Well, as you may remember from our last extract, Helen has just died from, from consumption, and Jane is very sad because Helen was Jane's dearest friend.

Well, in our novel, six years now pass after Helen's death.

And Jane grows up from a young child to a young woman.

And she becomes a teacher at Lowood school.

And Jane now becomes good friends with Miss Temple.

You may remember that Ms. Temple was the kind teacher that I introduced in a previous lesson.

Miss Temple is a very good influence upon Jane.

Okay let's now test the main ideas that we've been through so far.

First of all, six years passes after Helen's death.

Secondly, Jane becomes a teacher at Lowood School.

Thirdly, Jane becomes good friends with Miss Temple.

Press the pause button on your video now, read through these three sentences, try to remember them and then, I'm going to test you.

Off you go.

Let's now test your memory.

Go through these three sentences, telling the screen the full sentence, including the words in blank.

Off you go.

I will now tell you the right answers.

Number one.

Six years passes after Helen's death.

Number two.

Jane becomes a teacher at Lowood School, and number three, Jane becomes good friends with Ms. Temple.

Well done if you got all three of those right.

Let's now think about this question.

So six years has passed since Helen's death.

Jane is now a teacher.

Let's think about how Jane has changed throughout the novel.

You may remember that this novel is a Bildungsroman.

This is a story that follows a character as they grow up and mature.

So in this story, Jane Eyre begins at this novel, Jane Eyre begins when Jane is a young child, and we are going to watch her grow up and mature until she is a young lady, until she is an adult.

Now you may remember from earlier on in the story I explained that Jane is a very passionate character.

What do I mean by this word, passion? Well, passion is a strong emotion.

People who are very passionate experience very powerful emotions.

Let me give you a few examples.

Love is a passion.

Hatred is a passion.

Anger, compassion, fear, excitement, these are all different passions that we all experience.

Now, throughout the novel, Jane has always been very passionate.

She is often overwhelmed by her emotions.

You may remember that she experienced overwhelming anger when John Reed threw the book at her and then she attacked John, she experienced overwhelming sadness when she was locked in the Red-Room, and she experienced overwhelming fear when she was in the Red-Room and expected to see Mr. Reed's ghost.

At many times throughout the novel Jane has been completely overcome by her passions.

She has not been able to control her emotions.

Now, if you want to become a mature person, you need to be able to balance your passions with your reason.

What is your reason? Well your reason is basically your power to think logically.

It's your power to make decisions carefully, thinking before you speak, managing your emotions and planning ahead.

Now at the beginning of the novel as I said, if there's a spectrum with passion on one side and reason on the other side, Jane is very passionate.

She does not use her reason enough.

But Jane's friendship with Miss Temple helps her become more self-controlled.

I will now show you an extract to demonstrate this.

To Miss Temple's instruction and advice, I owed the best part of my acquirements.

Her friendship and society had been my continual solace and comfort.

She had stood me in the stead of mother, governess and latterly, companion.

I had imbibed and absorbed from her something of her nature and much of her habits.

More harmonious and peaceful thoughts, what seems better regulated and controlled.

Feelings had become the inmates of my mind.

I had given an allegiance to duty and order.

I was quiet, I believed I was content and happy to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued character.

In other words, through following Miss Temple's advice and example, Jane has become a far more self-controlled and reasonable character.

So while she was controlled by her passions at the beginning of the story, now that Jane's a young lady, she's allowed her passions to be regulated, to be controlled, by her reason.

Jane is becoming a more mature character.

Let's now revise what you've just learned.

Number one.

At the beginning of the novel, Jane is a passionate character who struggles to control her emotions.

Number two.

Through her friendship with Miss Temple, Jane has matured and become more self-controlled.

Press the pause button on your video now and revise these sentences.

Off you go.

Let's now test your memory.

Press the pause button on your video now.

Go through these two sentences, filling in the words in blank.

Off you go.

I will now tell you the right answers.

Number one.

At the beginning of the novel, Jane is a passionate character who struggles to control her emotions.

And number two, through her friendship with Miss Temple Jane has matured and become more self-controlled.

Well done if you got that right.

Let's now look at our next question.

Why does Jane decide to leave Lowood? Well, Miss Temple gets married and leaves the school.

And as you can imagine, this is a very sad moment for Jane, when she loses her dear friend.

Without her friends, Jane begins to feel lonely, bored, and restless.

We're going to read an extract in a minute.

In this extract, one day Jane is feeling particularly restless and lonely at Lowood school.

She takes a look out the window and looks at the mountains on the horizon.

Jane longs to leave Lowood, go and travel beyond these mountains and, and see the world for herself.

Let's read.

My world had for some years been in Lowood.

My experience had been of its rules and systems. Now I remembered that the real world was wide and that a varied field of hopes and fears of sensations and excitements awaited those who had courage and bravery to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils and dangers.

I went to my window, opened it and looked out.

There were two wings of the building.

There was the garden, there were the skirts of Lowood, there was the hilly horizon.

My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote and far away, the blue peaks.

It was those I longed to surmount and climb all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground exile limits.

I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain and vanishing and disappearing in a gorge between two.

How I longed to follow it farther.

I recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach.

I remembered descending that hill at Twilight.

An age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since.

My vacations had been spent at school.

Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead, neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me.

I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world.

School-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies, such was what I knew of existence.

And now I felt that it was not enough.

I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.

I desired liberty and freedom, for liberty, I gasped, for liberty, I uttered a prayer.

Let's now look at the reasons that Jane has for deciding to leave Lowood school, based upon the extract that we've just read.

I've got three main ideas.

First of all, Jane feels trapped in Lowood School.

She now sees the school as a prison-ground.

She uses this metaphor to suggest that the school feels like a prison to her.

She feels captivated.

She feels that she has no freedom, for as long as she is a teacher at Lowood School.

Remember, Jane has now spent a huge amount of her life at Lowood School.

First as a pupil, and then as a teacher.

She has seen little of the world outside this school and now longs to escape from it, to see the world for herself.

So my first reason that Jane wants to leave Lowood school is she feels trapped here.

Here's my second reason.

She looks towards the distant blue peaks and she longs to travel beyond these mountains.

That, that description of the blue peaks, the word peaks means mountains.

So she looks towards these mountains, these peaks on the horizon, and she longs to travel past them.

Now I would suggest that these peaks are a symbol for life's opportunities and hopes.

Jane longs to travel past these mountains to see the rest of the world for herself.

Remember, she's been in Lowood for such a long time and this is the only view that she has had of the outside world.

She wants to experience all the adventures and opportunities that life can provide once she escapes from this school.

But most of all, Jane longs to experience freedom.

This is what she writes.

"I desired liberty and freedom.

"For liberty, I gasped.

"For liberty, I uttered a prayer." That word liberty means freedom, and Jane uses very interesting language here to describe her desire for liberty.

She describes gasping for liberty and she describes uttering a prayer for liberty.

Such emotive language reflects Jane's desperation to experience freedom in her life.

She uses very similar language, which would be, which might be used to describe someone who is in a, in a desert, and desperate for water, someone who's gasping for water, someone who's praying for water, as if their life depends on it.

Well, in the same way, Jane is desperate to experience liberty and freedom.

She longs to have control of her own life.

Press the pause button on your video now and take some notes on these ideas.

Off you go.

Now we must remember, that Jane has not experienced liberty or freedom throughout her life.

At Gateshead Hall, she had no voice.

Remember, Mrs. Reed told her that she had to be submissive and quiet.

So Jane experienced no freedom as Gateshead Hall.

This was most powerfully symbolised when Jane was imprisoned in the Red-Room.

This is a symbol of her isolation and lack of freedom that she experienced in her childhood.

But even when Jane left Gateshead Hall, she still did not get freedom because she went to Lowood School.

Remember Lowood School's a very strict school.

It is run by, like a, a military regime.

Jane has suffered under Mr. Brocklehurst's tyrannical regime.

Throughout her whole life, as you can see, Jane has not experienced freedom.

So it's understandable why she is desperate to experience control of her own life now.

Press the pause button on your video now and take some notes on these ideas.

Off you go.

Okay, let's now move on.

So in a minute, I want you to answer this question.

Why does Jane want to leave Lowood School? Now, to help you out, I'm going to give you some sort of sentence starters that will help you structure your paragraph.

You could begin with this opening sentence here.

Jane wants to leave Lowood School because.

And then you'll write a few more sentences.

After this, you could include this sentence in your piece.

After Miss Temple's departure from the school, Jane gazes out of the window at the blue peaks on the horizon.

And then you could describe the symbolic significance of these blue peaks.

Next of all, you could talk about this idea.

Most of all, Jane longs for liberty.

You could expand upon that idea next.

And here's our final idea.

Indeed, throughout the novel, Jane has consistently found herself being imprisoned by her circumstances.

You could write that idea and the explain it in a bit more detail.

In what ways has Jane been imprisoned by her circumstances throughout the novel? So there you have it.

There are four sentences on the screen that you can use to help you structure your paragraph.

And here are some key words and phrases and quotations that you could use throughout your paragraph.

Press the pause button on your video now and complete this paragraph in your book or on your page.

Off you go.

Okay, I will now show you a model paragraph.

Jane wants to leave Lowood because she has grown tired of her monotonous existence here.

The young heroine has spent most of her life at this school, first as a pupil, and then as a teacher.

She now views Lowood as a prison-ground that is keeping her in captivity.

Jane longs to explore the world outside the narrow confines of this institution.

After Miss Temple is departure from the school Jane gazes out of a window at the blue peaks in the distance.

These mountains, which loom on the horizon in front of Jane seem to represent all the perils and opportunities that the outside world might offer.

Jane longs to escape Lowood, travel beyond these peaks and embrace all of life's experiences and adventures.

Most of all, Jane longs for liberty.

She longs to have control of her own life.

She claims, "I desired liberty.

"For liberty I gasped, "for liberty I uttered a prayer." Such emotive words seem to describe Jane, holding a desperate thirst for liberty, much like one might desperately gasp and pray for water in a desert.

Indeed, throughout the novel, Jane has consistently found herself being imprisoned by her circumstances.

She suffered a stifling existence at Gateshead, as most powerfully symbolised by her captivity in the Red-Room.

Later as a pupil, she suffered under Mr., under Brocklehurst's tyrannical regime in Lowood.

Jane is now ready to break free from these bonds.

Having read that exemplar, you might think to yourself that you'd like to improve your work a bit more.

If you would like to improve your work now, press the pause button on your video and improve your work.

Off you go.

And that brings us to the end of our lesson.

Here's the credits for the pictures I've used today.

Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson.

Well done for all of your hard work today.

Join us in our next lesson when Jane travels across the country to Thornfield Hall.

This is an old manor in the countryside and things are going to get rather scary once again.

I'll see you next time.

And before you go, make sure you complete the end-of-lesson quiz.

I'll see you next time.