Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to our next lesson of "Jane Eyre." In today's lesson, Jane is visited by her new head teacher, Mr. Brocklehurst.

Now, Mr. Brocklehurst is a very, very mean and nasty man.

This meeting goes very badly wrong when Mrs. Reed betrays Jane.

A huge argument is about to take place, and Jane is, you've guessed it, Jane is going to explode in anger.

Forget about "Coronation Street," forget about "Eastenders," because this book contains all the juicy drama that you need in your life.

Let's begin.

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 cause of Jane's sadness in the last chapter? Option one, Jane is sad because she loses a game with the other Reed children.

Option two, Jane is sad because she is locked in the Red Room.

Option three, Jane is sad because her parents have just died.

Or option four, Jane is sad because she is going to boarding school.

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 two.

Jane is sad in the last chapter because she is locked in the Red Room.

Remember, John Reed threw a book at Jane.

John Reed was not punished for that, but Jane was punished for attacking John in order to defend herself.

Well done if you got that right.

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

First of all, we're going to learn two new words, passion and versus reason.

After that, we're going to read our extract, and then we're going to think about this.

How does Bronte presents Jane as a passionate character in this extract? So let's begin by learning about our new words for today's lesson, passion versus reason.

Now, as you're going to see, passion and reason are two things that we both experience as people.

They're both influences in all of our lives.

First of all, I'm going to talk about passion, and then I'm going to tell you about reason.

So when we talk about passion, we're really talking about a strong emotion, a strong feeling that you can experience.

And I'll give you some examples of different passions that you may have experienced before.

Love is a passion.

Hatred is a passion.

Anger is a passion.

Compassion is a passion, and fear is a passion, too.

These are all strong emotions that can have a powerful influence over our actions and words.

And of course, excitement is a passion as well.

I left that one out.

Now, as you know from this book, Jane is a very passionate character.

She experiences her emotions very powerfully indeed.

She feels overwhelming anger whenever John Reed bullies her.

She feels overwhelming sadness whenever she's locked in the Red Room.

And she experiences overwhelming fear when she's in the Red Room, and she thinks Mr. Reed's ghost is about to visit her.

At the beginning of his novel, Jane has been presented as a very passionate character indeed.

Now, being a passionate person, experiencing your emotions powerfully can be a very useful thing.

Have a think about this question.

How can being a passionate person help you live a good life? Well, I've got some ideas.

I think being a passionate person is helpful for a number of reasons.

Firstly, if you're passionate, you're more likely to experience deep, loving relationships with people that you care about.

You're also more likely to experience the excitement and adventure of life.

You're more likely to be enthusiastic about the different experiences that you have.

And if you're passionate, you may well be very good at standing up for yourself or very good at being assertive.

These are all things that Jane.

These are all aspects of Jane's passionate character which will have a positive influence throughout her life in this book.

But as I'm sure you know, being a passionate person can also create problems in your life, too.

Have a think about those problems. Here's the sort of problems that I think being a passionate person can create.

First of all, if you're very passionate, it means that you may experience anger, you might experience overwhelming anger at times, and this anger can destroy your relationships, if you're not careful.

You may end up doing or saying very mean and hurtful things to people around you in your anger.

Being a passionate person can also lead one to becoming rather reckless and foolish.

It can lead you to doing things because you feel like doing them, even when they are a bad idea.

Being a passionate person, experiencing emotions very, very strongly can lead to you, experiencing fear and anxiety in your life more so than someone who's not as passionate.

As you can see, Jane also experiences these problems in her life because she's a very passionate child.

Now, a mature person experiences both passion but they also balance this with the use of reason.

We need to have both passion and reason in order to live a balanced life.

Let me now tell you about reason.

Your reason is your power to think logically, your power to use your mind.

Now, this can help you make decisions carefully.

It can help you think before you speak.

Your reason can help you manage your emotions, ensure that your emotions don't always control your actions, and your reason can also be used to plan ahead and do many other things.

So a balanced person has a combination of both passion and reason in their life.

They allow their actions and their words to be influenced by both their passions, their emotions, and their reason.

Now, at the beginning of the book, Jane is very clearly more.

Uses her passion far more than her reason.

And as you will see, as Jane matures and becomes a more, a wiser character, she will increasingly use her reason.

Okay, press the pause button on your video now, and write these two sentences in your book or on your page.

First of all, you're going to write a sentence describing a time when you followed your passions, and then you're going to write a sentence describing a time when you followed your reason.

Press the pause button on your video now, and write down those two sentences in your book or on your page.

Off you go.

Okay, let's now move on to the next part of the lesson.

We're going to read our extract.

Now, in our last lesson, we learned that Jane Eyre was locked in the Red Room as a punishment for attacking John.

When Jane Eyre was in this Red Room, she imagined seeing Mr. Reed's ghost appearing in front of her.

As you may remember, Jane panicked and begged to be let out of a Red Room, and Mrs. Reed became very angry with Jane.

Well, before this extract begins, Mrs. Reed has made a very big decision.

Mrs. Reed has decided that Jane's behaviour is so terrible that she is no longer fit to live in their house.

Mrs. Reed has decided to send Jane to boarding school.

Now, this boarding school is run by a man named Mr. Brocklehurst.

Mr. Brocklehurst is the headmaster of Lowood school, and as you can see, he's a very intimidating and serious man.

At the beginning of our extract, Mr. Brocklehurst has arrived a Jane Eyre's house to meet her for the first time.

The beginning of this extract describes Mr. Brocklehurst's appearance.

Let's read.

"The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtsying low, I looked up at a black pillar! such had appeared to me at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim and gloomy face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above a shaft by way of capital.

Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside.

She made a signal to me to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words: "This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you." He, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and having examined me with the two inquisitive questioning-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly and seriously in a bass voice, "Her size is small: what is her age?" "10 years." "So much?" was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged and continued to scrutiny for some minutes.

Presently he addressed me, "Your name, little girl?" "Jane Eyre, sir." In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman; but then I was very little; his features were large and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.

"Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?" Mrs. Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon, "Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst." "Sorry indeed to hear it! She and I must have some talk;" and bending from a perpendicular, he installed his person in the armchair opposite Mrs. Reed's.

"Come here," he said.

I stepped across the rug.

He placed me square and straight before him.

What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! What a great nose! And what a mouth! And what large prominent teeth! Mrs. Reed then spoke.

"Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit and lie.

I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst." Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature and character to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above.

Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I dimly perceived and saw that she was already obliterating and destroying hope from the new phase of existence in school which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that she was sowing aversion, hatred, and unkindness along my future path; I saw myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurt's eye into an artful, noxious, poisonous child, and what could I do to remedy the injury?" So this is a very upsetting moment in Jane Eyre's life.

Mr. Brocklehurst has gone to see her, but Mrs. Reed has spread a very hurtful lie about Jane's character.

Mrs. Reed has said that Jane has a tendency to deceit and lie.

Now, we know that this is not true.

Jane may be a very passionate character, but she does not lie to anyone.

Mrs. Reed is in fact the character lying in this moment.

Now, Jane is very upset about this.

Jane says that Mrs. Reed was already obliterating, that means destroying hope from the new phase of existence in school.

Mr. Brocklehurst now views her as a liar.

Mr. Brocklehurst now views her as a very badly behaved child.

Before Jane has already entered school, she's already been given a terrible reputation.

Jane is now very angry of Mrs. Reed.

Let's see what happens next.

"Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child," said Mr. Brocklehurst; "it is akin and similar to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in Hell in the lake burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Reed.

I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers.

I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there will be no difficulty about receiving her.

Good-bye." With these words Mrs. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.

Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was sewing, I was watching her.

Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.

"Go out of the room; return to the nursery," was her mandate and command.

My look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme through suppressed irritation.

I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up to her.

Speak I must: I have been trodden on severely, and must turn: but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist and enemy? I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence.

"I am not deceitful; if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I." Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine.

"What more have you to say?" she asked, rather in a tone in which person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.

That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy and hatred I had.

Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued, "I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never all you aunt again as long as I live.

I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty." "How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?" "How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth.

You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.

I shall remember how you thrust me back, roughly and violent thrust me back, into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, "Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!" And that punishment you made me suffer because you wicked boy struck me, knocked me down for nothing.

I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale.

People think you are a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted.

You are deceitful!" Ere and before I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt.

It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty and freedom.

Not without cause was this sentiment and feeling: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry." "Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?" "No, Mrs. Reed." "Jane, you don't understand these things: children must be corrected for their faults." "Deceit is not my fault!" I cried out in a savage, high voice.

"But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to the nursery, there's a dear, lie down a little." "I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here." "I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed, and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.

I was left there alone, winner of the field.

It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror's solitude.

First, I smiled to myself and felt elate and happy; but this fierce pleasure subsided and disappeared in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses.

A child cannot quarrel and argue with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and guilt and the chill of reaction.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic, sweet smelling wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.

Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature." So here Jane explains how she feels after she has beaten Mrs. Reed in this argument.

And when Jane, when Mrs. Reed first walks out of the room, Jane feels victorious.

She feels very proud of herself, but she's now stood up for herself and beaten Mrs. Reed through her words.

But out of this, Jane begins to feel very guilty about her anger.

This is what she says.

"A child cannot quarrel and argue with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing the pang of remorse and guilt and the chill of reaction." In other words, Jane feels very guilty right now, that she's allowed her anger to overwhelm her and she has not controlled her passions.

Let's look into these words in a bit more detail.

But before we go on, we're going to summarise what's happened in this extract.

So first of all, Mrs. Reed organises for Jane to attend boarding school.

After this, Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster of Lowood school, arrives at the house to meet Jane.

Mrs. Reed tells Mr. Brocklehurst that Jane is a badly-behaved and deceitful child.

After Mr. Brocklehurst leaves, Jane is furious that Mrs. Reed lied.

Jane is not deceitful at all.

Jane seems to win in an argument with Mrs. Reed.

Jane says that she hates living with the Reed family.

After Mrs. Reed withdraws, Jane feels guilty for her angry words.

Here's the sentences with some of the words missing.

Press the pause button on your video now and go through this six sentences, telling the screen the full sentence including the words in blank.

Off you go.

Let's now take a look at the right answers.

Mrs. Reed organised for Jane to attend boarding school.

Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster of Lowood school, arrives at the house to meet Jane.

Mrs. Reed tells Mr. Brocklehurst that Jane is a badly-behaved and deceitful child.

After Mr. Brocklehurst leaves, Jane is furious that Mrs. Reed lied.

Jane is not deceitful at all.

Jane seems to win an argument with Mrs. Reed.

Jane says that she hates living with the Reed family.

After Mrs. Reed withdraws, Jane feels guilty for her angry words.

Well done if you got all of those right.

We're now going to think about this question.

How does Bronte present Jane as a passionate character in this extract? We're going to zoom into this quotation here.

This is, this quotation is taken from the end of the extract, just after Mrs. Reed walks out of the room, having been beaten in this argument with Jane.

Let's read.

"I was left there alone, winner of the field.

It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic, sweet smelling wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned." Now, some of the language used by Bronte is very interesting here.

Let's zoom into some of these phrases.

First of all, Jane says that she feels like she is the winner of the field as she stands alone in the room after Mrs. Reed has more or less run away from her in fear.

She then says, "It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory," she has experienced.

As you will see through these references to a battle and to fighting and victory, Bronte is using military language to demonstrate that Jane feels like she has won a battle against Mrs. Reed.

Now, by comparing this argument to a battle between two different armies, Bronte is conveying the violence and the fierceness within Jane.

Even though Jane has not physically attacked Mrs. Reed, she has verbally attacked Mrs. Reed very fiercely through her words.

She now feels like a victorious conqueror who has beaten an army in battle.

We then get this description of the excitement that Jane feels after Mrs. Reed leaves.

Let's look at this next phrase, or this next sentence.

"Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic," that word aromatic means sweet smelling, "wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy." So here Jane is talking about this first feeling of revenge, of vengeance that she's experienced, and she's comparing this feeling of revenge to tasting or smelling lovely wine, sweet smelling aromatic wine, and on swallowing this wine or an experiencing this revenge, it feels warm and racy.

That would racy means exciting.

So here Jane is suggesting that having, experiencing revenge against Mrs. Reed is like tasting beautiful, sweet wine.

Initially, this is a very pleasurable experience, that both excites Jane and gives her great pleasure and happiness.

But this feeling does not last.

Let's read this next description.

"Its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned." So here, the description comparing this revenge to wine continues, and Jane says having revenge, experiencing revenge is like having wine.

It's pleasurable at first, but soon it turns to poison.

In other words, Jane is suggesting that she felt very, very happy for her vengeance against Mrs. Reed for a short time, but after that felt guilty.

After that, the revenge in a sense turns to poison.

Like a sweet wine that turns to poison, Jane feels guilty for her angry words.

Press the pause button on your video now and take some notes upon this quotation.

Off you go.

Okay, let's now write about this quotation.

Here's the quotation at the top of the screen.

Here's our question.

According to the description above how does Jane feel about her argument with Mrs. Reed? Here's an opening sentence to your answer.

Bronte demonstrates that Jane feels joyful after her argument with Mrs. Reed.

You're then going to expand and explain the idea a bit more.

After that, you could include this sentence.

But after the excitement of this victory wears off, Jane is filled with remorse.

And you could expand and explain that idea a bit more after that.

Here's some key words that you can use in your answer.

Press the pause button on your video now and write your answer in your book or on your page.

Off you go.

Let's now take a look at an exemplar answer.

Bronte demonstrates that Jane feels joyful after her argument with Mrs. Reed.

By refusing to back down to her cruel aunt, Jane feels that she has achieved a glorious first victory in the hardest battle that she has fought against her enemy.

Bronte's use of military language compares this argument to a violent battle from which Jane emerges triumphant and victorious.

Jane is intoxicated by this new-found sense of independence and power.

She compares the success to the pleasure of drinking an aromatic, warm and racy wine.

But after the excitement of this victory wears off, Jane is filled with remorse.

She finds that the sweet taste of vengeance eventually turns to a metallic and corroding taste like poison.

Jane is now saddened as she reflects on her harsh words towards her aunt.

Her revenge against Mrs. Reed fills her with guilt.

The young heroine is learning that her unrestrained passion can lead to cruelty and destruction.

If you would like to improve your answer, having read that exemplar, press the pause button on your video now and make some changes to your paragraph.

Off you go.

Here's our credits for today's lesson.

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

Well done for all of your hard work.

In our next lesson, Jane leaves the Reed household and goes to her new school, Lowood school.

As you're going to see, Jane's troubles are just beginning.

I'll see you next lesson.

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

I'll see you next time.