Helen Burns
Helen Burns is the fourteen-year-old schoolgirl who, in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre, befriends the ten-year-old Jane when Jane arrives at Lowood Institute boarding school. Unlike the rebellious Jane, Helen is a model of godly patience and Christian humility, but she can be slovenly in her habits, once failing to keep her clothing drawer neat, and one day does not wash her fingernails, behavior which incurs the wrath of one of her teachers, Miss Scatcherd.
Jane first sees this older girl in the schoolyard, speaks with her briefly, and learns that the book the older girl is reading is Samuel Johnson's novel Rasselas, but Jane does not yet have time to learn the older girl's name before the bell rings summoning the girls back from their recess. In the afternoon's class, Jane sees
- the girl with whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss Scatcherd from a history class and sent to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl-she looked thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise, she neither wept nor blushed: composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. "How can she bear it so quietly-so firmly?" I asked of myself.
What kind of girl might this be, Jane wonders. This girl standing shamed in the eyes of even the youngest children, her eyes fixed on the floor but not seeing it, her sight "turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present." Are these girl's silent thoughts the defiant musings of a wicked heart or the godly meditations of a patient and humble soul? "I wonder what sort of a girl she is-whether good or naughty," Jane asks herself.
The next day, Jane would have her answer.
Helen's whipping
Jane awakens the next morning to her second full day at Lowood, but "a change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the sewers to ice." There would be no water with which to wash.
After long prayers and Bible reading and a very short and skimpy breakfast, Jane proceeded to be enrolled in the fourth class, and while hers and most of the other classes engaged in sewing classes, one class is reading their English history for Miss Scatcherd, and
- among the readers, I observed my acquaintance of the verandah: at the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the class, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of constant notice: she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the following:--
- "Burns" (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere), "Burns, you are standing on the side of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately." "Burns, you poke your chin most unpleasantly; draw it in." "Burns, I insist on your holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude," &c. &c.
Burns' condition is soon to go to even worse, though, for despite her retention of the entire lesson far beyond the abilities of any of the other girls, Miss Scatcherd, far from praising her, suddenly cries out,
- "You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning!"
- Burns made no answer: I wondered at her silence. "Why," thought I, "does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?"
- My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a skein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time to time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, whether I could mark, stitch, knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not pursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd's movements. When I returned to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not catch the import, but Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.
- "Hardened girl!" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; "nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away."
- Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.
After dinner that evening, Jane seeks Burns, whose full name now learns is Helen Burns, to ask her feelings about the whipping. If Miss Scatcherd "struck me with that rod," Jane says, "I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose." No, Helen tells her, for if she did, Mr. Brocklehurst would expel her from the school, at great grief to her relations, and besides, the Bible tells us to return good for ill." When Jane complains, "But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it," Helen cautions her that it is her duty to bear chastisement for her faults and that she, Helen, herself has many faults which bear correction. "I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things, in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method, and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and particular."
External links
- Jane Eyre at Project Gutenberg. Helen Burns is whipped in Chapter VI.
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