Lowood forces the children to actually prey on each other in order tosurvive.

institutionalized children who stay healthy actuallygrow stronger.

he devotes onlyabout five paragraphs to narrating the epidemic, and this narrative isinterrupted by Helen’s death of consumption.

ice and ticks that lived in dirty clothes.

he boys are isolated, abused physically and pittedagainst instructors who are either hostile or helpless. By contrast,Brontë’s Lowood depicts an environment where teachers and studentsally with each other against the patriarchy.

Brontë’s sister Maria atCowan Bridge Clergy Daughters’ School,

ut also because it could not be classifiedmorally.

yphoid fever, like cholera, was part of what is nowknown as “The Water Crisis” in England—

yphus

oo, believed disease wascaused by unhealthy places.

Board of Health she envisions in Jane Eyre had a more humaneview of the sick

by want of sufficiency of food,

“a second wave of cholera developed in Attercliffealong the route taken by the cleansing team

but could be forced to pay the costs for the removal.15

Unfortunately, ready access to running water meant ready access towater closets,

uberculosisaccounted “for one-third of all deaths from disease in the Victorianperiod.”

Unlike many of their contemporaries who ignoredthe epidemic, Charlotte Brontë made it a point to bring contagiousdiseases to her readers’ attention and to challenge the stigmatizationof the ill,

housands of people all over England were dying fromdiseases such as small pox, cholera, typhus, and typhoid fever.

he or she is likely to die before the end of thenovel.

joy of procreation

not only responsible for her husband’s life, but becoming an extension of his male body as she functions as his eyes and right hand.9

for Bertha, that same territory is the only assurance she has for her own survival.

she must rely on physical acts of violence

insanity has frequently been ascribed to women who fail to per­form housewives’ tasks, or who deviate from the ‘average’ norms of expected behavior.

while situating Rochester as the feminized mate to be won through that competition.

fittest”

The male fear of female sexuality is reflected in Rochester’s treatment of his first wife, Bertha

passionate, angry

abomination

They are gener­ally stronger and larger than the females, and are endowed with the requisite qualities of courage and pugnacity.

its training does not improve survival chances beyond its walls.6

However, since these rules are stagnating, in an environment de­manding adaptation, Helen cannot survive.

It is this campaign for territory against John Reed that inspires Jane’s aunt to send her to Lowood, thereby freeing her poor son from his little competitor and reestablishing the old natural order.

flourish

assertive, self-validating, and aggressive

“survival of the fittest”

retreats to an academic sphere

i.e. the Victorian home

very culturally-signified perfection ultimately renders her incapable of adapting to the world that creates her,

methods of surviving

small society

developmental in nature;

“different”

reveals a correlation between the “supernatural” and the markedly devolved figure of Bertha Mason with whom the highly evolved example of Jane comes into direct conflict at Thomfield Hall

Jane Eyre’s place in the gothic genre complicates a realistic and sci­entific reading of the novel.

nfluence of the physical conditions in which it lives. . . . there are authentic instances of a people originally well-formed and good- looking, being brought, by imperfect diet and a variety of physical hardships, to a meaner form

exual selection

support

in writers who probably did not know any science first hand, who could have been ‘influenced’ by Darwin only indirectly”

Jane Eyre is a Darwinian exploration of sex and gender and the evolution­ary competition of nineteenth-century courtship.

it is an experiment in scientific thought

consequenc­es for defying one’s role within the household

Bertha is both a threat and a warning

engage with and challenge multi-field and multi-disciplinary conversations.

The conceptual problems, political quandaries, and theoretical issues they broached remain pressing and contentious.

rethinking of form and formalism.

tout court

If many of us share a dissatisfaction with the state of the field, we also internally disagree about how it might otherwise be shaped.

originating in our period

institutional mode is the instrumentalist evisceration of humanistic ways of knowing.

It fails to

The serial killer known as Jack the Ripper

Clean water, sanitation, and public health facilities were inadequate;

English family life increasingly became compartmentalised

increase in numbers

The Victorian frame of mind is largely composed of their characteristic modes of thought and feeling

The long-term effect of the reform movements was to tightly link the nonconformist element with the Liberal party

Railways had a major impact on industrialization.

Natural history became increasingly an "amateur" activity. Particularly

and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

Separate spheres,

extension of scientific assumptions

Nonconformists fighting bitterly against the established status of the Church of England, especially regarding education and access to universities and public office.

Their movement, often called "Philosophic Radicalism," fashioned a formula for promoting the goal of "progress" using scientific rationality, and businesslike efficiency, to identify, measure, and discover solutions to social problems.

rapid rise of the middle class, in large part displacing the complete control long exercised by the aristocracy.

Britain was a plenipotentiary at the Treaty of Berlin

The princely states were not affected and remained under British guidance.[17]

There were unprecedented demographic changes: the population of England and Wales almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901,[3] and Scotland's population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901.

sensibilities

romanticism and even mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and arts

The period was peaceful among the Great Powers

There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards