Jane Eyre
Mr. Brocklehurst
The Lowood director
A stern, hypocritical clergyman who runs Lowood on cold rooms, thin food and fear.
Mr. Brocklehurst is the director of Lowood School, a tall, severe clergyman. He tells the girls that humility is a Christian grace and orders their curls cut off. He asks young Jane whether she knows where the wicked go after death and does not like her answer.
His rules are strict, but they apply to other people. The girls go hungry and cold while his own family lives well. Jane calls him the black marble clergyman, and his theatrical display of piety is the story's picture of cruelty dressed as virtue.
“Why does that girl have curls? Cut them off! Humility is a Christian grace!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Brocklehurst interviews Jane at Gateshead, where Mrs. Reed calls her a liar. At Lowood he forces Jane to stand on a high stool before the school and calls her an interloper and an alien. Miss Temple later clears Jane's name.
Lowood is reformed after the typhus outbreak that sweeps the school, and Brocklehurst drops out of the story. He is the last of Jane's early tormentors to disappear.
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