Bk I, Ch. iv). Miss Temple’s Christian name, ‘Maria’, is that of Charlotte Bront?’s own mother and dead oldest sister, as well as a version of Christ’s mother’s name, Mary. ‘Temple’ has connotations as a sacred sanctuary.
4. the dips … holland: the dips: Abbreviated form of ‘dip-candle’, a candle made by repeatedly dipping a wick into melted tallow (animal fat), a form of lighting used by the poor; stuff frocks: worsted or wool dresses made of poor material without nap or pile; holland: plain linen material, originating in the Netherlands.
5. rushlight: Gloomy light given off by ‘dips’ with wicks of rush-pith.
6. the day’s collect: The Book of Common Prayer designates specific prayers for use on each day of the year.
7. mess: Serving of liquid or pulpy food.
8. tucker: Fabric worn round the neck and tucked in to the top of the dress.
9. work-bag: Females were expected to be sewing when not otherwise occupied. The bag would contain the utensils for their sewing ‘work’.
10. organ of veneration: Combe in The Constitution of Man (1835) describes this organ as producing respect, reverence, deference, adoration, religious feeling (see Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth, Embodied Selves, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, pp. 39–40).
11. her large front: A high forehead betokens intelligence and reason.
12. frieze: Heavy woollen fabric with long nap.
13. a hollow cough: The meeting with Helen Burns, who was based on Charlotte Bront?’s eldest sister, Maria, is preluded by her ominous tubercular cough. The name ‘Burns’ suggests both fire (purification), the ‘burns’ or brooks of Scotland and the Scots Romantic poet of that name.
14. St Matt. v. 16: Matthew 5 contains the Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (5:3).
15. I saw … bent over a book: Recalls Bunyan’s PP: ‘I saw a Man … a Book in his hand’ (p. 8).
16. ‘Rasselas’: Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas Prince of Abbissinia (1759), a didactic picaresque fable on the theme of the vanity of this world: ‘Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed’ (ed. J. Hardy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968, p. 31).
17. rusty: Stale, rancid.
CHAPTER VI
1. Charles I…. ship-money: King Charles I was executed in 1649 by the ‘Rump’ Parliament. Tonnage and poundage were excise taxes illegally levied by Charles on the Crown’s authority; ship-money was a wartime tax whose abuse by the king helped to precipitate the English Civil Wars (1642–8).
2. on her neck: This detail refers to the martyrdom of Charles I.
3. borders of Scotland: Helen’s surname links her with the poetry of the wild country which the Bront?s associated above all with Sir Walter Scott and on which they drew for their dreamy juvenilia.
4. Felix … convenient season: In the Acts of the Apostles, the governor Felix postpones consideration of Paul’s case: ‘when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee’ (24:25), hence colluding in his persecution.
5. Love … use you: Matthew 5:44.
6. putting off our corruptible bodies: 1 Corinthians 15:52–3.
7. gradations of glory: Allusion to the doctrine of the ‘spark’ of the believing soul ascending through the archangelic hierarchies to the seraphs (the order of Love, nearest to God). See Sara Moore, ‘Rights, Reason and Redemption: Charlotte Bront?’s Neo-Platonism’, Victorian Newsletter, 55 (Spring 1979), pp. 5–7.
8. another creed: Belief shared in different forms by the Bront? sisters that eternal damnation is not consonant with a God of Love. See Tom Winnifrith, The Bront?s and their Background: Romance and Reality (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 35, 56–62. It is not unlikely that the Bront? sisters derived this belief from their precocious eldest sister, who had worked it out for herself, and died in that belief. In a letter of 14 February 1850, Charlotte Bront? regrets that ‘the Clergy do not like the doctrine of Universal Salvation’ as set out in Jane Eyre (Letters, Vol. II, p. 343).
CHAPTER VII
1. hebdomadal: Every seven days.
2. the fifth … of St Matthew: The Sermon on the Mount, containing the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer and admonitions against hypocrisy and worldliness.
3. Eutychus: Falling asleep during a long sermon by St Paul at Philippi, Eutychus tumbled out of a third-storey window, to be revived by Paul.
4. ‘Coming Man’: Ironic reference to Christ at his Second Coming and the Day of Judgement.
5. ‘If ye suffer … happy are ye’: Brocklehurst carelessly alludes to biblical texts, including 1 Peter 3:14 and Matthew 25:40–46, in which the privileged who have neglected ‘the least of these my brethren’, letting them