Jane Eyre VIII -- chapter 8: EXONERATION

Reading Questions

1. "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."
2. Helen intrigues me: additional to and shortly after the above quotation, she says, "you think too much of the love of human beings;" what does this say about Helen's past?  Is this pertinent only to orphans?  What if we expand the definition of "orphan" to include something like that of an "emotional orphan?"
3. This might be a premature question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because it has already crossed my mind, prompted by the graceful care and reassurance from Miss Temple: What if Jane Eyre had been written by a man?  (Knowing me as I do, I expect I will ask this question again, ere we reach the end.)
4. Just as premature--or early, at least--as the previous question was, so risky is the next: Is Jane whiny, is she just a girl, or are they (it's not my intent to invite reprobation (in any of its various usages)) the same?
5. Is the tangible reality of the haunting in the red room escalating in the natural exaggeration of Jane's memory?
6. A little more than halfway through my first year in Michigan, a student of mine came to me with a funny report.  He'd been in the office waiting to speak to someone there about something--for why else is a student ever sitting in the school office? --and he happened to overhear the principal talking with the guidance counselor.  They were talking about me, of all people, and in the course of the conversation, the principal used a label for me which I'd never heard or thought before in my reference, thinking myself relatively subdued, obedient, and conscientious, none of which, I felt, aligned themselves with her label.  She called me a "loose canon."  Regardless of how she meant it, I've come to think of it as a complement.  I am proud to be a loose canon--or of having been one (I'm not sure I might still qualify, if ever I really did).  Miss Temple, I believe (and this is in no way intended to pat me on the back, as may appear so by any comparison between self and this wonderful woman, or denigrate my former principal, whom I happen to greatly respect and admire), might be labeled similarly by Mr. Brocklehurst.  I expect he recognizes her for what she is.  The question, then, is why does he keep her around?