Jane Eyre and Helen Burns

The friendship between Jane Eyre and Helen Burns at Lowood Institution is the novel's first deep emotional bond and its most formative intellectual and spiritual influence on Jane, providing a model of Christian endurance, forgiveness, and otherworldly faith that stands in permanent tension with Jane's own passionate, justice-seeking nature. Helen, a girl of thirteen or older, is the first person Jane meets at Lowood who offers not merely kindness but a fully articulated philosophy of life, and their relationship—intense, brief, and concluded by Helen's death from consumption—shapes Jane's moral development more profoundly than any other relationship in her early life.

First Encounter and the Bond of Shared Isolation

Jane first notices Helen on her very first day at Lowood, during a break in the garden. Helen is sitting on a stone bench, reading a book titled "Rasselas," a name that strikes Jane as strange and attractive. Jane, feeling lonely and isolated, approaches her and asks if the book is interesting. Helen replies that she likes it, and after a brief examination, Jane finds the contents less captivating than the title, but the exchange marks the beginning of their connection. Helen explains to Jane the meaning of the inscription over the school door—that Lowood is a charity school for orphans—and answers Jane's many questions about the teachers, including Miss Temple, Miss Smith, Miss Scatcherd, and Madame Pierrot. This conversation, in which Helen patiently provides information without condescension, establishes her as a source of knowledge and stability for the bewildered new arrival.

The Contrast in Responses to Injustice

The fundamental difference between Jane and Helen emerges starkly when Jane witnesses Helen's punishment by Miss Scatcherd. Helen is sent to stand in the middle of the schoolroom as a disgrace, and later is flogged with a bundle of twigs on her neck. Jane, who has herself just been physically assaulted by John Reed and imprisoned in the red-room, expects Helen to show signs of great distress and shame. Instead, Helen neither weeps nor blushes; she stands composed, her eyes fixed on the floor but seeming to see something beyond her punishment. Jane is astonished and asks herself how Helen can bear it so quietly and firmly. When Jane later finds Helen by the fire, reading, she expresses her outrage: "If I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose." Helen's reply articulates a doctrine of patient endurance that is utterly alien to Jane's instinct for resistance: "It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil." Jane hears this with wonder, unable to comprehend a philosophy that forbids retaliation against unjust punishment.

The Theological and Emotional Core of the Friendship

The most profound conversation between Jane and Helen occurs on the evening after Mr. Brocklehurst has publicly denounced Jane as a liar, forcing her to stand on a stool as a pedestal of infamy. Jane, crushed and weeping, is found by Helen, who brings her coffee and bread. Helen offers comfort not through mere sympathy but through a sustained theological argument. She tells Jane that Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god, that the eighty girls who heard the accusation are not the whole world, and that if Jane perseveres in doing well, friendly feelings will eventually appear. More radically, Helen articulates a creed of her own: "Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs." She speaks of putting off the corruptible body and retaining only the spark of the spirit, of a future state where the soul returns to God, and of a creed that allows her to distinguish between the criminal and his crime, forgiving the first while abhorring the last. Jane, still burning with the injustice of her treatment, cannot fully accept this doctrine, but she is calmed by it. She rests her head on Helen's shoulder, and they sit in silence until Miss Temple joins them. This scene establishes Helen as Jane's spiritual mentor, offering a vision of transcendence that Jane will later draw upon but never entirely adopt.

The Death of Helen Burns

Helen's consumption worsens as spring arrives at Lowood. She is removed from the dormitory to Miss Temple's room, and Jane is not allowed to see her. On a June evening, after learning from the surgeon that Helen "will not be here long," Jane creeps out of bed at nearly eleven o'clock and makes her way to Miss Temple's room. She finds Helen in a little crib, pale and wasted but composed. Jane climbs into the crib, and Helen puts her arm over her. In their final conversation, Helen speaks of her impending death with serene faith: "I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about." She tells Jane that she is going to God, that she believes in a future state, and that God is her father and friend. Jane asks if she will see Helen again when she dies, and Helen assures her that she will come to the same region of happiness. They fall asleep in each other's arms. When Jane awakens at dawn, she is being carried back to the dormitory by the nurse; Helen is dead. Her grave in Brocklebridge churchyard is later marked by a grey marble tablet inscribed with her name and the word "Resurgam"—"I shall rise again."

The Enduring Influence on Jane

Helen's influence on Jane is not a simple conversion but a permanent addition to Jane's moral vocabulary. Throughout the rest of the novel, Jane's instinct for passionate resistance—her refusal to be trampled on, her insistence on justice and equality—remains her dominant trait, as seen in her confrontation with Mrs. Reed, her declaration of equality to Rochester ("I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart!"), and her decision to leave Thornfield rather than become Rochester's mistress. Yet Helen's voice is never entirely silenced. When Jane, starving and homeless, ponders the mystery of death and the fate of the soul, she thinks of Helen's dying words and her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. When she prays for strength to resist temptation, she draws on the spiritual resources Helen first showed her. The friendship, though brief, provides Jane with a counterpoint to her own nature—a vision of forgiveness, patience, and faith in a transcendent justice that she can neither fully embrace nor entirely reject. Helen Burns remains the novel's purest embodiment of Christian grace, and her friendship with Jane is the foundation upon which Jane's moral and spiritual growth is built.