The influence of Jane's friend Helen Burns on Jane Eyre
Helen Burns had many concerns. She thought that if she resisted, she would be expelled from Lowood's school, and that it would be better for her to suffer alone than for everyone else. And the Bible, which she believed in, taught her to return good for evil: Love your enemies, bless those who curse us, be kind to those who hate us and abuse us.
Helen Burns represses her emotions with rationality beyond ordinary children, enduring repeated verbal humiliation and beatings. She uses her fragile and sensitive nerves to deal with the cruelty of the world alone, and even advises brief to endure.
From Jane's later writings, we find that Helen Burns read a lot, and her knowledge even allowed her to communicate with Tambor directly. Jane was impressed by the depth and breadth. Physically, however, Helen Burns grew thinner and thinner, with an ineffable sadness in her air, and frequent bouts of empty coughing.
Until Jane was pronounced a liar by Pollokhurst, and this was only his judgment based on Aunt Jane's evaluation, but Jane's heart collapsed! It was in such a public humiliation that Jane was reintroduced to Helen Burns.
Helen Burns, with a bright light of wisdom in her eyes, warned Jane, when she thought her reputation was gone, that the eighty or so people at Lowood were far from alone in the world, and that they should not care what they thought; besides, they all hated Pollockhurst in their hearts, so they should not take too seriously what others thought of you.
Jane thought Helen Burns saw her weakness and was too excited, impulsive, and emotional.
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