Chapter 8 — Miss Temple's tea; Jane is cleared

That evening, after the schoolroom has emptied, Miss Temple sends a note: Jane and Helen are to come to her own room. Miss Temple is the young, intelligent superintendent of Lowood, the only adult in the building Brocklehurst has not been able entirely to bend to his methods. Her room is small and warm and lined with books. She gives the two girls tea and a thick slice of seed-cake — kept, she says, for unexpected occasions, and tonight is one. The kindness is the first the novel has shown Jane since Mr. Lloyd.

She asks Jane, gently, for her account of Gateshead. Jane has been waiting, for hours, for the chance to defend herself; she feels the rush of resentment rise up. Helen, sitting beside her, catches her eye, and Jane checks herself. She tells the story plainly — not theatrically, not bitterly, simply as it happened. The red-room. The lie about her deceitfulness. Mrs. Reed's coldness. Mr. Lloyd's recommendation of school. Miss Temple listens without interruption. When Jane is finished, Miss Temple says only that she will write to Mr. Lloyd, the apothecary, and ask him to confirm. If he confirms, she will publicly clear Jane.

A few days later the letter from Mr. Lloyd arrives. He has corroborated Jane's story in full. Miss Temple, in the long classroom that afternoon, in front of the assembled school, formally announces that the charge of deceit against Jane Eyre has been investigated and found to be without foundation. She shakes Jane's hand. The girls applaud. The slander is undone in front of the same room in which it was delivered. The chapter is one of the novel's quietest set-pieces and one of its most important: an institution can be cruel, the book is saying, but a single decent person inside it can refuse to be the instrument of the cruelty. Jane, that night, sleeps better than she has slept in months.