All readers of “Jane Eyre” will remember the school, Lowood, to which Jane was sent, and her terrible experiences, especially at the beginning of her time there. The foundation in actual life of this school of fiction, coloured by the Brontë temperament, with its evils exaggerated for the purposes of art, is known by all to be the Clergy Daughters’ School at Casterton. As we have seen in the last chapter, it was to this school that Dorothea Beale had somewhat hastily resolved to go after sending in her resignation to the Head of Queen’s College. Probably she looked upon the offer of this post as an indication that she was to sever her connection with the college in London. If in her decision she was to blame, she certainly paid the price of her mistake. Casterton is near Kirkby Lonsdale, in a somewhat lonely district, within sight of the rounded height of Ingleborough. Dear to the heart of north-country people is this glorious wild country, but it must have seemed terribly out of the world to a girl accustomed to the life of London, to its libraries and lectures, and the many interests of the metropolis. From the first Dorothea Beale felt herself oppressed and hindered by numbers of things which she did not approve, and could not alter. The girls wore a uniform which she found terribly depressing: the rules of the school were extremely rigid, and the restrictions so many that she felt the girls had no room for growth. To her, the whole organisation of the place seemed wrong in principle, and the effect on the character of the girls of a too rigid discipline appears to have been pernicious. To one whose views on education were already clearly defined, the having to “carry on” without any power to change what was wrong, must have been an extremely trying experience. Nor was there much compensation in her own work of teaching: rather the opposite. She found herself compelled to teach many subjects, far more than she could do justice to: Scripture, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Ancient and Modern Church History, Physical and Political Geography, English Literature, Grammar and Composition, French, German, Italian, and Latin. Holding such strong views as she did about the preparation of lessons and the careful correction of children’s work, she must have found this undue multiplication of subjects very unsatisfactory. There can be, I suppose, for natures like Dorothea Beale’s, few things so trying as circumstances which make a high standard of work impossible. Her father’s letters to her at this time reveal the strong friendship that existed between the two. She wrote home that she found the work hard and her father replied, evidently with the idea of cheering her:--