Adele

At breakfast, which I took with Mrs Fairfax in her room by invitation, she remarked upon my lameness.

"I noticed you were somewhat stiff last night, and took it to be the result of your tiring journey from Lowood, but you seem still to be suffering pain when you move."

There was nothing for it, I must confess.

"It is the effect of the thrashing I underwent before leaving the school," I said, feeling a pink warmth rising in my cheeks.

"A thrashing! Show me at once."

Blushing even deeper, I stood and removed the loose wrap I had donned, for she had told me breakfast was to be an informal occasion. Beneath I had only my shift, which I hoisted onto my hips, exposing the rounds of my buttocks, which I turned towards my employer.

"Goodness, child," she exclaimed, "what heinous offence did you commit to deserve that?" A worried look crossed her open countenance. "I hope you are not dishonest or dishonoured."

"Do not be concerned," I said, "it was not done as punishment, but as a parting gift, a reinforcement of that discipline and behaviour inculcated in all Lowood girls, imprinted in their persons with the rod and the cane. It was not done in anger, more in love and concern for my future well-being."

My explanation seemed to satisfy her, but she continued to 'tut' over the ravaged bottom I displayed. It was hardly surprising, since I made a colourful spectacle. The welts had darkened overnight, and it was too soon for them to have subsided much. Mr Brocklehurst did not deal in light swishes, every one was a whistler, leaving a finger thick welt, and two dozen, even spaced on my rather fatty underbum, must needs merge to form great slabs of blackish bruise. Several shorter, tell-tale tracks, starting on my left thigh, following its white curve inwards and upwards, but failing to reappear opposite, on the right thigh, marked the 'short' cuts, where he had reached my poor aching vulva, still throbbing, even now, nearly twenty-four hours after it had been so cruelly sliced.

I resumed my gown, and we continued our conversation. I asked after my charge.

"She will be here directly," I was informed, "I gave instructions to the nurse that they should not hurry down this morning, so that we might meet under less rushed conditions than last night, and get a little acquainted."

I enquired what her daughter was named.

"My daughter!" she exclaimed in some surprise, "I have no children. I would have liked children," she added wistfully, as if to herself, "but never became fruitful. Mr Fairfax, for all he was a dear sweet man, and we were ever very companionable in bed together, had spent too much time in Arab lands. There they do not use a woman as is done here, you know."

"Not as men do to us in England?" I exclaimed. "How so then?"

"Why he liked mostly to take me from behind, in that other channel. He claimed that it was tighter, and excited him more. Though it certainly aroused him to great passion, and I was not unmoved myself, no children could come of it."

"Then who is it I am hired to teach?" I asked, surprised in my turn.

"Why, AdŠle is Mr Rochester's ward. He has brought her here from France to be given a good English education."

"And who is Mr Rochester?"

"Why the Master of this house, and your employer."

"But I thought that you were my employer," I said in astonishment.

"Oh, no, my dear," she said in a surprised tone, as if taken aback that I did not know. "I am only the housekeeper, though distantly related to Mr Rochester through my late dear husband's family."

I must have looked bewildered for she went on.

"I see I have not been full enough in my letter to you. Mr Rochester asked me to find a governess, as soon as maybe, and I answered your advertisement in haste, since the little girl was due here imminently. She is the daughter of a friend of his, from France, recently deceased and, as an act of charity, he has taken her in, she having no other guardian. Mr Rochester is the owner of this estate, and several other properties in the district, and a great fortune besides, but he is seldom here, seeming to spend all his time travelling, principally on the continent I believe."

Just then the door opened to admit a trim nurse and the little girl, my charge. AdŠle at that time was about eight years old, a small, pretty child, with a mass of ringlets falling to her waist. She was well dressed, but in too fancy a fashion for a child, in my opinion. I was not given to extravagant dress in the young. I myself, wore mainly plain black, perhaps dove grey for special occasions, pale blue and apple green in summer.

She addressed a question to the nurse, Sophie, asking, in French, whether I was the Governess she had been promised. It happened that I had some fluency in the language for I had been taught by a French lady at Lowood, Mde. Pierotte, from whom I had acquired, not only some skill with rod and cane, for it was she who taught me how to cut the bare bottoms of the great girls in my charge until they howled or, better still, clasped their hands to their seats and thus earned themselves extra strokes, but also a good accent and pronunciation. Soon we were in conversation in her own language. She was overjoyed, for her English still lacked ease and fluency, and prattled on about herself, her history and her accomplishments.

It seems she had lived in France, with her Mamma, who had now 'gone to the Holy Virgin', in a pretty house in a clean town, where many ladies and gentlemen had come to visit, 'to play with Mamma in her bed', amongst them Mr Rochester. When she had lost her Mamma, Mr Rochester had asked her if she would like to come and live with him in England, and she had said yes, 'but he lied to me, for, though he brought me here in a great ship across the sea, he does not live here with us'.

She asked if I would like to hear her sing, and she rendered a song from an opera, most unsuitable for a little girl, being about a woman parted from her lover, wet, warm and weak-kneed with passion for him, and anticipation of their conjunction on his return. Then she would recite for me, then dance. Though pretty and lively, indeed her movements mocked those of a Grande Coquette, I could see she was spoilt and self-willed, and I would have to work hard to make her what an English girl should be.

My task would not be made any easier by her extreme youth. I approved of the use of a penal cane on the developed buttocks of great girls of sixteen or more, who had acquired with their growing womanhood, some fatty padding that would respond well to a smart cutting from tough rattan or malacca, and, indeed, deemed it an essential adjunct to a grown woman's spiritual health, that there be someone to exercise firm discipline and correction, father, brother, husband, an older woman at a pinch, if none other could be found, who would not hesitate to quell any wilfulness, any lack of that submissiveness that is the hallmark of a real woman, but I could not condone the infliction of such severe punishment on one of such tender years as my charge, and only the lightest of corrections would be allowable. If the child fell short of grace, it would be the teacher who was at fault as much as she.

I was to be confirmed in this judgement later from a most unexpected quarter, and to my own cost in pain and suffering, but my conscience was clear on the matter. I searched through the collection of corrective instruments that, as in any well regulated establishment, the house provided, and selected the thinnest strip of cane, the lightest strap available, resolving to use them as sparingly as possible, and then only on the palm, and to spare the child the humiliation of having her lean buttocks beaten. Time enough for that when she entered into womanhood. Though sometimes trying and unruly, she was not wicked, nor unintelligent, and learnt well, her English, especially, progressing to the benefit of both herself and others, like Mrs Fairfax, with whom she came in contact.