Cottages and Farms, especially in Old West Surrey

Cottages and Farms, especially in Old West Surrey

The following article is about the typical cottages and farms of the rural lower class. The article describes their drab exterior and damp, unsanitary conditions. Compare this to the considerably more well-built and lavish dwellings of the rural upper class, described in Jane Eyre and further elaborated on by the article that Rachel has provided.


Yet, the author of this article notes that these homes did have some practicalities for the lower class:


“Many of the older cottages have a rough paving of Bargate slabs, or a pitching of the local black iron-stones, from the gate to the cottage door, or of both kinds mixed, with often a few paving-bricks. It not only looks well and is durable, but as the man. comes in from ‘his work’ he stamps his feet as he passes over the stones, and shakes off most of the loose sandy earth that clings to his boots.” This utilitarian practicality of the lower class can be contrasted with the rather impractical size and amenities of upper class manor houses such as Thornfield.


Old West Surrey is some distance southwest of where Jane Eyre takes place, which is somewhere in northern England, presumably Yorkshire. So, the styles of the lower class houses may have been somewhat different, but still proportionally drab compared to the upper class mansions like Thornfield.


We don’t see many lower class homes directly in the novel, but I imagine these houses resemble the rural homes that St. John visits as a minister in his parish. Take for example the passage on page 492 when St. John leaves to walk four miles in the snow to visit a dying man.



Getting an idea of this domestic poverty highlights the notion that St. John might be just as useful serving in his own parish as he would be in India. This is an idea that Jane suggests to St. John in an attempt to convince him to marry Rosamund and stay in England. “It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr. Oliver’s large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius to wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun” (Bronte Ch. 32). Given that there are impoverished lower class people in his own parish, likely living in houses similar to the buildings in Old West Surrey, St. John’s mission to India seems more like merely an attempt to satisfy his own vain ambitions.

Article by Gertrude Jekyll

The Victorian Web

2-2-15

T.J. Carter