Later that day, Miss Temple allows Jane to speak in her own defence. After Jane does so, Miss Temple writes to Mr. Lloyd. His reply agrees with Jane’s, and she is cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst’s accusation.

Mr. Brocklehurst embezzles the school’s funds to support his family’s luxurious lifestyle while hypocritically preaching to others a doctrine of privation and poverty. As a result, Lowood’s eighty pupils must make do with cold rooms, poor meals, and thin garments whilst his family lives in comfort. The majority become sick from a typhus epidemic that strikes the school.

Jane is impressed with one pupil, Helen Burns, who accepts Miss Scatcherd’s cruelty and the school’s deficiencies with passive dignity, practising the Christian teaching of turning the other cheek. Jane admires and loves the gentle Helen and they become best friends, but Jane cannot bring herself to emulate her friend’s behaviour. While the typhus epidemic is raging, Helen dies of consumption in Jane’s arms.

Many die in the typhus epidemic, and Mr. Brocklehurst’s negle