From Jane Eyre to false truths – an experience of reality
I often wondered about Jane Eyre – the heroine in the TV/films of Charlotte Bronte’s famous novel.
Why did Charlotte Bronte write this story? Was it a reflection of something that had happened to her?
In her early life Jane Eyre clearly seeks to say the truth and nothing but the absolute truth. She does not like liars. Alas the other kids, the other parents, the other teachers she meets are liar and manipulators.
Clearly the motto behind the early life of Jane Eyre is the truth is bad. Lies are good. No surprise. Much of society is based on constructs and these do not have to be truthful as long as there is a consensus that sates the perversions of those driving the overall direction of the theatricality that is involved, as well as acting out impulsively retrograde scripts.
Jane Eyre got bullied by relatives, pupils and school staff alike – regardless of truth.
This is the true leaning in society. I know. I experienced it myself. I was not popular, because I was about truth. I stuck to truth. *Aspie*.
I blinked all the time, a sign of insecurity, and also as is known now, a sign of autism. I got messed about for blinking. That was my first mistake. I exposed my weaknesses without realising. I had become easy meat. I had not known that this school, based in Berkshire and touted as a elite school for deaf pupils, was so hung up on social matters that anyone who didn’t fit was in for a hard time.
The premises before it became a school. It had once been owned by Lt-Col J.A. Fairhurst (1868-1944), a race horse owner and chairman of several racecourses. Image from estate agents Dreweatt, Watson & Barton’s December 1946 publicity for the sale of the premises and coloured by Deaf21.
This was a famous school at that time. I was the target for some horrific abuses which I have found even other pupils deny to this day (clear denial and shut-out of what they had done to me) and even in general pupils from THAT school cannot even believe the things I have said happened did in fact happen. They cannot accept that they, these being those pupils at the school ran what I termed the ‘murder project.’ (Among other things it seems they were trying to get me to kill myself, just to get me be gone, expired, and their operative word for it was ‘murder’.)
Yes there were play games and fun in the first months but soon enough – when social bonding became even more important (eg sports, inter-house competitions for the best efforts, prefects, various statuses that could be earned) – that is where I fell really foul of the school’s process.
Talk about a massive culture of disbelief at school where one is bullied for horrific reasons and in ways that affected one’s ability to study pass exams, etc. Many of these pupils went on to get qualifications, degrees, whilst I got nothing.
I was beaten up, punished, made to go without things, and forced to agree that those meting out these punishments were *right* and I was completely wrong to believe otherwise.
If I tried to disagree that I had done any wrong (in other words stick to the truth) I was dragged and paraded into what were nothing more than beating up parties, where each pupil would take it in turn to punch me hard or kick me where ever they liked, until I came to my ‘senses’ – and to admit that I was wrong, that I was in fact stealing stuff, doing things I shouldn’t be doing (and which I had never done anyway) and one of the most shocking things was to be accused of being a murderer. Yes a murderer, not one body slain, no-one dead, but still a murderer. These were essentially forced confessions for a distorted paradigm that happened to be the school’s pupils.
Nevertheless I still saw it clearly as them concocting a whole system of lies that fitted their perversions, their distortions, even schoolmasters and school staff. If I tried to report to staff or teachers they would say “I dont believe you they (in whatever form/year) could not have possibly done that.” So that was another block on my rather poor options of getting any remote sort of justice.
The irony was a couple of teachers seemed to know something because they would ask me questions at parades such as for when we lined up for weekend jobs or other tasks, and if I didn’t answer rightly (rightly of course to their perverse social script, or satisfy their expectations) they would punch me hard and call me a fucking liar. And this included one who went on to become a deputy principal and receive many plaudits for his new role.
As time went they saw I still did not subscribe fully to their fantasies, so the bullying went on and on.
It was only if I broke and admitted under duress I was wrong, I was a much vaunted liar (because they had eventually taken it to their senses that I was in fact a liar and nothing more) that peace would reign, but only for a short while until someone found another ‘untruth’ to trumpet to the rest of the school.
I was punished to no end and the school scrutinised my letters to my parents to make sure I did not write overtly about my experiences – in other words it was hawking my stuff to make sure I did not say things which would have caused authorities to raise concerns. I learnt through these processes that my lot was just to be silent and accept that I did not fit in and was to be punished however others saw it fit.
Essentially I was broken down and made to fit in a system that was oppressive, bullying, intimidating and desperate to check my every move and make sure I did not so much as squeal ‘murder’ to the police, the council, my parents.
Even the one weekend where I was given urgent home leave – this was in the hope my parents would allow me to leave the school early – my parents didn’t help much by insisting despite the problems I was at the best school possible. It depressed me somewhat because I had too been concerned about the abuse my father often directed at my mum. So there was abuse at home and there was abuse at school and on the one hand in the former not really wanting to do much about it (because it was embarrassing to admit one was in a failed marriage) and with the latter there was one wanting to do a lot about the abuse being suffered at school but was being shut up about it. Evidently some things have to be denied or embargoed in order to keep a perceived social fabric intact.
I also told no pupils I was going on weekend leave. On my return I discovered that some more bad things had happened. I was scared because I knew who they would blame.
Yes it was me they would blame. Even though I gone home for the weekend unannounced, I as a 14 year old had somehow travelled nearly 200 miles by train in the night back to school committed some ‘crimes’ and then returned home again. That in itself a process in which I would have required my parents to drive me to the station and a taxi or someone to collect me at the school end and drive me through the countryside to the school.
Strangely that situation, some began to realise the extent of their mad perversions at believing I was responsible for anything that happened. One or two agreed I could have not done those things and some indeed apologised rather more dutifully some time later. But it was too late. The damage had been done.
This, a famous school for a certain kind of disability – that being deafness – a school that prided itself on its progresses and jubilation, including flying the flag for oralism and several royal visits from a certain princess – who later died after taking too hot a bath in a luxurious bathroom lined with mirrors in her London palace. She had been the school’s patron from its official inception in 1950 as the following picture shows:
The school’s official opening in 1950. Image upscaled and colourised by Deaf21.
I left school early because I had got sick of being victimised. It was a deep trauma which I suffer even to this day. Even though things improved somewhat after the age of 14, there was still friction. The option of sitting it out in order to take exams and show one’s ability as a deaf person was simply not acceptable. I hated the school and its abject philosophy and simply had to get out. I very deliberately flunked my exams, thus it was a way of showing the school I had no future potential. The downside was it also made getting any possible gainful employment quite a problem.
On leaving school I soon saw the social system for what it was. A crassly perverse paternalistic patriarchy that depended on mass distortions, distractions and numerous lies. Essentially a gigantic school no doubt, but perhaps rather more of a place where reality had been adjusted in order to make everyone compliant and subservient.
Spare Rib, feminism, class war, environmentalism and disability rights became my main interests. This was the option I had to follow because these at least in a sense alleviated some of my suffering by way of learning to understand just how suffering was dispensed throughout various sections of society. For example I understood how rape or DV victims felt because their struggle was against a power that traumatized them (my dad would be a perfect example with the domestic violence he regularly doled out) and it was a system that absolved rapists (or wife beaters) of any blame. A system that essentially said it was ok to rape and pillage and let the abusers free, whilst pouring scorn on the real victims.
Today, society – our ‘system of life’ – is still the same. Its a horrible society/system based on bullying and coercion designed to place people in fixed categories. If one is not a criminal then there is a desire to criminalise until one is a criminal. One only has to put a foot wrong or place themselves in the light wrongly and justify the aspirations of those dealing out their judge and jury perversions. If one tried to be good then the idea was to make them bad. It is called social displacement (for want of a better word.)
In many ways social media has corrected some of these horrific social abuses that were portent in pre-social media days. Not fully though because as we have seen for example in the CSA inquiry, abusers are still covered up, excused, protected.
Our legal systems are problematic they derive from the same perverted consciousness. They were derived from the male desire for violence and that sort of thing, the quest for bloodletting, evisceration, the sheer enjoyment of seeing others suffer.
That is why domestic violence is still essentially a non crime in 2014. That is why rape is still ok in many parts of the world.
That’s why disability hate crime still goes unchallenged despite a dodgy 2003 law – and society largely views disabled people as scroungers or trouble makers.
It is why in 2014 it’s difficult to move the law and legal systems into modernity. They cannot be moved easily because of the many vested interests that would *suffer* as a result. And of course its rooted in an unsympathetic and constructivist male world.
This is not progress. It is not modernity. It is prelapsarian, retrograde. It must end. Justice must be forced to move into the modern era and end its bestial origins, just as humanity must also move forward and end each and every one of its bestial desires too.
Published 25th July 2025.
This post was written during 2013-2014 for a blog I was doing at the time – but the post was never published. It was last saved as a draft on 1st January 2014! In July 2025 it was realised this post would fit quite well into the concepts that are behind the Deaf21 blog so it was used, with some minor changes featuring links to other sites plus a couple of photos prepared for a separate 2025 post with new information about the school’s founder.
One of the things not done with this post after 11 years is there had been intent to illustrate some other episodes in the life of Jane Eyre including her escape from Thornfield Hall and the autism as parallels to mine. That was never done so the post is basically incomplete.
I have never read Jane Eyre however I have seen at least three adaptations of it and the best for me is the one with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens in the 2006 TV dramatisation – which I think brings out the autism elements more critically though its not intended as such. I did not see the series when it was broadcast however it was viewed in 2013 on DVD.
Screencap from Recompenz. This October 2013 post covered concerns Deaf women were more vulnerable than hearing women. Recompenz was available as a static site for a good while – however after COVID it was set to private thus its no longer available to view.
That older blog alluded to which had been online in 2014 featured disability, deafness, racism, hate crime, domestic violence, child sexual abuse and other appalling cases linked to minority groups. It was called Recompenz as the image above shows. Subjects included the horrific killings of Bijan Ebrahimi, Damilola Taylor and others, the police killings of Sean Rigg and others, the disablist abuses/hate crimes against Fiona Pilkington, David Askew and quite a few others, also the controversies surrounding the 2012 Paralympics and the disabled as scroungers. Most of these posts were in short news form – which meant there were around 1200 summaries that were linked to main news articles and features which fully covering those very topics. There were a few fully featured posts however. The blog was managed from 2006 to 2015, when it was superseded by a somewhat different format featuring two newer blogs – one focussed on disability and the other focussed on police abuses and also the failures with CSA (hence a major inquiry established in 2014) and domestic violence.
The feature image is a scan of the school’s title printed on a parched paper cover for an undated but evidently late 1950s/early 1960s brochure. I debated whether to use this image (intended for a different post), evidently some may have wondered what school was being alluded to in this post hence that image was chosen. At first the school’s proper name was used but after some thought it was decided better to use Jane Eyre and the other name in the same picture rather than a full descriptive name of the school involved. Having done that it looks so much better and looks more impactful. Curiously Hare and Eyre are quite alike verbally. The phonetics for the former is /hɛəɹ/ and for the latter its /ɛ(ə)r/ however both use ‘air’ thus the pronunciation is very similar.
