Today's manuscript follows the grueling childhood
and early adulthood of an orphan girl as she
navigates abusive relatives, a harsh charity
school, and her first job as a governess at a
mysterious estate. We are diving right into the
critique to explore how we can elevate this incredibly
evocative narrative. Yeah, I am very ready to
get into this. There is just so much raw power
in these pages. And I really want to look at
how we can, you know, harness that energy without
letting it totally run away from us. Right. I
mean, the material makes a really strong case
for the protagonist's fiery nature right away.
Like, by highlighting her intense early rebellions
in the Red Room and against John Reed. Oh, absolutely.
The heat in those opening chapters is undeniable.
It is. But let's look closely at the section
discussing the eight year time jump in chapter
10. Reading this part, it feels as though we've
been watching a roaring untamed fire and then
somebody simply flips a switch and it becomes
a perfectly calibrated gas stove. I mean, we
missed the turning of the dial. Is the connection
between A and B fully established in the material
or is that an area to potentially bolster? Well,
the abrupt eight -year time jump compresses a
crucial period of the protagonist's emotional
maturation into a mere passive summary. Yes,
exactly. That's the core weakness right there.
Skipping directly from the aftermath of the typhus
outbreak to her adulthood, it just, it leaves
the reader completely disconnected from the actual
process of her transformation. Right, we just
jump forward. Yeah. The narrative tells us that
she, quote, imbibed Miss Campbell's nature and
gave her allegiance to duty and order. But relying
on exposition for such a massive character shift,
it just flattens the emotional weight of her
internal growth. It really does. The reader totally
misses the vital struggle of this passionate,
volatile child actively forcing herself into
a, you know, subdued, disciplined mold. And I
think we have to talk about what that exposition
costs the reader emotionally. I mean, we spent
chapter after chapter experiencing every physical
blow from John Reed, every moment of suffocating
panic when she was locked away. Right, all that
visceral detail. Exactly, every freezing morning
washing with ice -covered water. We felt her
indignation. We felt her desperate desire to
strike back again very hard. Yeah. So to then
simply be told in just a paragraph or two that
she absorbed Miss Temple's serenity over eight
years, it robs the reader of witnessing the actual
mechanics of her survival. It really does. It
completely removes the friction. We are told
she altered, but we don't get to see what it
cost her to alter. Yes. So the suggestion here
is to dramatize these transitional years by illustrating
the subtle, hard -won shifts in her temperament
through an active, pivotal scene before Miss
Temple's departure. I love that. Instead of summarizing
her time as a student and young teacher, we need
concrete examples. like write a specific scene
showing the protagonist choosing restraint over
her natural inclination for rebellion. Oh, that's
a great approach. Right? For example, she could
be faced with a difficult, insubordinate student
of her own, like a child who intensely reminds
her of her younger, frantic self. Oh wow, a mirror
image? Exactly! Show her actively suppressing
the urge to react with the rapid rush of retrospective
thoughts she felt in the Red Room. And instead,
show her deliberately employing the gentle, measured
tones she learned from Miss Temple. That's brilliant.
This serves as a dynamic bridge between the passionate
child and the composed young woman arriving at
Thornfield. Yeah, it forces the protagonist to
confront a living mirror of her own past. Let's
play this out a bit. Imagine a scene where a
young girl under her care throws a massive tantrum.
Maybe even strikes out at her or throws a slate.
Right. Directly echoing the John Reed dynamic,
but reversing the power roles. Exactly. And the
protagonist's immediate, instinctual, physiological
reaction would be that old heat, the rising blood,
the ringing in the ears, the absolute desire
to retaliate or scream about the injustice of
it all. And that's where the tension lies. The
reader knows her history intimately by this point.
The reader is practically begging her to snap,
because we remember how good it felt when she
yelled at her aunt. Oh yeah, we want her to fight
back. But instead, she has to physically swallow
that heat. You could show her closing her eyes,
taking a ragged breath, intentionally picturing
Miss Temple's face, and, you know, choosing a
different path. Right. And by showing her actively,
painfully choosing to be calm, we understand
that her new, composed demeanor isn't a magical
personality transplant. No, not at all. It is
a suit of armor she has painstakingly forged
for herself, link by link. It makes her eventual
arrival at Thornfield so much more compelling.
Because we know that beneath her quiet, governess
exterior, that blazing fire still exists. It
is just tightly controlled. It fundamentally
changes how we view every interaction she has
moving forward. When she is polite and submissive
to Mrs. Fairfax or her new employer, we don't
just see a passive character conforming to societal
norms. Right. We see a character exercising immense,
exhausting self -control. That is an incredibly
active state of being, and it creates this simmering
suspense, like we're constantly wondering, when
is the armor going to crack? Exactly. The restraint
becomes a weapon she wields rather than just
a trait she possesses. So now moving along that
same thematic line of the friction of control,
I want to transition from how the protagonist
controls herself to how external forces try to
control her. Okay, let's get into it. As I understand
it from the notes, the argument here is that
the adults in her early life are deeply oppressive.
That makes sense, but could the evidence also
support a different conclusion? Like giving these
antagonists their own twisted moral high ground?
Oh, I see. The characterization of the early
antagonists leans heavily into absolute villainy,
which risks pushing the narrative into melodrama
and dampening the psychological realism. That's
the real weakness here. Characters like Mr. Brocklehurst
and Mrs. Reed are presented as purely malicious
or grotesquely hypocritical. Very black and white.
Yeah, I mean, Brocklehurst is introduced as a
literal black pillar who justifies starving children
while his own family arrives draped in velvet
and ostrich blooms. Right, it's very stark. And
Mrs. Reed is shown to be entirely devoid of any
maternal conflict regarding her niece. This paints
the protagonist's struggles in stark black and
white, which can totally alienate a reader looking
for a complex, grounded human friction rather
than a fairy tale, wicked stepmother dynamic.
I have to admit some confusion here, or maybe
just a bit of pushback. Sure, what are you thinking?
Well, I actually really loved how absolutely
wicked Mrs. Reed was. It made me fiercely root
for the protagonist right out of the gate. If
we give her a moral high ground or make her sympathetic,
don't we risk losing that visceral, fairytale
energy that makes the opening chapters so compelling
and easy to latch onto? I get that. But think
about it. Giving these antagonists their own
twisted moral high ground actually makes them
more terrifying. How so? When an antagonist is
cruel simply because they are evil, they cease
to be a real human being. and become a predictable
plot device. We know exactly what the wicked
stepmother is going to do. Right, she's going
to be wicked. Exactly. But a human being who
genuinely believes they are doing the right thing,
or a human being driven by an irrational terror,
they are entirely unpredictable. And unpredictability
generates far more suspense than reliable malice.
I see where you're going with this. If Mrs. Reed
locks a terrified child in a room where her husband
died and feels absolutely no remorse, she's just
a monster. Right. If Brocklehurst demands the
girl's hair be cut off to mortify the lusts of
the flesh while his own daughters sport elaborate
curls, he's just a cartoon hypocrite. It works
for a surface -level reaction, but it doesn't
give the story the depth it needs to sustain
a long gothic narrative. Precisely. We need to
figure out how these villains justify their actions
when they look in the mirror. No one thinks they're
the villain of their own story. So the suggestion
is to infuse the antagonists with believable,
albeit flawed, internal justifications for their
cruelty to create a more sophisticated, chilling
tension. Yes. Let's brainstorm some concrete
examples for this. Give Mrs. Reed a fleeting
moment of genuine, vulnerable superstition. Oh,
I like that. When the protagonist screams in
the Red Room rather than Mrs. Reed thrusting
her back in purely out of impatient, frantic
anguish, show Mrs. Reed truly terrified that
the child is a fiend or channeling her dead husband's
spirit. Wow. Making her cruelty a product of
profound fear rather than mere spite. Oh, that
shifts the dynamic entirely. Think about how
much more unsettling Mrs. Reed becomes if you
realize she isn't just a sadist. but a woman
genuinely haunted by the deathbed promise she
made to her husband. Exactly. If we see her hand
visibly shaking on the key to the red room, not
out of rage, but out of a superstitious dread
that this strange alien child is somehow a curse
on her house. Yes, it makes her so much more
real. It doesn't excuse her abuse at all. In
fact, it actually makes it scarier, because fear
drives people to do far worse things than simple
dislike ever could. Building on that point, What
if we looked at it from the perspective of Mr.
Brocklehurst? Okay, how would we handle him?
Show him making a difficult, budget -driven decision
about the Burt Porridge. Have him actively reviewing
ledgers and convincing himself that the physical
suffering of the girls is a necessary, unavoidable
evil to keep the underfunded institution open.
Grounding it in the money. Exactly. Making his
hypocrisy a systemic failure rather than a cartoonish
personal evil. I love the idea of putting him
at a desk with his ledgers. It grounds the horror
and administration. Let the reader see him looking
at the incredibly poor quality of the thread
for the camisas or the rancid fat used for the
food. Right, the actual math of it. And instead
of just dismissing it with a villainous mustache
twirl, have him internally rationalize the horrible
math of the charity school. Have him truly believe
that if he spends a single penny more on food,
the school will bankrupt and close, and these
girls will end up destitute on the streets. Yes.
So in his warped mind, feeding them burnt porridge
is actually a horrific act of grace. Oh, that's
incredibly dark. In regarding his own family
wearing velvet and curls, he doesn't see it as
hypocrisy. In his mind, his family represents
the benefactors. The grace of God made manifest.
They are the reward for righteousness, while
the orphans must learn extreme humility because
of their fallen station. If he genuinely believes
his own terrifying theology, his interactions
with the protagonist become a clash of actual
worldviews, rather than just a big bully picking
on a small victim. When the antagonist thinks
they are the hero, the protagonist's battle to
survive them becomes infinitely more complex.
Exactly. It elevates the text from a simple melodrama
into a profound psychological study. So a key
theme running through this material seems to
be the conflict between earthly justice and divine
endurance. We see this heavily when we shift
our focus from the antagonists to the protagonist's
primary ally, Helen Burns. Yes, Helen is such
a pivotal figure here. She really is. And, you
know, themata weight is like the anchor of a
ship. It grounds the vessel beautifully, but
if the chain is entirely let out all at once,
the ship stops moving forward completely. That's
fascinating. What are the potential limitations
or counter -arguments to that idea of giving
a young character such a heavy philosophical
burden? Well, the extended theological dialogues
halt the narrative momentum and strain the natural
voices of the young characters. Yeah, that weakness
is deeply tied to the pacing and the physical
reality of the scene. Helen Burns' lengthy speeches
about forgiveness, the New Testament, and the
incorruptible spirit read like a polished philosophical
treatise. They really do. They're so dentists.
Right. And while the themes of turning the other
cheek versus the protagonist's desire to strike
back again very hard are incredibly rich, delivering
them through massive blocks of uninterrupted
text bogs down the pacing of the Lowood section.
It completely stalls it out. It removes the reader
from the visceral, freezing, starving reality
of the school and places them into an abstract
theological debate that feels inauthentic to
the organic, fragmented conversation of a 14
-year -old girl. It really does feel like the
manuscript forgets the brutal physical reality
it has so perfectly constructed just a page prior.
I mean, we have girls who are washing in ice,
whose toes are raw and painfully swollen from
chillblains, who are sharing tiny morsels of
oatcake just to survive the night. It's pure
survival mode. Exactly. And yet amidst this total
bodily deprivation, Helen speaks in perfectly
constructed semi -colon laden paragraph long
sentences about the impalpable principle of light
and thought. Right. You cannot speak in pristine
flowing paragraphs when your teeth are chattering.
The ideas she is expressing are beautiful, but
the delivery mechanism pulls us entirely out
of the immersion of the scene. It feels disconnected.
Speaking directly to the reader rather than two
starving children desperately trying to comfort
each other in the dark. So how do we fix it?
We don't want to lose the philosophy because
it's the core of her character. No, we definitely
want to keep it. The suggestion is to anchor
the philosophical and thematic debates deeply
into the immediate physical action and sensory
details of the scene to make the dialogue feel
earned, dynamic, and natural. One way a writer
might approach this is to provide concrete examples
of her physical struggle. Break up Helen's long
monologues by having her physical body continually
betray her stoic words. Oh, I like that contrast.
Right? While she is explaining her creed of eternity
and a mighty home, have her abruptly wracked
by a hollow coughing fit. Or show her struggling
to fold the untidy badge with chilblain -covered
numb fingers. Make it tactile. Yes. Have the
protagonist physically interrupt these speeches
to rub Helen's freezing hands or offer her a
stolen crumb of food. Instead of paragraphs of
doctrine, translate Helen's high -minded ideals
into brief, fragmented comforts spoken through
chattering teeth. That's so powerful. It will
completely heighten the tragedy of her situation
while maintaining the narrative's forward momentum.
Let's workshop that specific scene by the fire
where Helen first explains her philosophy. The
protagonist is demanding to know why Helen doesn't
fight back against Miss Scatchard. Right, the
big debate. Yeah, and Helen starts to explain
her belief in quiet endurance. But instead of
a pristine, uninterrupted monologue, what if
she has to pause mid -sentence because the draft
in the ream is so severe she starts violently
shivering? Oh, that's fantastic. What if she
has to use M dashes and staccato phrasing because
she literally doesn't have the breath to finish
a long thought? Is there a risk that focusing
solely on the physical ailments might overshadow
the theological points she's making? I don't
think so because the physical vulnerability actually
underscores the tragic irony of her philosophy.
She is talking about possessing an incorruptible
spirit while her corruptible body is literally
failing her on the page. That is such a good
point. It proves the necessity of her theology.
If your body is failing that spectacularly, You
have to believe in an incorruptible spirit just
to survive the night. Oh, that is brilliant!
And it forces the protagonist to react not just
to Helen's intellectual words, but to her immediate
physical distress. Yes, it makes it an active
scene. The protagonist might entirely disagree
with the theology of turning the other cheek,
but she can clearly see the suffering in front
of her. If the protagonist wraps her own thin
shawl around Helen's shoulders while Helen whispers
these fragmented ideas of forgiveness, the thematic
debate transforms into a highly charged physical
interaction. It grounds the abstract right back
into the visceral. It reminds the reader constantly
of the life and death stakes. Helen isn't just
pontificating in a vacuum. No, she's fighting
to live. She is desperately holding onto these
beliefs as a literal survival mechanism against
the freezing cold, the starvation, and the impending
consumption. By fracturing the dialogue with
those sensory interruptions, the hollow cough,
the numb fingers, the howling wind rattling the
window panes, you maintain the relentless narrative
pacing. Exactly. The scene is no longer just
a convenient pause for a philosophical debate.
It's a desperate tactile moment of connection
between two dying girls. And think about how
that makes Helen's eventual death so much more
impactful. We haven't just been listening to
a saint lecture us from a podium. Right. We've
been with her in the trenches. We've been watching
a terrified, freezing child physically waste
away while clinging to her faith. It completely
transforms the text from a stage play into a
lived, breathing, agonizing reality. The foundation
of this narrative is incredibly strong. And by
applying these adjustments to the pacing, character
motivations, and thematic delivery, the material
will hit with so much more resonance. Absolutely.
To elevate this deeply atmospheric manuscript,
this critique has focused on three main pillars
of structural and character development. First,
dramatize the eight -year time jump. Rather than
relying on passive exposition, craft an active
scene that shows rather than tells the protagonist's
hard -won emotional restraint, perhaps by having
her manage a defiant student of her own to mirror
her past. Second, add psychological nuance to
antagonists like Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst.
Ground their cruelty in genuine believable fears
or administrative pressures to avoid melodrama
and increase the chilling unpredictability of
their actions. Finally, maintain the narrative
pacing by breaking up the heavy theological dialogue.
Anchor Helen Burns' philosophical themes in the
visceral physical realities of the freezing school,
allowing her failing body to interrupt and highlight
her stoic words. These changes will make a huge
difference. They really will. The listener is
highly encouraged to implement these actionable
structural suggestions and to submit the revised
work back in for a future critique. We really
want to see how these scenes evolve once that
friction is fully applied.