Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her?
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 7. The tyrannical supervisor of Lowood School Mr. Brocklehurst singles Jane out, stands her on a stool, and publicly humiliates her in front of the entire school. He labels the child an agent of the devil. This is the fuller quote from the hypocritical clergyman into whose care the impoverished little girls of Lowood have been entrusted: “You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood: God has graciously given her the shape that He has given to all of us; no signal of deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.”