Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying.
Chapter 7
Context
Mr. Brocklehurst justifies his refusal to provide the students with adequate food after Miss Temple explains that she served bread and cheese because the breakfast porridge was inedible.
Analysis
Brocklehurst's triplet—'hardy, patient, self-denying'—sounds like a moral curriculum, but the verb 'render' exposes his real project: he is manufacturing a type of person, not educating individuals. The word choice belongs to industrial or agricultural production ('render' means to process or reduce something), revealing that his rhetoric of Christian virtue masks what is actually a class-engineering scheme to produce compliant, uncomplaining workers.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Bronté embeds critique in Brocklehurst's own vocabulary—his slip into the language of manufacture ('render') exposes the economic agenda behind his religious talk, showing that what he calls virtue-building is really training in subjugation.