Response to "How Does Jane Survive?" Tobias Burger

Jane Eyre handles the problems that are presented to her throughout her life with a tenacious, stubborn pursuit of equality. Throughout her childhood and adulthood, she is striving for equality with others, despite her social and physical status. As a child, Jane is "humbled by the consciousness of [her] physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed" (Bronte, 9), the children of her adopted mother. She suffers due to the unequal treatment she receives from Mrs. Reed. Her tenacity for equality ultimately convinces Mrs. Reed to send her off to school, sparing her of one of the major problems presented to her in her life. Later on in her life, she justifies her love for Mr. Rochester, a rich man easily double her age, by insisting that the two were intellectual equals. In addition, after inheriting her family fortune, Jane insists on splitting the money with her three newly discovered cousins: "Were we not four?" she explains to St. John, "Twenty thousand pounds shared equally, would be five thousand each - enough and to spare: justice would be done - mutual happiness secured" (Bronte, 445). This clearly connects Jane's idea of happiness with equality. Jane ultimately ends up happy because she achieves her life long goal of equality, living a humble life with the man she loves, neither of them being better or worse than the other in a major way. -Tobias Burger