The theme of equality in Jane Eyre

Social Status in Jane Eyre

"Reader, I married him" (Bronte 457). Jane Eyre tells the story of a friendless orphan who marries her wealthy employer. This Cinderella story, however, does not delineate the rags-to-riches triumph of a beautiful young woman who wins the favor of a man purely because of her feminine vulnerability and good looks. Over the course of the novel, Charlotte Bronte orchestrates a plot that gradually creates a more stable social identity for her protagonist, so Jane can marry Mr. Rochester as an equal, rather than a servant. Jane Eyre finally accepts Mr. Rochester not as an imperious, wealthy man but a "poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand," in his words (Bronte 453). She is no longer a servant who will have to serve Mr. Rochester as a wife as she served him as a governess.

"How could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband's death, by any tie" (Bronte 15). Jane's subject and socially unequal status is established in the first part of the novel, which chronicles her girlhood. She is totally dependant upon her distant relations the Reeds, who despise her and abuse her by confining her in a room when she resists their teasing and tormenting. Jane regards herself as in a state of slavery. "I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage" (Bronte 15).To make her understand her 'place' in the world, she is sent to a religious charity school called Lowood where she is denied food and warmth. Many of the girls die because of the unwholesome conditions. One of her friends who dies, young Helen Burns, bears her trials with patient resignation, such as when Helen is accused of being slatternly by one of the teachers: "You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning!'Burns made no answer: I wondered at her silence. 'Why,' thought I, 'does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?'" (Bronte 53). Jane is willful, and says she will refuse to submit to such injustice but eventually even her will is broken by the cruel treatment at the school. "There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy" (Bronte 67). At Lowood, the girls are taught to accept their inferior social status as normal. The girls are paraded as spectacles of poverty before rich visitors, but unlike the Lowood girls the young women of the upper classes do not have to have their hair cut off or wear humble, unadorned clothing.

Upon her graduation from the Lowood School, Jane is forced to take a situation as a governess, the traditional mode of employment of educated, penniless women. A servant who is of a higher class has almost no social status in Victorian society, and Jane finds herself continually patronized by her social 'betters.' "You should hear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the rest ridiculous, and all incubi -- were they not, mama?" says the beautiful Blanche Ingram, with whom Mr. Rochester is rumored to be in love (Bronte 179). Instead, Rochester says chooses Jane for her character. However, there is always the social barrier between them, which makes Jane uncomfortable: "I ask only this: don't send for the jewels, and don't crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there" (Bronte 265). And Jane soon discovers that Rochester is already married. She refuses to be his mistress, which would have lowered her social status even more, and deprived her of the one thing she does own -- her respectability. "Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical -- is false" (Bronte 309). Even in this exchange, Jane calls Mr. Rochester 'Sir,' acknowledging the social gap that still separates them. Their true wedding, after the death of his wife, is far more subdued: "A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present" (Bronte 457). This wedding, Bronte implies, befits Jane's true character and does not flaunt Rochester's social status.