by Jacqulyn Martin

Created on: January 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Jane Eyre, arguably one of the most influential feminist works in the canon, opens with Jane depicted as a poor, orphaned, animal-like being who is rejected by the family she is sent to live with and treated lower than a slave, as slaves work for their keep. Jane travels through her live being treated as a lower-class dependent. From her time with the Reeds, to her education at Lowood, and on to her employment at Thornfield, everyone Jane meets seems to attempt to oppress her to her dependent class status. During her time at the Moor house, however, St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers treat Jane as though she is one of them, little knowing upon taking her in that she is in fact a relation. In the year she spends with her newfound family, she acquires friends, a living space, and a school of her own all before she is aware of her fortune. Upon realizing her worth, Jane does not alter much in the way of her attitude. She immediately gives away most of her inheritance, keeping only one-fourth for herself, to her new cousins. She continues to visit the school she has started though she is no longer the mistress.

From the start of the novel, Jane always believed that she was more than the dependent, lower-class, savage-like creature she was made out to be, stating that she would rather live among the cruel Reed family than with her surviving uncle, who was poor as well. She spends her whole life treating and respecting herself as more than the poor, plain Jane everyone else seems to see in her. She may be poor, but she does not want to belong to the Poor.
As we move on to Jane's time at Lowood Institute, we begin to see Jane really come into her own. She has broken away from the Reed house where she was constantly oppressed and ostracized from her family there. Although this environment is not exactly the nurturing one we would have hoped for young Jane, she is, for the first time in her life, surrounded by people who are just like she is. She no longer feels the pressure to measure up to some unreachable goal. In these conditions, Jane is free to be herself and blossoms into a young woman who excels in her studies so much so that she remains at the institution as a teacher for two years after the completion of her education. It is in this place that Jane learns to become the independent woman that she is. By independent, I mean secure in being on her own.
From Lowood, Jane moves on to Thornfield where she meets the man to whom she will eventually be wed. With "stern

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