Love versus Autonomy - Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Thus Jane says to Helen Burns: "to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss …showed first 75 words of 301 total…

…showed last 75 words of 301 total…Jane's autonomy. Only after proving her self-sufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her "master." The marriage can be one between equals. As Jane says: "I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine…. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company…. We are precisely suited in character-perfect concord is the result" (Chapter 38).