proposes by saying, "You - strange, youalmost unearthly thing! - I love you as my own flesh. You – poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are - I entreat to accept me as a husband". We see words like strange, unearthly, plain, poor, small, and obscure as adjectives that describe something ugly andhard to look at. Yet, Rochester also expresses, "my equal is here, and my likeness" when speaking about Jane.The personalities of Jane and Lily are significantly different from each other. Both characters shared conflicts that were centered around home and marriage, (inJane’s case, seeking marriage while maintaining her independence), and the two displaystrong characteristic traits throughout the novels. Similarly, both are strong minded. Lily often dares to be up-front about the things that most women of her day were hesitant about expressing, such as love and money, and the uncomfortable correlation between the two. However, her irresponsible, pleasure-seeking way of life that involved a lot of gambling, is what sets Lily apart from Jane. Lily’s challenged her independence in that she felt she must marry just to survive. On the contrary, Jane Eyre was revolutionary for the Victorian era in which she lived and her views, values and beliefs moved directly against the society at the time. Jane did not like to follow the orthodox way of doing things. She chose to live her life her way, not the way women of her time traditionally did. She made her own path and didn’t let tradition or anything else stop her from being a modern woman. Like Jane, Lily attempted to live by her own rules. In the beginning of chapter 2, Jane sets the tone for the rest of the novel by saying, “I resisted all the way.” Both characters, are affected by the line drawn between men and women during their time, as well as with equality and the roles that their sex plays in society. They also display very different views of...
