Risking Isolation at the Cost of Finding a Balance: The Reed Sisters’ Essential Role in Jane Eyre Puja Harikumar College

When it comes to the topic of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in literary circles, the critical attention given to Eliza and Georgiana Reed, the title character’s cousins is practically non-existent. Most critics do not seem interested in delving further past a surface level interpretation of their existence that points out how their mother’s favoritism of them over Jane resembles the circumstances of Cinderella and her ugly stepsisters, contributes to the fairy tale element of the story. This in turn, fails to acknowledge the importance of Jane reuniting with her cousins in adulthood. The few critics, like Micael M. Clarke that do take the time to acknowledge the purpose of this reunion, falsely believe that that Georgiana and Eliza merely represents the “dilemma many women confront regarding marriage or spinsterhood”, respectively (Clarke, 704). What Clarke fails to understand is that while the sisters do represent a dichotomic dilemma, it is not one that can be universally applied to women in general, but rather to Jane’s own struggle that she will have to face shortly after meeting them.

Jane’s main adversary over the course of the novel is her inability to reconcile her desire to live by her spiritual faith with her desire to...