Jane's Inheritance

Jane Eyre's inheritance of twenty thousand pounds from her uncle John Eyre is the material and emotional hinge on which the final movement of her story turns. The news arrives not as a triumphant climax but as a bewildering shock, delivered by St. John Rivers in her cottage at Morton on a snowy night. The sum—far larger than the four or five thousand pounds she had vaguely hoped for—stuns her into silence, and St. John, who has never laughed in her presence before, laughs at her aghast expression. Yet the inheritance does more than lift her from penury: it reveals that she is not alone in the world. St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers are her cousins, the children of her father's sister, and the discovery floods her with a joy that the money itself could never produce.

The Revelation of Fortune and Kinship

St. John brings the news in two stages. First, he tells Jane that her uncle, John Eyre of Madeira, is dead and has left her his entire property. When she asks the amount, he replies, "Twenty thousand pounds," a figure that takes her breath away. But the deeper revelation follows immediately: St. John himself is a namesake—christened St. John Eyre Rivers—and his mother was Jane's father's sister. The solicitor Mr. Briggs had written to St. John because the Rivers family were the only other living relatives of the deceased. A slip of paper bearing Jane's true name, torn from the margin of a portrait cover and found in St. John's pocket-book, had confirmed her identity. In a single moment, Jane learns that she is rich and that she has found a brother and two sisters.

Jane's Refusal to Keep the Fortune Entire

Jane's response to her inheritance is as distinctive as her character. She refuses to accept the full twenty thousand pounds, insisting that it be divided equally among the four cousins—five thousand each. St. John argues that the law and custom give her the sole right, but Jane is immovable: she has never had a home or family, and she will not now purchase them at the cost of justice. "I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly ungrateful," she tells him. The dispute is submitted to arbitration by Mr. Oliver and a lawyer, who both uphold Jane's position. The instruments of transfer are drawn up, and each of the four cousins becomes possessed of a competency. Jane's act of dividing her fortune is not impulsive charity but a deliberate choice to create the kinship she has always lacked.

Consequences: Independence, Home, and a Changed Future

The inheritance gives Jane the practical independence she has craved since childhood. She closes Morton school, returns to Moor House as its mistress, and refurnishes the house in anticipation of Diana and Mary's return. The money also removes the last obstacle to her reunion with Mr. Rochester: when she finds him blind and maimed at Ferndean, she can tell him, "I am an independent woman now," and offer herself as his wife without any taint of dependency. The fortune, divided and shared, binds the Rivers family together; Diana and Mary both marry well, and St. John pursues his missionary vocation in India with the knowledge that his sisters are provided for. For Jane, the inheritance is not an end but a beginning—the material foundation of the equal partnership she will build with Rochester.