Jane is the novel's most sustained argument. Plain, poor, and without social protection, she insists on moral equality — not because the world grants it but because she believes she has it by right. Her famous 'I care for myself' is not selfishness: it is the refusal to let circumstances determine her worth. She is also passionate, observant, and occasionally wrong — she idealizes Rochester, underestimates St. John's danger, and narrates with a bias toward herself that the reader should notice. She is, in short, a person rather than a symbol.