The beginnings of mass rapid transit took place in London, where the world's oldest underground train network was built. This railway was built in mostly shallow cut and cover tunnels. Later, another major breakthrough occurred, and that was the development of Boston's first subway in 1897. This creation eventually led to the construction of New York's first line, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company or IRT. This line runs from City Hall in lower Manhattan all the way to 145th street at Broadway in Harlem. The New York subway system is the only form of rapid transit that runs 24 hours a day, and with over 4 million passengers that board it daily, it has become one of the world's largest transit systems.

In Lindner's Jane, Jane Moore often uses the subway as a means of getting from one destination to the next in America's northeast. She is seen using a subway to and from Manhattan, where her sister Jenna lives, and she also uses one to get back to Connecticut, where she lives at Mr. Rathburn's estate at Thornfield Park (p.193, Lindner). Unlike Jane Moore, Bronte's Jane Eyre only had the option to ride the slow and uncomfortable coach on her way to Lowood (p. 40, Norton 4th Critical Ed.). In Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Gemma often used buses (p. 286, Livesey), trains (p. 46, Livesey) and planes (p. 405, Livesey) as a way to get from place to place. Even though Gemma has used more diverse modes of transportation, Jane Moore seems to utilize the subway more often, because she grew up in the northeast, and the subway for this region of the country is more of a common and convenient means of travel, than a bus or a plane, especially when going from one neighboring state to another in the northeast, as Jane Moore did. The subway in this text represents a common way of life that all northeasterners come to know and utilize, when traveling to a nearby state to visit friends, or in Jane Moore's case family.

Bibliography

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. W.W. Norton & Company Inc.,2016.

Lindner, April. Jane. Poppy: Hachette Book Group Inc., 2010.

Livesey, Margot. The Flight of Gemma Hardy. HarperCollins, 2012.

Information Source: "New York City Subway Opens." history. com. A & E Television Networks, 23 Oct. 2019. Web. Date Accessed, 22 Oct. 2019. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/new-york-city-subway-opens

Image Source: https://time.com/4810662/new-york-city-metro-mta-new-york-public-library-nypl/