The heroine of Bread, Jeannette, is an uncommonly beautiful girl with a fine intelligence and a superb will. Her initial foray into the world of work is, arguably, a selfless gesture. After years of scraping by on her mother's meager earnings, Jeannette sacrifices her education to go to work and support her sister. Jeannette recognizes the importance of marriage for a young woman at this time, so she sacrifices her own chance in an effort to give Alice a better opportunity to find a husband. At one point, she even passes one of her suitors, Roy Beardsley, on to her sister. In this and several other instances, Jeannette seems to have almost no romantic interests, to be almost completely rational. The final scenes, however, make it clear that Jeannette does have a deeply emotional side, one that is crushed in the final pages under the weight of her...