Jane Eyre

An orphan who tells her own story

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë came out in 1847 under the male pen name Currer Bell. It was an instant success. Readers were struck by its narrator: a poor, plain, passionate woman who speaks directly to the reader and judges the people around her. The book's subtitle in the first edition was "An Autobiography", and it reads like one. Jane looks back on her life from about ten years after its end.

The novel follows Jane through five places, and each one is a stage of her growth: Gateshead, where she is a rebellious child; Lowood, where she learns self-control; Thornfield, where she finds love; Moor House, where she finds family and faces a different temptation; and finally Ferndean. In each place she meets a person who wants to control her, and in each she has to decide how much of herself to give.

Three themes run through the book. The first is independence: Jane wants to be loved, but never at the cost of her self-respect. The second is the conflict between passion and principle. The third is social class and the limited choices of a poor woman in Victorian England. Brontë also mixes realism with Gothic elements: a haunted red room, a mysterious laugh in the night, a fire, a ghostly voice.

Gateshead: the red room

Jane is ten. Her parents died when she was a baby, and she lives with her uncle's widow, Mrs. Reed, at Gateshead Hall. Her uncle made his wife promise to raise Jane as one of her own children, but Mrs. Reed resents her. Her son John Reed bullies Jane and one day throws a book at her head. Jane fights back and calls him a murderer and a slave driver.

As punishment, Mrs. Reed locks Jane in the red room, the bedroom where Mr. Reed died. Jane, in the dark, thinks she sees a light that might be her uncle's ghost. She screams and faints. The apothecary, Mr. Lloyd, suggests that she go to school.

Mrs. Reed sends her to Lowood, a charity school run by Mr. Brocklehurst, a hard clergyman. Mrs. Reed tells him Jane is a liar. Before she leaves, Jane stands up to her aunt and tells her what she thinks of her. It is the first time she feels the power of speaking for herself, and also the first time she feels the cost of anger.

Lowood: hunger and Helen Burns

Lowood is cold, the food is burnt and scarce, and the girls wear plain clothes while Brocklehurst's own family dresses in silk. Brocklehurst preaches humility to the poor and practices none himself. He makes Jane stand on a stool in front of the school and calls her a liar.

Two people help her. The superintendent, Miss Temple, is kind and fair. She lets Jane tell her side and clears her name. Jane's friend Helen Burns is a gentle, pious girl who accepts every punishment without complaint. Helen teaches that one should endure injustice and return good for evil. Jane cannot fully agree: she believes that unjust people should be resisted.

In the spring, typhus sweeps through the school and kills many girls. Helen dies of consumption in Miss Temple's room. Jane has crept into her bed to be with her and wakes to find her dead. After the epidemic, the public learns about the school's conditions, and new managers improve it. Jane stays eight more years, six as a pupil and two as a teacher. When Miss Temple marries and leaves, Jane feels restless. She advertises for a post as a governess.

Thornfield: Mr. Rochester

Jane becomes governess at Thornfield Hall to Adèle Varens, a lively French girl who is the ward of the master, Edward Rochester. The kind housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, runs the house. From the third floor Jane sometimes hears a strange, low laugh. Mrs. Fairfax says it is Grace Poole, a servant who sews up there.

Jane first meets Rochester on an icy road at dusk, when his horse slips and falls. He is dark, rude and not handsome. At the house he questions her sharply, and she answers him plainly. They begin to talk in the evenings. He tells her that Adèle is the daughter of a French opera dancer, Céline Varens, who betrayed him. He is not sure the child is his, but he took her in.

One night Jane hears the laugh outside her door and finds Rochester's bed curtains on fire. She throws water over him and saves his life. He tells her to say nothing and blames Grace Poole. The next morning, Grace is still in the house, which puzzles Jane.

Rochester leaves and returns with guests, among them the beautiful, proud Blanche Ingram. Everyone expects him to marry her. Jane, who now knows she loves him, watches in silence. Rochester disguises himself as a Gypsy fortune-teller to question the guests, including Jane. Then a stranger arrives from Jamaica, Richard Mason. That night a scream wakes the house. Rochester takes Jane to the third floor, where Mason is bleeding from a stab wound and a bite. Jane tends him while Rochester fetches a doctor. Mason leaves before dawn.

The proposal and the wedding

Jane is called back to Gateshead. John Reed has killed himself after a life of debt, and Mrs. Reed is dying. Mrs. Reed confesses that three years earlier, Jane's uncle John Eyre, a merchant in Madeira, wrote asking to adopt Jane and leave her his money. Out of spite, Mrs. Reed told him Jane had died at Lowood. Jane forgives her. Mrs. Reed dies unforgiving.

Back at Thornfield, Rochester teases Jane that he will marry Blanche and send her to a post in Ireland. Jane breaks down and tells him what she feels. She says that she has as much soul and heart as he has, and that she speaks to his spirit as an equal. Rochester says he never meant to marry Blanche, and he asks Jane to marry him. She accepts. That night, lightning splits the great chestnut tree under which he proposed.

In the month before the wedding, Rochester wants to dress her in silks and jewels. Jane refuses to be his doll and keeps working as Adèle's governess. Two nights before the wedding, a woman Jane does not know enters her room, puts on her wedding veil and tears it in two.

At the church, a lawyer, Mr. Briggs, and Richard Mason stop the ceremony. Rochester is already married. Fifteen years ago, in Jamaica, he married Mason's sister, Bertha Mason. She went mad, and he keeps her locked on the third floor with Grace Poole as her keeper. It was Bertha who laughed, set the fire, attacked her brother and tore the veil. Rochester takes everyone to see her. She attacks him like an animal.

Rochester begs Jane to live with him in France as his wife in all but law. She loves him and is tempted. She refuses, because she would lose her self-respect, and she leaves Thornfield before dawn with almost no money.

Moor House: St. John Rivers

The coach leaves Jane at a crossroads called Whitcross. She sleeps on the moor, begs for food and nearly starves. At last she collapses at the door of Moor House, where she is taken in by a clergyman, St. John Rivers, and his sisters, Diana and Mary. She gives a false name, Jane Elliott. The sisters are warm and clever, and Jane recovers. St. John finds her a post as teacher in the village school at Morton, where she teaches poor girls.

St. John is handsome, cold and ambitious. He loves the rich and lovely Rosamond Oliver but will not marry her, because she would not suit the life of a missionary in India. He plans to go there and wants to crush his own feelings for the sake of duty.

Then St. John learns Jane's real name. Her uncle John Eyre has died and left her twenty thousand pounds. He was also the uncle of the Rivers family, so St. John, Diana and Mary are Jane's cousins. Jane, who has never had a family, is overjoyed. She divides the money into four equal parts, one for each of them.

St. John asks Jane to learn Hindustani. Then he asks her to marry him and go with him to India as a missionary's wife. He does not love her; he says she is formed for labor, not for love. Jane offers to go as his sister, not his wife. He refuses and keeps pressing her with the weight of God's will. One night, under his pressure, she almost agrees.