Overview
An orphaned, fiercely independent young woman finds love with the brooding Mr. Rochester, only to discover a terrible secret that tests everything she believes.
Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell, partly to avoid the prejudices against female authors. The novel, about an orphaned governess who falls in love with her troubled employer Mr Rochester, was an immediate success. Bronte died in 1855 at thirty-eight, leaving a small but significant body of work including this book, her masterpiece.
Key Ideas
Self-Respect Above All
True love must be built on equality and moral integrity.
Resilience in Adversity
Inner strength can overcome the most oppressive circumstances.
Love as Partnership
Genuine love is based on mutual respect, not wealth or beauty.
Who should read this
Readers who want a Gothic-tinged Victorian novel with a protagonist unusual for its time — a plain, poor, fiercely independent woman whose selfhood is the book's main subject. Jane Eyre is accessible in a way many Victorian novels are not, and its first-person voice is one of the strongest in the tradition.
Who might skip it
Skip if you're sensitive to the racial politics of Rochester's mad wife Bertha (the 'madwoman in the attic'), which have been the subject of important later readings including Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. Skip also if the Gothic elements (the Thornfield fire, the mysterious laughter) feel manipulative to you.
The verdict
A novel whose first-person narration is its great achievement. Jane's voice — sharp, articulate, morally serious — holds the book together through its Gothic turns and its romantic climaxes. The red-room chapter early in the novel, where young Jane is locked in as punishment, is one of the finest pieces of childhood writing in nineteenth-century fiction.
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
If you liked this
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys for the postcolonial response. Villette by Charlotte Bronte for her other major novel.