Jane Eyre
A plain orphan who refuses to be small. Jane Eyre is one of the most defiant, independent heroines ever put on paper.
Plain Jane
Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel follows Jane Eyre from a miserable childhood with cruel relatives, through the austere Lowood School, to a position as governess at Thornfield Hall where she falls into a charged and dangerous love with her employer, the dark Mr. Rochester. When Rochester's terrible secret is revealed, Jane must choose between passion and principle. Published under the pen name Currer Bell, the novel was an immediate sensation. It is considered one of the first fully realised first-person narratives in English literature.
Reading Jane Eyre
Intensity
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"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
"Charlotte Bronte · Jane Eyre
Bronte wrote Jane Eyre in under a year and published it in 1847 under the male pen name Currer Bell. When her identity was revealed it shocked Victorian readers who had assumed the novel too fierce for a woman.
The character of Bertha Mason, Rochester's imprisoned wife, inspired Jean Rhys to write Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. Rhys retells the events of Jane Eyre entirely from Bertha's perspective.