Jane Eyre
A Victorian Heroine’s Struggle for Self-Realization
By Charlotte Brontë
Category: History | Reading Duration: 20 min | Rating: 4.7/5 (73 ratings)
About the Book
Jane Eyre (1874) is an intense, intimate portrait of a young woman’s search to find her place in Victorian society without compromising her passionate ideals. It follows her as she navigates life’s obstacles – and her developing love for the mysterious Edward Rochester.
Who Should Read This?
- Hopeless romantics who crave plot twists and turns
- History lovers keen to get a window into life as a nineteenth-century governess
- Fans of period dramas like Outlander and Bridgerton
What’s in it for me? A classic tale of love and self-discovery.
The character of Jane Eyre – the poor, unremarkable, and plain governess who goes on to star in one of the most intense and tumultuous love affairs in literary history – has captivated generation after generation of readers. In this Blink, you’ll learn about Jane’s humble beginnings as an orphaned charity case and the cruel deprivations of her school years. You’ll hear about her time as governess at the grand yet eerie Thornfield Hall, and her blossoming relationship with its brusque yet charismatic owner, Rochester. And you’ll see how, in the wake of a shocking revelation, Jane asserts her own desires.
Chapter 1: A troubled childhood, an undaunted spirit
When we first meet young Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s classic nineteenth-century novel, she is experiencing a rare moment of private pleasure. She’s curled up on a velvet window seat at Gateshead, the house owned by her Aunt Reed who took Jane in when she was orphaned. She has drawn the thick curtain around her, concealing herself from her aunt and cousins – who make little effort to hide the fact that they consider Jane a burden. And she is reading a book, Bewick’s Book of Birds, which she has found in the library.
This moment of reprieve and happiness is short-lived. John, Jane’s eldest cousin, rips back the curtain and discovers her. He scolds her for taking a book from their library, calls her an ungrateful “beggar,” and, when Jane doesn’t respond to his taunts, throws the volume at her head. Now, Jane fights back. Aunt Reed discovers Jane and John in the middle of this scrap, and lays the blame entirely on Jane. Her punishment?
She will be locked overnight in the Red Room, a stately but rarely used bedroom. Jane’s uncle died in this room, and there is some speculation that it is haunted. In her state of distress, Jane believes she encounters her uncle’s ghost and pleads to be let out. Her pleas are ignored. She is discovered the next morning suffering from a fever that nearly kills her. Once Jane has recovered from her illness – and her ordeal in the Red Room – Aunt Reed sends her to a boarding school for orphaned girls, called Lowood.
The school is a miserable place. There is rarely enough food and drink for the pupils, illness is widespread, and the cruel teachers, led by monstrous headmaster Mr. Brocklehurst, take delight in meting out abusive punishments to their students. Jane is singled out for punishment – once, Brocklehurst orders her to stand on a stool in front of her class while he tells them that she’s a liar who’s not to be trusted. She is left to stand on the stool all day. But there is a bright spot at Lowood: Jane forms an intense friendship with her kind and beautiful classmate, Helen Burns.
The pair bond over their love of literature, and Helen – who is universally good and understanding, even in the most trying circumstances – models compassion and forgiveness to her more impulsive, emotional friend. Tragically, Helen comes down with a fatal case of consumption, leaving Jane lying next to her in her sick-bed, clutching her hands. As she is dying, Helen says, “I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day. ” In the wake of Helen’s death, Jane struggles to emulate Helen’s goodness and understanding – while she never becomes as angelic as Helen, her friend’s values guide her through the story. After Helen’s death, the school is taken over by kindlier trustees.
Jane begins to thrive and even takes up a post teaching at the school after she graduates. But then, she receives a letter offering her the position as governess at Thornfield Manor. Jane knows nothing about Thornfield or its inhabitants – and the letter, written by Thornfield’s housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, contains few details. Nevertheless, Jane accepts. ANALYSIS These opening scenarios are an unflinching portrayal of a deprived, loveless childhood.
Aunt Reed and her children never accept Jane into their comfortable middle-class family, and they subject her to constant taunts about her unfortunate circumstances. At Lowood, Jane and her fellow pupils are the victims of harrowing cruelty, both physical and emotional. It seems likely that the scenes at Lowood were partly inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s own experiences at Cowan Bridge, a school for daughters of the clergy that she attended along with her sisters. Conditions at Cowan Bridge were spartan – pupils washed in freezing water and ate burned porridge. Helen Burns may be inspired by Charlotte’s older sister Maria, who died – like Helen – of consumption, which she contracted at Cowan Bridge. She was just eleven when she died.
Two defining features of Jane’s character are established early on in this story. Jane is consistently told by those around her that she is plain and unremarkable, yet she is also passionate and impulsive. She struggles to control her emotions, even in situations where it would be more prudent to conceal them – she can’t help responding angrily to the taunts of her cousins, or fuming at the cruelty of some of Lowood’s teachers. Her Aunt Reed describes her as a “picture of passion,” and Mr. Brocklehurst says she is “vicious. ” Throughout the novel, Jane will both struggle to control her passionate emotions and come to the realization that displays of passion and emotion aren’t necessarily bad – especially when they’re directed at situations of injustice.
Chapter 2: A budding friendship turns into a fiery romance.
When Jane arrives at Thornfield Manor, she finds a grand, stately home that, despite its gracious rooms and comfortable furnishings, feels rather empty and more than a little eerie. The master of Thornfield, Edward Rochester, is away on business. The cavernous home is occupied only by the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, a handful of servants, and Adele, the impish young French girl who Jane has been hired to tutor.
Adele is the daughter of Rochester’s mistress, a French opera singer, but it is never made clear whether or not she is Rochester’s daughter. Jane soon falls into a rhythm: she leads Adele’s lessons, takes long, solitary walks, and enjoys browsing Thornfield’s ample library. But during the night, she is troubled by mysterious noises and even thinks she hears a woman laughing – “as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as I ever heard. ” Mrs. Fairfield assures her the laughter belongs to one of the servants, a woman named Grace Poole. Out walking one icy winter’s day, Jane witnesses a man fall from his horse.
When she goes to help him, he treats her in a rough, arrogant manner – but accepts her assistance nonetheless. Once he is back on his horse, Jane returns to Thornfield where she hears that the master, Mr. Rochester, has finally returned home. Rochester is, of course, none other than the man she has just met in the woods. On the surface, they have little in common. Rochester is in his late thirties – he is worldly, experienced, handsome, and wealthy.
Jane is young, mousy, and naive. Before arriving at Thornfield, she had seen little of the world except for her Aunt Reed’s house and Lowood school. And yet, Jane and Rochester soon discover they have much in common: they are both direct, passionate, and deep thinkers. A friendly relationship blooms, though Rochester is still sometimes arrogant and dismissive toward Jane. Jane, for her part, finds her feelings for Rochester deepening into love – she feels that, in him, she may have found someone whose temperament fits her own. But she tells herself that no one of Rochester’s class and standing could ever love someone as homely and inferior as she believes herself to be.
One night, Jane suddenly wakes up: “There was a demoniac laugh – low, suppressed, and deep – uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. ” She stumbles outside to find a lit candle outside her door. Down the corridor, the door to Rochester’s chambers is ajar, and smoke is billowing out. Jane finds Rochester asleep, surrounded by flames licking at the canopy of his bed. She extinguishes the fire and rouses Rochester, who goes to investigate who started the fire. When he returns, he explains the fire was set by Grace Poole.
He takes Jane by the hand and thanks her for saving him, saying, “I knew you would do me good in some way, at some time; – I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you. ” ANALYSIS Jane Eyre is often cited as one of the most famous examples of the Gothic Romance genre, melding the popular tropes of both gothic horror and romance. Gothic novels are suspenseful and dramatic; they are frequently set in eerie mansions or castles, and feature unexplained or even supernatural phenomena. They also typically feature women in distress – the stereotypical gothic heroine is a helpless damsel. With the character of Jane, Charlotte Brontë spearheaded a shift away from the figure of the helpless – and one-dimensional – heroine. Jane has a rich interiority, is an independent thinker, and asserts her agency by doing things like finding her own employment, or rescuing Rochester from the fire.
Fire is a motif that features throughout the novel. Aside from the literal fire that breaks out in Thornfield, Jane often characterizes herself in “fiery” terms – even describing her mind as a “ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring. ” She thinks of Rochester, too, as fiery and often comments on his “flaming” eyes. Fire represents both passion and – if properly tamed – comfort. Conversely, both Gateshead and Lowood – two places where Jane felt desperately unhappy – are portrayed as chilly and frigid. After the near-fatal fire, Rochester travels to a nearby manor, where an elegant house party is in full swing.
Chapter 3: A plot twist leaves Jane’s fate in the balance.
One of the other guests at the party, Mrs. Fairfax reports, is the glamorous Blanche Ingram. Jane tortures herself imagining Blanche and Rochester laughing and dancing together, and is embarrassed to remember she thought Rochester might have been developing a fondness for her. She suspects that when Rochester returns, he and Blanche will be engaged.
And Jane’s suspicions seem to be confirmed: a letter from Rochester arrives, announcing that Blanche, and some other guests, will come to stay at Thornfield. Blanche is everything Jane feels she is not – wealthy, beautiful, charming, intelligent. Jane is quietly devastated, saying, “I have told you, dear reader, that I had learned to love Rochester. I could not unlove him now, merely because he had ceased to notice me. ” Time passes. The engagement between Blanche and Rochester seems ever more certain.
Strange noises and laughter continue to float down the corridors of Thornfield at night. Jane is called away to her ailing Aunt Reed, who confesses to Jane on her deathbed that her late husband always loved Jane, and for that reason, Aunt Reed had been jealous of her. On her return to Thornfield, Jane is surprised to learn that Blanche has departed – and it seems that Rochester has no plans to visit her. “I began,” she says, “to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive. ” On a moonlit summer evening, Rochester talks with Jane about his plans for the future but makes no mention of her. Jane is overcome with emotion and can’t hold her tongue any longer.
She pleads with Rochester to be gentle with her feelings, saying, “Do you think just because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart! ” To her surprise, Rochester responds by asking her to marry him. They decide to marry soon, in a small, private ceremony. Jane’s happiness with Rochester is short-lived.
On the day of their wedding, a Mr. Mason appears at the church. Jane and Rochester can’t get married, he says, because Rochester is already married to Mason’s sister, Bertha. Rochester admits this is true. His wife, Bertha, is mentally disturbed and prone to violence. He keeps her hidden in a secret wing of Thornfield.
Grace Poole is employed as her caretaker. Bertha is the source of the mysterious laughter in the corridors. Bertha lit the fire that nearly killed Rochester. ANALYSIS The revelation that Rochester is already married is undoubtedly one of the most shocking twists in nineteenth-century English literature – it captivated contemporaneous readers.
Today’s readers, though, will likely be shocked at the novel’s largely unsympathetic portrayal of Bertha – who is alternately described as “mad,” “embruted,” “cunning,” and a “maniac” – and Rochester’s shocking treatment of her. Feminist critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have pointed out how literature in this period tends to characterize women in one of two modes – as “angel” or “monster. ” In Jane Eyre, Jane – while she is a richly complex character – can be read as the “angel” while Bertha is undoubtedly cast as “monster. ” In her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, the writer Jean Rhys imagines Bertha’s life before and during her marriage to Rochester, and interrogates the oppressive social structures and mores that contributed to her plight.
Chapter 4: A difficult choice, and a final transformation
Jane is distraught at the revelation that Rochester is already married. She locks herself in her room in Thornfield, and thrashes over her options in her mind. She resolves she can’t stay at Thornfield any longer – and so, in the early light of the morning after what should have been her wedding day, she slips away from the house and through the woods. Without connections or money, Jane is soon reduced to foraging for food.
She looks for employment in the village she comes to, but no one there needs a servant. She is forced to sleep outdoors. On a rainy night, three days after she first left Thornfield, she knocks on the door of a house that belongs to the kindly Rivers family – St. John Rivers and his sisters Diana and Mary. Jane is gravely ill after her ordeal. The Rivers nurse her back to health, and once she is recovered, Jane becomes the teacher at the local school.
St. John is a minister. He is pious, reserved, and abstemious. In other words, he is the polar opposite to Rochester, who more than matched Jane for fiery passion and impulsivity. But, like Rochester, St. John, too, starts to see Jane as a potential wife.
Not because he is in love with her, but because he is planning a missionary trip to India and thinks Jane would make an excellent partner on this journey. Jane considers the proposal. She views St. John as morally good – if sometimes sanctimonious – and wonders if his cool temperament might have a good influence on her. She accepts his invitation to travel to India, but asks that she accompany him in the guise of his sister rather than his wife. St.
John refuses to give up on the idea of marrying Jane – but as Jane begins to relent, she hears Rochester’s voice calling her back to Thornfield. She returns and finds Thornfield has burned to the ground, following a fire again set by Bertha Mason. Rochester rescued his staff from the burning building and attempted to rescue his wife, but Bertha ultimately jumped from the roof of the house to her death. In the blaze, Rochester lost his eyesight and one hand. Rochester is humbled by the experience of losing Jane and the injuries he suffered in the fire. He acknowledges that he has acted recklessly and arrogantly in the past, especially in concealing his marriage from Jane.
But while his fiery temperament has cooled somewhat, his passion for Jane has not. He begs her to reconsider his proposal. At the novel’s conclusion, Jane utters the final line: “Reader, I married him. ” ANALYSIS Though it is rightly considered a romance novel, Jane Eyre also falls into another category of novel popular in the nineteenth century – the bildungsroman, or novel of education and development.
These stories typically recounted the formative experiences and ideas that shape their protagonists’ development – and they typically featured male protagonists. By examining Jane’s ideas, moral progress, and shifting responses to her life experiences, Charlotte Brontë made the quietly revolutionary argument that women’s intellects and inner lives were just as worthy of artistic attention as men’s. The reader sees how Jane overcomes childhood adversity, makes her way in the world as a single woman, matures as a result of both romance and heartbreak, and ultimately learns to temper her emotions without compromising her passions.
Final Summary
Jane Eyre is orphaned as a child, and treated cruelly – first by her Aunt Reed and then by the staff at the abusive Lowood School. Later, while working as a governess, Jane gains a degree of independence and strives to meet the world on her own terms. A turbulent romance with Edward Rochester leaves her heartbroken and adrift, but the pair soon realize they can’t live without each other.
About the Author
Charlotte Brontë, along with her sisters Emily and Anne, wrote novels celebrated for their suspenseful plots and romantic sense of atmosphere. As a female novelist in Victorian England, Brontë struggled to have her work taken seriously, and originally published her novels under the male pseudonym of Currer Bell. Now, her novels are recognized as works of genius.