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Jane Eyre ( ; originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published in January 1848 by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
The novel revolutionised prose fiction, being the first to focus on the moral and spiritual development of its protagonist through an intimate first-person narrative, where actions and events are coloured by a psychological intensity. Charlotte Brontë has been called the "first historian of the private consciousness" and the literary ancestor of writers such as Marcel Proust and James Joyce.
The book contains elements of social criticism with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and it is considered by many to be ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the topics of class, sexuality, religion and feminism. Jane Eyre, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of the most famous . It is considered one of the greatest novels in the English language, and in 2003 was ranked as the tenth best-loved book in Britain by the BBC in The Big Read poll.
The second edition was dedicated to William Makepeace Thackeray.
The novel is a first-person narrative from the perspective of the title character. Its setting is somewhere in the north of England, late in the reign of George III (1760–1820). It has five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she gains friends and role models but suffers privations and oppression; her time as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her mysterious employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester; her time in the Moor House, during which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her; and ultimately her reunion with, and marriage to, her beloved Rochester. Throughout these sections it provides perspectives on a number of important social issues and ideas, many of which are critical of the status quo.
The five stages of Jane's life are as follows:
Mrs Reed then enlists the aid of the harsh Mr Brocklehurst, the director of Lowood Institution, a charity school for girls, to enroll Jane. Mrs Reed cautions Mr Brocklehurst that Jane has a "tendency to deceit", which he interprets as Jane being a liar. Before Jane leaves, however, she confronts Mrs Reed and declares that she'll never call her "aunt" again. Jane also tells Mrs Reed and her daughters, Georgiana and Eliza, that they are the ones who are deceitful, and that she will tell everyone at Lowood how cruelly the Reeds treated her. Mrs Reed is hurt badly by these words but has neither the courage nor the tenacity to show it.
In due course Mr Brocklehurst visits the school. While Jane is trying to make herself look inconspicuous, she accidentally drops her slate, thereby drawing attention to herself. She is then forced to stand on a stool and is branded a sinner and a liar. Later Miss Temple, the caring superintendent, facilitates Jane's self-defence and publicly clears her of any wrongdoing. Helen and Miss Temple are Jane's two main role models who positively guide her development despite the harsh treatment she has received from many others.
The 80 pupils at Lowood are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes; Helen dies of Tuberculosis in Jane's arms. When Mr Brocklehurst's maltreatment of the pupils is discovered, several benefactors erect a new building and install a sympathetic management committee to moderate Mr Brocklehurst's harsh rule. Conditions at the school then improve dramatically.
One night, while Jane is carrying a letter to the post from Thornfield, a horseman and dog pass her. The horse slips on ice and throws the rider. Despite the rider's surliness, Jane helps him get back onto his horse. Later, back at Thornfield, she learns that this man is Edward Rochester, master of the house. Adèle was left in his care when her mother, a famous dancer, abandoned her. It is not immediately apparent whether Adèle is Rochester's daughter.
At Jane's first meeting with Mr Rochester he teases her, accusing her of bewitching his horse to make him fall. Jane stands up to his initially arrogant manner. Despite his strange behaviour, Mr Rochester and Jane soon come to enjoy each other's company and they spend many evenings together.
Odd things start to happen at the house, such as a strange laugh being heard, a mysterious fire in Mr Rochester's room (from which Jane saves Rochester by rousing him and throwing water on him) and an attack on a house-guest named Mr Mason.
After Jane saves Mr Rochester from the fire, he thanks her tenderly and emotionally, and that night Jane feels strange emotions of her own towards him. The next day, however, he leaves unexpectedly for a distant party and several days later returns with the whole party, including the beautiful and talented Blanche Ingram. Just as she realises that she is in love with Mr Rochester, Jane sees that he and Blanche favour each other and starts to feel jealous, particularly because she also sees that Blanche is snobbish and heartless.
Jane then receives word that Mrs Reed has suffered a stroke and is calling for her. Jane returns to Gateshead Hall and remains there for a month to tend to her dying aunt. Mrs Reed confesses to Jane that she wronged her, bringing forth a letter from Jane's paternal uncle, Mr John Eyre, in which he asks for her to live with him and be his heir. Mrs Reed admits to telling Mr Eyre that Jane had died of fever at Lowood. Soon afterward Mrs Reed dies, and Jane helps her cousins after the funeral before returning to Thornfield.
Back at Thornfield Jane broods over Mr Rochester's rumoured impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. However one midsummer evening Rochester baits Jane by saying how much he will miss her after getting married and how she will soon forget him. The normally self-controlled Jane reveals her feelings for him. To her surprise, Rochester reciprocates, having courted Blanche only to make Jane jealous, and proposes marriage. Jane is at first sceptical of his sincerity, before accepting his proposal. She then writes to her Uncle John, telling him of her happy news.
As she prepares for her wedding Jane's forebodings arise when a strange woman sneaks into her room one night and rips Jane's wedding veil in two. As with the previous mysterious events, Mr Rochester attributes the incident to Grace Poole, one of his servants. During the wedding ceremony, however, Mr Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr Rochester cannot marry because he is already married to Mr Mason's sister, Bertha. Mr Rochester admits this is true but explains that his father tricked him into the marriage for her money. Once they were united he discovered that she was rapidly descending into congenital madness, and so he eventually locked her away in Thornfield, hiring Grace Poole as a nurse to look after her. When Grace gets drunk, Rochester's wife escapes and causes the strange happenings at Thornfield.
It turns out that Jane's uncle, Mr John Eyre, is a friend of Mr Mason's and was visited by him soon after Mr Eyre received Jane's letter about her impending marriage. After the marriage ceremony is broken off, Mr Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France and live with him as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married. Jane is tempted but realises that she will lose herself and her integrity if she allows her passion for a married man to consume her and she must stay true to her Christian values and beliefs. Refusing to go against her principles, and despite her love for Rochester, Jane leaves Thornfield Hall at dawn before anyone else is up.
The sisters leave for governess jobs, and St John becomes slightly closer to Jane. St John learns Jane's true identity and astounds her by telling her that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her his entire fortune of 20,000 Pound sterling (equivalent to US $2.24 million in 2022calculated using the UK Retail Price Index: ). When Jane questions him further, St John reveals that John Eyre is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a share of the inheritance but were left virtually nothing. Jane, overjoyed by finding that she has living and friendly family members, insists on sharing the money equally with her cousins, and Diana and Mary come back to live at Moor House.
Jane reunites with Rochester, and he is overjoyed at her return, but fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. "Am I hideous, Jane?", he asks. "Very, sir; you always were, you know", she replies. Now a humbled man, Rochester vows to live a purer life, and reveals that he has intensely pined for Jane ever since she left. He had even called out her name in despair one night, the very call that she heard from Moor House, and heard her reply from miles away, signifying the connection between them. Jane asserts herself as a financially independent woman and assures him of her love, declaring that she will never leave him. Rochester proposes again, and they are married. The narrator breaks the fourth wall and in a famous Metafiction manner directly addresses the reader: "Reader, I married him." They live blissfully together in an old house in the woods called Ferndean Manor. The couple stay in touch with Adèle as she grows up, as well as Diana and Mary, who each gain loving husbands of their own. St John moves to India to accomplish his missionary goals, but is implied to have fallen gravely ill there. Rochester regains sight in one eye two years after his and Jane's marriage, enabling him to see their newborn son.
The Gothic manor of Thornfield Hall was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District in Derbyshire. This was visited by Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845, and is described by the latter in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre family, and its first owner, Agnes Ashurst, was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second floor room. It has been suggested that the Wycoller Hall in Lancashire, close to Haworth, provided the setting for Ferndean Manor to which Mr Rochester retreats after the fire at Thornfield: there are similarities between the owner of Ferndean—Mr Rochester's father—and Henry Cunliffe, who inherited Wycoller in the 1770s and lived there until his death in 1818; one of Cunliffe's relatives was named Elizabeth Eyre (née Cunliffe). The sequence in which Mr Rochester's wife sets fire to the bed curtains was prepared in an August 1830 homemade publication of Brontë's The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2. Charlotte Brontë began composing Jane Eyre in Manchester, and she likely envisioned Manchester Cathedral churchyard as the burial place for Jane's parents and Manchester as the birthplace of Jane herself.Alexander, Christine, and Sara L. Pearson. Celebrating Charlotte Brontë: Transforming Life into Literature in Jane Eyre. Brontë Society, 2016, p. 173.
A famous line in the book is at the beginning of Chapter 38: "Reader, I married him." Many authors have used a variation of this line in their work. For example, Liane Moriarty discussed and used the line in her 2018 novel Nine Perfect Strangers.
The book Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre, a 2016 anthology of short stories, edited by Tracy Chevalier, was also inspired by this line. It was commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of Brontë's birth, and is published by The Borough Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. Includes full list of authors Shows UK cover
Thai literature Ruk Diow Kong Jenjira was adapted by Nida in 1993. In 1996, it was made into a lakorn on Channel 3 starred by Willie McIntosh and Sirilak Pongchoke.
The novel The French Dancer's Bastard, by Emma Tennant, reimagines the back story of Adèle, exploring whether she was Rochester's love child and what her relationship with Jane Eyre is.Gómez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. A Successful Novel Must Be in Want of a Sequel: Second Takes on Classics from The Scarlet Letter to Rebecca. Jefferson, NC and London:: McFarland, 2018. 978-1476672823
The most recent film adaptation, Jane Eyre, was released in 2011, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, and starred Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester. The film, actors, and costume design team were nominated and won various awards from 2011 to 2012.
An anonymous review in John Limbird writes of "the extraordinary daring of the writer of Jane Eyre"; however, the review is mostly critical, summarising: "There is not a single natural character throughout the work. Everybody moves on stilts—the opinions are bad—the notions absurd. Religion is stabbed in the dark—our social distinctions attempted to be levelled, and all absurdly moral notions done away with."
There were some who felt more positive about the novel contemporaneously. George Henry Lewes said, "It reads like a page out of one's own life; and so do many other pages in the book." Another critic from the Atlas wrote, "It is full of youthful vigour, of freshness and originality, of nervous diction and concentrated interest ...It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears."
A review in The Era praised the novel, calling it "an extraordinary book", observing that "there is much to ponder over, rejoice over, and weep over, in its ably-written pages. Much of the heart laid bare, and the mind explored; much of greatness in affliction, and littleness in the ascendant; much of trial and temptation, of fortitude and resignation, of sound sense and Christianity—but no tameness."
The People's Journal compliments the novel's vigour, stating that "the reader never tires, never sleeps: the swell and tide of an affluent existence, an irresistible energy, bears him onward, from first to last. It is impossible to deny that the author possesses native power in an uncommon degree—showing itself now in rapid headlong recital, now in stern, fierce, daring dashes in portraiture—anon in subtle, startling mental anatomy—here in a grand illusion, there in an original metaphor—again in a wild gush of genuine poetry."
American publication The Nineteenth Century defended the novel against accusations of immorality, describing it as "a work which has produced a decided sensation in this country and in England... Jane Eyre has made its mark upon the age, and even palsied the talons of mercenary criticism. Yes, critics hired to abuse or panegyrize, at so much per line, have felt a throb of human feeling pervade their veins, at the perusal of Jane Eyre. This is extraordinary—almost preternatural—smacking strongly of the miraculous—and yet it is true... We have seen Jane Eyre put down, as a work of gross immorality, and its author described as the very incarnation of sensualism. To any one, who has read the work, this may look ridiculous, and yet it is true."
The Indicator, concerning speculation regarding the gender of the author, wrote, "We doubt not it will soon cease to be a secret; but on one assertion we are willing to risk our critical reputation—and that is, that no woman wrote it. This was our decided conviction at the first perusal, and a somewhat careful study of the work has strengthened it. No woman in all the annals of feminine celebrity ever wrote such a style, terse yet eloquent, and filled with energy bordering sometimes almost on rudeness: no woman ever conceived such masculine characters as those portrayed here."
In 2003, the novel was ranked number 10 in the BBC's survey The Big Read.
The Gothic genre uses the Gothic double: a literary motif, which is described as the protagonist having a double, alter ego, or doppelgänger interpreted between Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason, where Bertha represents the other side of Jane and vice versa. The commonly used Gothic literary device, foreshadowing, creates an environment filled with tension, ominousity, and dread. After Jane agrees to marry Rochester, a horse-chestnut tree in an orchard is struck by lightning, splitting the tree in half. The lightning strike is ominous and foreshadows Jane and Rochester's separation.
The Gothic Genre in tandem with Murphy's the "New Woman Gothic" establishes an opportunity to go against the Romantic's concept that the antagonist is usually a villainous father. The Gothic genre allows there to be a complex consideration of who or what hinders Jane's happiness. The barriers Jane experiences, whether related to social class, societal and cultural norms, Bertha Mason, or Rochester, have antagonistic elements.
Bildungsroman was primarily viewed through male life progression, but feminist scholars have worked to counteract the male norm of bildungsroman by including female development. Experiences that deem a female narrative to be bildungsroman would be the female protagonist discovering how to manage living in a restrictive society. The novel's setting is the English society of the early 19th century, and with that time setting come specific restrictions women encountered during that time, such as the law of coverture, the lack of rights, and the restricted expectations placed on women. Jane Eyre does not specifically and directly deal with the restrictions of, for example coverture, but her character lives in a society where coverture exists, which inadvertently impacts social and cultural norms and expectations. Progression in the bildungsroman does not necessarily occur in a linear direction. Many narratives that employ bildungsroman do so through the protagonist's development of maturity, which is represented through the protagonist's experiences from childhood to adulthood; this progression is in conjunction with the novel's narrative technique set as an autobiography. Temporally, the beginning of the novel begins with Jane at age ten and ends with Jane at age thirty, but Jane's development of maturity goes beyond her age. For example, Jane's emotional intelligence grows through her friendship with Helen Burns as Jane experiences and processes the loss of her friendship with Helen.
Many times, the 19th-century female bildungsroman can be interpreted as the heroine's growth of self and education in the context of prospective marriage, especially when, in the context of 19th-century womanhood, a wife experiences new knowledge in the private sphere of her role. Jane develops knowledge and experience regarding a romantic journey before her almost marriage to Mr. Rochester; a physical, spiritual, and financial knowledge during her time with St. John; and lastly, with her marriage with Mr. Rochester at the end of the novel. (2020). 9780814723371, New York University Press. ISBN 9780814723371 Jane's search for excitement and understanding of life goes beyond her romantic journey. In the text, Jane's childhood beliefs about religion, as seen in her interactions with Mr. Brocklehurt, shift considerably in comparison to her friendship with Helen in Lowood as a child and in her marital and missionary rejection of St. John as an adult woman.
This means that those who were born of ethnicities associated with a darker complexion, or those who were not fully of European descent, were believed to be more mentally unstable than their white European counterparts were. According to American scholar Susan Meyer, in writing Jane Eyre, Brontë was responding to the "seemingly inevitable" analogy in 19th-century European texts which "compared white women with blacks in order to degrade both groups and assert the need for white male control". Bertha serves as an example of both the multiracial population and of a 'clean' European, as she is seemingly able to pass as a white woman for the most part, but also is hinted towards being of an 'impure' race since she does not come from a purely white or European lineage. The title that she is given by others of being a Creole woman leaves her a stranger where she is not black but is also not considered to be white enough to fit into higher society.
Unlike Bertha, Jane Eyre is thought of as being sound of mind before the reader is able to fully understand the character, simply because she is described as having a complexion that is pale and she has grown up in a European society rather than in an "animalistic" setting like Bertha. Jane is favoured heavily from the start of her interactions with Rochester, simply because like Rochester himself, she is deemed to be of a superior ethnic group than that of his first wife. While she still experiences some forms of repression throughout her life (the events of the Lowood Institution) none of them are as heavily taxing on her as that which is experienced by Bertha. Both women go through acts of suppression on behalf of the men in their lives, yet Jane is looked at with favour because of her supposed "beauty" that can be found in the colour of her skin. While both are characterised as falling outside of the normal feminine standards of this time, Jane is thought of as superior to Bertha because she demands respect and is able to use her talents as a governess, whereas Bertha is seen as a creature to be confined in the attic away from "polite" society.
Scholars have also noted the novel's overt references and allusions to slavery, arguably its North American iteration.
Do you think I am an automaton? a machine without feelings?...Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart...I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are.Martin, Robert B. Charlotte Brontë's Novels: The Accents of Persuasion. New York: Norton, 1966, p. 252 "Jane Eyre, Proto-Feminist vs. 'The Third Person Man'". P. J. Steyer '98 (English 73, Brown University, 1996). Victorian Web
The novel "acted as a catalyst" to feminist criticism with the publication by S. Gilbert and S. Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), the title of which alludes to Rochester's wife. The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne-Davis. (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990), p. 633. The Brontës' fictions were cited by feminist critic Ellen Moers as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority, and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre explore this theme.Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, 1981, pp. 123–129.
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