Tabs & Twists
Jane Eyre
An orphaned governess refuses to give up her dignity as she falls in love with her brooding employer and uncovers the secret of Thornfield Hall.
- Setting / Period
- Victorian England
- First published
- 1847
- Pages
- 532
- Language
- English
Review
Jane Eyre grows up unloved, survives a brutal charity school and takes a post as governess at Thornfield Hall, where the master, Mr. Rochester, is as magnetic as he is evasive. Strange laughter in the night suggests the house is hiding something.
Brontë's great achievement is Jane's voice. She is plain, poor and utterly insistent on being treated as an equal, and the novel keeps asking what a woman owes to love, to religion and above all to herself. The Gothic atmosphere gives the moral argument a heartbeat.
Some plot turns are melodramatic by modern standards, but the emotional honesty carries them. This is a book about self-respect that happens to contain a ghostly mansion, and it remains thrilling to read.
