What Is Jane Eyre About? Charlotte Brontë's Novel in Plain English

Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë, published in October 1847, that follows a poor, plain orphan girl from an unhappy childhood to adulthood, through her love for the brooding Mr Rochester of Thornfield Hall, and to a life she chooses on her own terms. It is told in the first person by Jane herself, and its great novelty was how closely it follows her inner life: her anger, her conscience, her loneliness and her stubborn sense of her own worth. If you have heard of the "madwoman in the attic" or the line "Reader, I married him", this is the book they come from.

The story in five places

The novel is usually divided into five stages, each tied to a house or a school.

Gateshead Hall. Ten-year-old Jane lives with her aunt, Mrs Reed, who treats her as a burden. After fighting back against her bullying cousin John, Jane is locked in the "red room" where her uncle died, and she faints in terror. A kind apothecary suggests she be sent to school.

Lowood. The charity school is cold and hungry, and its director, Mr Brocklehurst, publicly calls Jane a liar. She finds two models of goodness: the gentle teacher Miss Temple and her friend Helen Burns, who forgives everyone. When disease sweeps through the school, Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Jane stays on, first as a pupil and then as a teacher.

Thornfield Hall. Advertising herself as a governess, Jane is hired to teach Adèle, a young French girl in the care of Edward Rochester. Their first meeting is on an icy road, when his horse slips and she helps him up. Rochester is moody and sharp, but the two begin to enjoy long conversations. Strange things happen in the house: a wild laugh at night, a fire in Rochester's bedroom, an attack on a guest. Jane falls in love, Rochester proposes, and she accepts.

At the altar, the wedding is stopped. Rochester already has a wife, Bertha Mason, whom he has kept locked in the attic for years. He asks Jane to go away with him anyway. She loves him, but she believes she would lose herself and her integrity, so she leaves Thornfield at dawn with almost nothing.

Moor House. Starving on the moors, Jane is taken in by the clergyman St John Rivers and his sisters. She learns that an uncle has left her a fortune, and that the Rivers family are her cousins; she insists on sharing the money with them. St John asks her to marry him and go to India as a missionary's wife, out of duty rather than love.

Ferndean. As she is close to giving in, Jane seems to hear Rochester calling her name. She returns to find Thornfield burnt down: Bertha set the fire and died, and Rochester lost a hand and his sight trying to save people. Jane goes to him, now as an independent woman, and the last chapter opens with the famous sentence "Reader, I married him."

Who was Charlotte Brontë?

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) was an English novelist and poet, the elder sister of the writers Emily and Anne Brontë. As a child she was sent with her sisters to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, where conditions were terrible and disease was common. Her two elder sisters fell ill there and died soon after. She later worked as a teacher and a governess, and in 1842 she studied and then taught in Brussels, where she fell in love with the school's married director, Constantin Heger.

Real life inside the novel

Much of the book's power comes from experience. Lowood is modelled on Cowan Bridge, Helen Burns's death recalls the deaths of Charlotte's sisters Maria and Elizabeth, and Mr Brocklehurst is based on the minister who ran the school. Like Jane, Charlotte had been a governess, and her feelings for Heger are thought to have fed into the character of Rochester.

Why it was published as "Currer Bell"

The novel first appeared as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, under the pen name "Currer Bell", from the London publisher Smith, Elder & Co. The three sisters all used male-sounding pen names at first, and readers did not know who the author was. The book was a great success on publication.

Main themes

Independence and self-respect. Jane is poor and has no family power, yet she keeps insisting that her feelings and her judgement count. Critics see the novel as ahead of its time because of how it treats class, sexuality, religion and the position of women.

Love versus principle. Jane loves Rochester, but she will not become his mistress, and she will not marry St John without love. She returns only when she can do so as an equal.

Growing up. The novel is a bildungsroman, a story of a person's development from childhood to maturity. Some critics have called Brontë a pioneer in writing about private consciousness.

Legacy and adaptations

Jane Eyre is often named, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, as one of the most famous romance novels in English. In 2003 it came tenth in the BBC's Big Read poll of the nation's best-loved books. It has been adapted for theatre, film, television and opera, and it inspired Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which tells the story of the woman locked in Rochester's attic from her own side.

Learn with Jane Eyre: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to stand up for yourself	to defend your rights or opinions	Jane learns to stand up for herself.
a skeleton in the cupboard	a hidden secret that would cause shame	Rochester has a skeleton in the cupboard.
to follow your conscience	to do what you believe is right	She followed her conscience and left.
on your own terms	in the way you choose	She returned on her own terms.
to be torn between	to be unable to choose between two things	Jane is torn between love and principle.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a hard choice you once made, using "to be torn between" and "to follow your conscience".