Jane Eyre

• Author: Charlotte Bronte
• Year: 1847
• Amazon Listing: Jane Eyre

This classic romance tells the story of a plain governess who captures the heart of her enigmatic employer, Edward Rochester. Even as the two hope for happiness, he has a secret that will jeopardize their future.

Jane is an orphan who is sent to a boarding school where is she is accused of lying. Though cleared of the charges and rising to the position of teacher, she leaves the school, striking out on her own after the death of her friend Helen Burns (who dies of consumption in a very Victorian, martyr-like way). She makes her way to the Rochester home, where she and Edward fall in love -- only to have their marriage interrupted with the news that he's already married.

Jane escapes Rochester and conveniently falls in with her long-lost cousins -- and inherits a substantial sum of money. Though she can now do what she wants, she still loves Rochester. She finds her love wounded and blinded after his insane wife sets the house on fire (for another perspective on this story, see Wide Saragasso Sea). Rochester and Jane reclaim their love and live happily ever after.

Other stories that build on the Jane Eyre myth include Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (Rebecca), Sharon Shinn's Jenna Starborn (Jenna Starborn), and, peripherally, Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. The book has also been made into a movie several times.

With the crazy wife in the attic, Jane's cruel upbringing, and the over-the-top events, the story has much in common with Gothic stories, though it was written nearly a century after the Gothic style was in vogue.

This book was originally published under Bronte's pseudonym, Currer Bell by Smith, Elder & Company, London.

Awards/Nominations

• 1996 RRA Awards Nominee - Best All-Time Favorite Romance

Quotable Lines

"Reader, I married him."

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I have a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.