Plot
- Gateshead: the orphaned Jane lives with her cruel aunt, Mrs Reed. She is locked in the 'red-room' as a punishment, where she panics and faints.
- Lowood: at a harsh charity school run by the hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst, Jane befriends the gentle, religious Helen Burns, who dies of consumption (tuberculosis). Jane later becomes a teacher there.
- Thornfield: Jane becomes governess to Adèle and falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester, despite strange events such as a fire in his bedroom. At their wedding, it is revealed that Rochester is already married, to Bertha Mason, who is locked in the attic. Jane refuses to become his mistress and leaves.
- Moor House: Jane, starving, is taken in by the Rivers family. She inherits money and discovers they are her cousins. St John Rivers asks her to marry him and become a missionary in India, but she refuses a loveless marriage.
- Ferndean: Jane returns to find Thornfield burned down by Bertha, who died in the fire. Rochester was blinded and lost a hand trying to save her. Jane marries him.
Themes
- Independence and self-respect, social class, gender and equality, love and passion against duty and morality, religion, and freedom and confinement.
Context
- Published in 1847 under the male pen name Currer Bell. Middle-class women had few options apart from marriage, or low-paid work such as being a governess.
- Charlotte Brontë went to a harsh school like Lowood; two of her older sisters caught tuberculosis there and died.
Key quotations
- 'Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?' (Jane to Rochester).
- 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me' (Jane).
- 'Reader, I married him.' (Jane).
Key terms
- Bildungsroman
- A novel about a character growing up.
- Governess
- A woman employed to teach children in a private household.
- Gothic
- A style of fiction with mystery, secrets and dark settings.
- Pen name
- A false name used by a writer.
- Consumption
- An old name for tuberculosis.
- Independence
- Being free to make your own choices.
- First-person narrator
- A narrator who tells their own story using 'I'.