Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Published in 1847

The story of Jane Eyre told by Jane herself, from when she was only ten years old and lived in her aunt’s house. Her parents were dead, but her mother had a brother, Mr Reed, who took her in. Unfortunately he died shortly after and made his wife promise to look after her. You can imagine how well did that go: Mrs Reed did not like her at all, and her children were never Jane’s friends.

The two little Reed girls were spoiled and vain, while the Reed boy was a bully and a menace, totally out of control. He always bullied her, and even hit her from time to time.

The servants would have pitied her more had she been pretty and quiet and nice, like a good little Miss should be. When they locked her into a cold, dark, empty room where her uncle had died years ago, she fainted and Mr Lloyd was called. 

He was: “an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs Reed when the servants were ailing; for herself and the children she employed a physician.”

Mr Lloyd asked her a few questions and then suggested Mrs Reed sends her off to school. Mrs Reed was quite happy to get rid of her, of course.

The school was a charity school, and the man in charge spoke a lot about church and bible stuff, and gave very strict rules. One of those people that spoke big fancy words, but that when you get down to it wanted to cut all the girls hair because sign of vanity, and yet his wife and daughter wore much much more frilliness. Under his orders, and one housekeeper (or whatever) just like him, the girls lived quite poorly, they were terribly cold in the winter, they never had enough to eat, they could not have clean clothes more than once a week, so it’s no surprise really that after a while many of them got ill and died. After that, the pubic learned about it and things changed for the better, at least.

Jane had made a couple of good friends, although poor beloved Helen Burns died. She stayed there as a student for six years, and as a teacher for two more (so, she was ten, months passed before she got to school and before the girls got ill, so let’s say she might have been around eleven, six more years as a student place her at seventeen, and she became a teacher until she was nineteen…)then she started to think about leaving, after dear Miss Temple got married and therefore went away with her husband.

She put an ad in the paper and got called to teach a child at Thornfield Hall.

She went there and met Mrs Fairfax, the kind housekeeper, and Adele, the child she was there to teach. She learned that Mr Rochester was the master of the house, he had taken in Adele but was very seldom home.

She got a bit frightened when she heard a creepy loud laugh, but Mrs Fairfax told her it was simply one of the servants.

Jane liked it there, but still felt restless for more, it was in her nature. She writes: “Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer, and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow -creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”

Jane goes to the post office for the chance to walk a bit, and on the road meets a man on a horse with a dog. They meet because he falls down, and she stops to ask if she can help in any way. I loved here how it was all described, because basically she says that had he been very handsome she would have been intimidated and would not have insisted on helping, and something else to the effect that he was quite common but in a good way, a comfortable way.

She then meets his at her new home, as the master of the house, Mr Rochester himself. He’s quite a peculiar character, and he finds her interesting and honest. She bluntly admits she does not find him handsome, and he tells her of his past, when he fell for a French dancer and gave her lots of stuff, until he found her in the company of a man he despised and talking quite ill of him, so he took the money away from her and left her. She told him that Adele was her daughter but he did not believe it, and yet when the woman abandoned the child, he took her with him.

Jane enjoys their frequent chats, she appreciates his good traits and acknowledges his faults. One night she can’t sleep easily, and then she hears the creepy laugh again. She rose to go to Mrs Fairfax, but she smelled smoke outside and saw Mr Rochester’s door open. There was fire inside and she tried to wake him, in vain. She hastily throws water on the bed and the couch, putting out the fire, and he wakes up. Nobody else was awake and he told her to call no one, tell no one. He went to check something himself, and that was it. The next day, he told the other servants that he fell asleep with the candle lit and caused the fire, but woke up on time to put it out. Jane was very surprised why the culprit (she was sure it was Grace, since she was told that she had that weird laugh) was not punished.

Mr Rochester then went away for days, and Mrs Fairfax told her stories of the people attending the party he had gone to, and especially of a pretty young girl called Blanche, and the woman told her also that Mr Rochester was almost forty and never attempted courting a girl of twenty-five like her, so Jane feels silly for thinking she might be a favourite of his, a plain subordinate like herself.

She worried that he might go away like he often did and not come back for long months as it was his usual, but he came back with other guests.

Jane now knows that she loves him and can’t do anything about it. She sees him flirting with Blanche and thinks he will marry her for her connections and she him for his money, for she sees no love in either of them. 

One night there are screams and great commotions, and Jane helps Mr Rochester in assisting the injured Mr Mason, recently arrived. It seems a woman (Jane of course thinks it is Grace) attacked him with a knife and her teeth. We can see that he trusts her and relies on her a lot, but still he tells her that he will soon marry Blanche (Miss Ingram).

News arrive that John Reed is dead (he was up to all sorts of wrong things and companies, lost a lot of money and eventually probably killed himself) and now Mrs Reed is very ill because of it, and he called for Jane to visit her, so Bessie’s husband came to fetch her. Mr Rochester was not happy to see her go, even unhappier when she reminded him that before his wife enters the house Jane will need to have another occupation and Adele will need to go to school (since Blanche despise both Jane and the child).

Jane goes, and sort of make as much peace as she can with her cousins Eliza and Georgiana, but Mrs Reed still hates her, and only wants to alleviate her guilt by giving her a letter: three years before a John Eyre wrote to her to know her address since he wanted to adopt her and leave her what he had when he died, but she told him Jane had died. Jane stays there a whole month, then goes back. Mr Rochester tells her he has found a new position for her in Ireland, and after some more talking she explodes like she did as a child and tells him how she feels, sort of, so he confesses his feelings and asks her to marry him, he only flirted with Blanche to make her jealous so she would love him. She accepts and is all happy, although Mrs Fairfax is less so and more worried when she learns the news.

Mr Rochester seems to want to change her, in a way, and he has to fight to stop him from giving her jewels or flashy dresses that do not suit her character at all.

She keeps to her usual habits all month before the wedding, not giving in to him, and when she tells him she saw an unknown, scary woman in her bedroom at night, he told her it must be Grace.

Then at the wedding, there is someone who comes forth to say that they know of a reason the marriage should not take place: Mr Mason and a lawyer, they say that Rochester married 15 years ago and his wife is still living and at Thornfield Hall. Rochester is busted, and takes them all home to show them what he has to bear with. It turns out Grace is a nurse, and the scary figure is Bertha Mason, his wife. He was half tricked into marrying her. His father and brother arranged the marriage because she had money, and he was never let alone with her to get to know her, but she was beautiful and he married her, only too soon he found out she was not only totally unsuited to him, but also mad like her mother. After some despair, he came back to England to hide her at the top of the house with all the care she needs, where nobody knew of the marriage.

He then travelled to find another woman, but only found three, the French dancer Cecile Varens, then an Italian and a German woman, but he soon tired of them. Jane does not think highly of this tale of his. Edward Rochester still wants her with him, he would like to go away and live with her, but she can’t, not now knowing that he is married. She still loves him very much, but still leaves first thing in the morning before anyone wakes up.

She gives the little money she has for the journey, then wanders around in search of occupation, starving and growing desperate. Four days she walks eating nothing, until finally someone takes her in before she dies from the hunger and the bad weather.

The master of the house is a young minister of a local parish, then there are his two sisters and the housekeeper. She stays a month with them, feeling a great affinity with the girls. When the girls have to go, to work as governesses, and the brother leaves too, she starts the job he found her: to teach girls at the newly opened school for girls, all poor daughters of farmers or other workers. She finds satisfaction in her work, but she still thinks of Rochester.

One day St John, the brother who saved her, tells her that he found out who she is, and that her uncle John Eyre died and left her 20.000 pounds, which is a great fortune (if I remember right, Rochester gave her 30 pounds a year! just for a little comparison…)

But she senses there’s more to the story, and wants to know why the lawyer in search for her asked him… and it turns out he’s part Eyre as well, John Eyre was also his uncle, therefore Jane is his cousin! This finally makes her super happy: she had nobody before, now she has three cousins!!! And she loved the two sisters already, so she immediately states that she’ll divide the 20.000 into four, and each of them will have 5.000 pounds, and they will all live at their house.

Soon Jane starts doing whatever St John asks of her, because she admires him greatly and he has an air of command in his tone, but this submission makes him believe that she will do anything he’ll ask, because he is quite confident when he asks her to share his missionary life and go to India with him, as his wife. She might agree to travel there, but not to marry him, because she knows he doesn’t love her. He won’t agree to go there together unless married (partly because of appearance, but also because if free she might leave, but as his wife she would be bound to him). He insists and insists, and treats her coldly after her refusal. 

When he leaves to say goodbye to some friends (he’s to be away a fortnight), she leaves too to find news on Rochester, since her letters to Mrs Fairfax never got a reply. She reaches Thornfield Hall and find it in ruins. She asks at the local inn and learns that the mad wife burned it down. Rochester managed to save everyone inside - everyone but the wife who jumped to her death - but in doing so he was greatly injured: he lost a hand and his sight from both eyes, and now lives in another house. She is relieved to hear that he is not dead and has not lost his mind. She goes there. She sees him, and feels the same as ever for him.

When she goes to him, he thinks she’s the maid, but he knows her voice and her hands, and still loves her and can’t believe it’s her, but she says she’ll never leave him again.

He is jealous of St John Rivers, when she tells her story, but then she tells him she loves him, he asks her to marry him, she accepts, and very very soon they marry (a few days tops). She writes to her cousins explaining it. The sisters are happy for her.

Jane narrates it all now, ten years after the marriage. The sisters got happily married, and they visit each other from time to time. St John went and became a missionary, and never married, and in his last letter he said (basically) that he was now dying, and happy to finally join his beloved God.