The key ideas

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë, 1847

She is ten, an orphan, living on charity with an aunt who cannot stand her. For hitting back at her cousin, she is locked in the room where her uncle died. Eight years later she is a governess in an old house where someone laughs on the third floor at night, and the master, gloomy and twenty years older, talks to her as an equal. She has no money, no family, no beauty. All she has is her own will.

Who it is for

For anyone who knows “Jane Eyre” from the films and wants to go through the whole novel, from the red room to the last page. For anyone moved by stories of a person who has nothing but herself. For students who were set the novel for class.

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart!

The girl behind the red curtain

November, rain, no walk today. A ten-year-old girl climbs onto a wide window seat, tucks her feet under her and draws the red curtain. On her lap is Bewick’s book of British birds. A rock in the middle of the sea, a broken boat on an empty shore, a cold moon over a sinking ship. She is happy, in her own way at least, and afraid of only one thing: being found.

Her name is Jane Eyre. She is an orphan, living on charity in a rich house, with her uncle’s widow. The door is already opening, and her cousin shouts: “Boh! Madam Mope! Where is she?”

Charlotte Brontë published this novel in 1847 and called it an autobiography. Jane tells the whole story herself, and we know exactly as much as she does.

Ahead lie a cold school for orphans and an old house with a locked third floor. She is ten, and she has nothing but herself.

Part one. The red room

John Reed sits in an armchair and spends three minutes taunting Jane, sticking his tongue out at her. He is fourteen, big and flabby, with dull eyes and heavy cheeks: at table he gorges on sweets. Then, without a word, he hits her.

“You are a dependant. Mama says you have no money; your father left you none.” The books in this house are his, the whole house is his. He tells her to stand by the door and hurls the Bewick at her. Jane falls and cuts her head on the door. Blood runs down her neck.

And the fear is gone. “Wicked and cruel boy! You are like a murderer, you are like a slave-driver, you are like the Roman emperors!” He grabs her by the hair, and she fights back without knowing how. Mrs Reed comes in: “Take her away to the red room, and lock her in there.”

Nine years ago Mr Reed, her mother’s brother, died in this room. Before he died he made his wife promise to raise Jane as one of her own. A deep red canopy over the bed, a great mirror in which her face looks like a ghost’s. It is getting dark.

Jane thinks: what if her uncle’s spirit comes to stand up for her? At that moment a streak of light slides along the wall and trembles above her head.

She screams and shakes the lock. Mrs Reed orders her kept there another hour. The door is locked again. After that, Jane remembers nothing.

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About the author

Charlotte Brontë (1816 to 1855) was the daughter of a clergyman in the Yorkshire village of Haworth and the eldest of three writing sisters. Her two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, fell ill at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge and died as children; that school became Lowood. Charlotte herself worked as a teacher and a governess. “Jane Eyre” came out in October 1847 under a man’s pen name, Currer Bell.

All books by this author: Charlotte Brontë

Terms from the book

  • Rochester
  • Grace
  • Helen
  • Madeira
  • pilot
  • Gateshead: The Reed family estate, where Jane lives until she is ten, with her uncle’s widow.
  • Lowood: A charity school for orphan girls in a wooded valley. Fifteen pounds a year is paid for each pupil, and donations cover the rest; the school is run by the clergyman Brocklehurst.
  • Brocklehurst: Mr Brocklehurst, a clergyman, the treasurer and manager of Lowood. He preaches humility and plain food to the orphans, while his wife and daughters go about in velvet and furs.
  • Temple: Miss Maria Temple, the superintendent of Lowood, about twenty-nine. For eight years she is Jane’s mother and teacher in one.
  • typhus: An infectious fever. In spring it sweeps through Lowood, after which the school is inspected and rebuilt.
  • consumption: The old name for tuberculosis of the lungs.
  • Bessie: Bessie Lee, the nurse at Gateshead, a teller of fairy tales and ballads. The only one in the house who was sometimes kind to Jane; later she married the coachman, Robert Leaven.
  • Thornfield: Mr Rochester’s old three-storey house with battlements along the roof, a few miles from the town of Millcote. The name comes from the old thorn trees growing in the field in front of it.
  • Fairfax: Mrs Alice Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield, an elderly clergyman’s widow. Mr Rochester’s mother was her husband’s second cousin.
  • Adèle: Adèle Varens, Mr Rochester’s ward, the daughter of the Paris dancer Céline Varens. She speaks French, sings and dances.
  • Gytrash: A spirit from the folk tales of the north of England. It appears to lonely travellers on empty roads in the shape of a horse, a mule or a large dog.
  • Blanche: Blanche Ingram, a beauty of twenty-five from a noble but not wealthy family. She sings and plays the piano beautifully.
  • Mason: Richard Mason, a visitor from Spanish Town in Jamaica. He says he has known Mr Rochester for a long time.
  • Bertha: Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of the merchant Jonas Mason, whom Rochester married in Spanish Town fifteen years ago. For ten years she has been kept on the third floor of Thornfield.
  • St John: St John Eyre Rivers, the clergyman of the poor parish of Morton, about twenty-eight or thirty. He is preparing to go to the East as a missionary.
  • Moor House: The old home of the Rivers family on the moors. It is also called Marsh End.
  • Hindustani: The language spoken across northern India. Modern Hindi and Urdu both grew out of it.
  • Ferndean: An old Rochester manor deep in a forest, thirty miles from Thornfield. Rochester’s father bought it for the shooting.

All terms

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