Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre opens with Jane’s melancholic childhood. Her hostile and frigid aunt and cousins - Eliza, John and Georgiana - treat her with disdain, deeming her to be inferior, and unworthy of love.

Aunt Reed convinces the supervisor of Lowood Institute - Mr Brocklehurst - that Jane is a troubled child, after she strikes her sadistic cousin John, and she is sent away to a boarding school for orphaned girls.

Here, Jane discovers her affinity to education, excelling in all of her classes. She is treated like a social pariah, as she is stigmatised by Mr Brocklehurst as a liar, however her reputation is restored after finding solace in her friendships with Ms Temple, her teacher, and Helen, her first friend. It is in this moment that Jane experiences true happiness for the first time. However, this happiness is short-lived when Lowood is hit by a typhus epidemic, and Helen dies. Jane stays at Lowood for 8 years, eventually becoming a teacher there.

The close of Jane’s life at Lowood is where the main plot of the novel begins. Jane, now eighteen, is hired by Thornfield Hall as a governess. Here she meets Mr Rochester, the owner and master of Thornfield Hall. The physical and mental connection between the two is palpable. Though Jane is intrigued by Mr Rochester, there is an immediate disparity between Jane’s low social status and Mr Rochester’s upper-class superiority, made evident when Jane is ridiculed by his friends, including the beautiful Blanche Ingram.

Jane receives a message that her Aunt Reed is about to die and wishes to see Jane. Jane wistfully hopes that Aunt Reed will apologise for her mistreatment, but she instead reveals that she will never love Jane and withheld her from seeing her relatives by telling them she had died of typhus at Lowood.

Though Jane is dejected, she is not surprised and returns to Thornfield Hall. The relationship between Jane and Rochester grows stronger, and though he teases her relentlessly, he eventually admits his feelings and proposes to Jane.

However, the plot takes another restless turn at their wedding, when two men disrupt the ceremony, stating that Mr Rochester is already married. He admits that he is indeed married to Bertha Mason, an insane and beast like woman whom he was tricked into marrying and is currently confined on the third floor of Thornfield Hall. He begs Jane to run away and act as a married couple with him, but Jane rejects the offer to be his mistress, leaving with no belongings, fleeing with no orientation, to any place far away from her beloved.

At the brink of death, exhausted, starving and lost, Jane is taken in by St John and his sisters, who provide her shelter and even offer her a job as a schoolteacher nearby. She stays there for months, discovering what true independence feels like. She learns that she is related to St John and his sisters when she becomes the heir of a small fortune left by one of her distant relatives.

St John asks Jane to marry him, not out of love, but out of mutual benefit, believing she would prove beneficial in his missionary lifestyle. Jane rejects the offer, and eventually goes back to Thornfield after hearing Mr Rochester’s voice calling her.

She is dismayed to find that in her absence, Thornfield Hall burnt down after Bertha escaped and set the house on fire. She hears that Mr Rochester saved the servants and even tried to save Bertha, but she jumped to her death. As a result of the fire, Rochester lost both his sight, and one of his hands.

Jane reunites with Mr Rochester, who recognises her voice and touch despite being sightless, and again asks for her hand in marriage. As an independent woman, and his equal, she agrees.

Several years later, Rochester regains his eyesight, and the happy couple have a child.