Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

‘…something spoke out of me over which I had no control.’

Jane Eyre clings to a sense of self-worth throughout the hardships of her childhood, spent with a severe aunt and unfeeling cousins, and later at the austere Lowood charity school. At the age of 18, sick of her narrow existence, she seeks works as a governess. The monotony of Jane’s routine at Thornfield Hall is broken up by the arrival of her unconventional employer, Mr. Rochester. Life at the mansion is further disrupted by mysterious incidents that draw the pair closer together, but which, once explained, threaten Jane’s happiness and integrity.

Victorian readers were shocked and enthralled by the novel’s forceful depiction of childhood deprivation, female restlessness, and the complexities of faith and passion. Jane’s voice remains as striking today as it sounded more than 150 years ago.

• In this new edition, Juliette Atkinson explores Charlotte Brontë’s handling of narrative voice, situates the novel within evolving nineteenth-century attitudes towards selfhood, and explores how the novel’s ‘poor, obscure, plain’ heroine negotiates the competing pulls of the fantastical and the everyday.