Jane Eyre

by

Paperback, 496 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 1998 by Oxford University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-19-283356-3
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OCLC Number:
39359315

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(2 reviews)

The novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family, during which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her. Will she or will she not marry him?

98 editions

reviewed Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

A worthy classic

This was my first ever Brontë novel (no, really). I was of course familiar with the literary family but had never read any of their work (for no purposeful reason). So it was with a degree of excitement that I started Jane Eyre wondering what the popular Victorian novel could hold.

I enjoyed it from the start, and I enjoyed it more as I devoured it over three days of a holiday. Certain anachronisms aside, the social commentary was informative, and the character of Jane Eyre remarkably fresh given her age. Her personal growth throughout the novel (along with other characters') was probably the best I'd read up until that point.

Some aspects of the story I found a bit weak but overall it was a satisfying ending in the context of the time and place.

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Subjects

  • Governesses -- Fiction.
  • Fathers and daughters -- Fiction.
  • Mentally ill women -- Fiction.
  • Charity-schools -- Fiction.
  • Married people -- Fiction.
  • Country homes -- Fiction.
  • Young women -- Fiction.
  • Orphans -- Fiction.
  • England -- Fiction.