Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë tells the life story of an orphaned child called Jane Eyre. The novel follows Jane’s emotions, experiences and life-changing decisions as she passes through different life stages. The novel is written in first person with Jane telling her own side of the story.

The novel travels through five distinct stages of Jane’s life. The first being her childhood at Gateshead, where she is both emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; the second is her childhood education at Lowood School; next is her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall; (In this period of time, Jane falls in love with her employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester); the fourth stage is Jane’s time with the Rivers family who eventually turn out to be a part of her actual extended family; and the finale is her reunion with, and marriage to, Mr Rochester. Jane Eyre is set in the early 1800’s in northern England. However the novel moves from location to location. For example, the main locations include: the Reed family’s home at Gateshead, Lowood School, Rochester’s manor house Thornfield, the Rivers family’s home at Moor House, and Rochester’s rural retreat at Ferndean.

In all honesty, I was excited to read Jane Eyre because it was considered by so many people such a brilliant novel and a classic. Unfortunately for me however I just could not get into it. This might have been because I already knew the story from watching the recent movie of Jane Eyre or maybe because I just had no motivation to read the novel. Whatever the reason was, I cannot say that Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books. For me, it was dull, very slow moving, had little character development and too many extensive descriptions. To be honest, I really had to motivate myself to finish this book because by the end of it, I thoroughly disliked it. I do appreciate the time and effort Charlotte Brontë put into the novel of Jane Eyre and I think I can see why so many people regard it so highly however I still cannot say that I would read this again.

Jane Eyre: Jane Eyre is a plain young girl who grows up to be a courageous woman. Her life was so different to ours as this book was based on a true story. This book was a great book to read and there was only one bad thing about it which was they kept you waiting till the very end before the revealed things about Mr Rochester’s past. Charlotte Bronte is an amazing writer so I suggest you read Jane Eyre and some of her other books.