Jane Eyre

‘I wish... I wish I’d never been born! I wish I’d never come to Thornfield!’ No longer able to control my feelings, I poured out what was in my heart. ‘I can’t bear to leave! Because here I’ve been treated kindly. And because I’ve met you, Mr Rochester, and I can’t bear never to see you again. Now I have to leave, I feel as if I'm dying! … I can’t stay!’ I cried furiously. ‘Do you think I can watch another woman become your bride? Do you think I’m a machine, without feelings? Do you think, because I’m small and poor and plain, that I have no soul and no heart? Well you’re wrong! I have as much soul and heart as you. It is my spirit that speaks to your spirit! We are equal in the sight of God!’

——"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre /ɛər/ （originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography） is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell", on 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.[1] Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman which follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.[2]

The novel revolutionised prose fiction by being the first to focus on its protagonist's moral and spiritual development through an intimate first-person narrative, where actions and events are coloured by a psychological intensity. Charlotte Brontë has been called the "first historian of the private consciousness", and the literary ancestor of writers like Proust and Joyce.[3]

The book contains elements of social criticism with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and it is considered by many to be ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the topics of class, sexuality, religion, and feminism.[4][5] It, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of the most famous romance novels of all time.[6]

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