Jane Eyre

Published in October 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, Jane Eyre was Charlotte Bronte’s first and most successful novel. The plot follows the fortunes of the eponymous lead character as she grows into adulthood, meets the man she falls in love with, loses him and then finds him once again. While those bare bones are conventional enough, the way Jane’s fortunes are internalised to give words to her feelings as all this unfolds is not. In diverting the attentions from the plot towards Jane’s reactions to it, the novel follows the bildungsroman genre also used by Charlotte’s sister Anne in her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It is thought that Jane represents the kind of austere, moralising protestant women prevalent in the town near to Haworth and it’s interesting that the narrative records just as much reactions to this character as lessons drawn from it. Equally, however, Jane makes efforts to separate her morals from a strict religious orthodoxy.