BOOK 233: JANE EYRE: CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.

But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?

(From Goodreads)

Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.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.

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 Marcel Proust and James Joyce.

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 It, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of the most famous romance novels.

(From Wikipedia)

MY VERDICT: This is exactly the kind of book that, every now and then, I am totally in the mood for. An old book, morally and historically interesting. This one is a classic and one of the best for a reason, I think it’s even better because of its first person narrative. The story, is one I knew before going in (because of pop culture) but it didn’t take anything away from this reading and was much more of a page turner than I was expecting. I would highly recommend.