Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a work of classic British literature written by Charlotte Bronte under the pseudonym Currer Bell. It was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. It became a bestseller, receiving mostly favorable reviews.http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/bronte.html#reviews The novel is told as a first-person account and was initially described as An Autobiography in its title.

The book has been adapted for film on numerous occasions. In 1943, Joan Fontaine played the title role alongside Orson Welles as Mr. Edward Rochester. In a 1983 television miniseries, Zelah Clarke and Timothy Dalton took on the main roles. In a 2006 BBC miniseries, Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens starred.

At the beginning of the novel, Jane Eyre is an orphan living with the Reeds, her uncle's family. After her uncle passes away, Jane receives horrible treatment from her relatives. At the age of ten, she is sent away to the Lowood School for Girls.

At Lowood Jane befriends a girl named Helen Burns, who dies during a typhus outbreak in the school. Jane eventually becomes a teacher at Lowood. When she grows restless with her situation, she becomes a governess to a French girl named Adele Varens and moves to Thornfield Hall.

Adele is the charge of Mr. Edward Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield. While she is employed as Adele's governess, Jane's relationship with Rochester grows to one of love. Suspecting, however, that he is going to propose to a guest to his home named Blanche Ingram, she is surprised to find out he returns her love. On their wedding day, it is revealed that Mr. Rochester has a first wife Bertha stowed away in an attic, where she suffers from madness. Jane leaves Thornfield.

By coincidence, after escaping Thornfield, Jane finds herself at the home of St. John Rivers and his sisters Diana and Mary. There she discovers that these individuals are her relatives and that she is meant to have inherited a fortune. She shares the fortune with her cousins. St. John asks Jane to marry him, but she refuses. She decides to return to Thornfield, feeling that Rochester needs her.

When Jane returns to Thornfield, she finds out that Bertha burned it to the ground and was killed. Rochester was maimed in the fire. When Jane reunites with Rochester, he proposes again and they are married.

This is not merely a work of great promise; it is one of absolute performance. It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which have been published for many years. -- Atlas (1847)http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/bronte.html#reviews

'Jane Eyre' is, indeed, one of the coarsest books which we ever perused. -- Rambler(1848)http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/bronte.html#reviews

Altogether the autobiography of Jane Eyre is preeminently an anti-Christian composition...We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code human and divine abroad, and fostered Chartism and rebellion at home is the same which has also written Jane Eyre. -- Quarterly Review (1847)http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/bronte.html#reviews

Note: The majority of the links in this timeline are to IMDb, which has pop-ups.