Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë's first published novel, is the life story of an orphan girl who becomes a governess and falls in love with her mysterious employer, Mr Rochester. Told in the first person by a heroine who is poor, plain and fiercely independent, it caused a sensation on publication and remains one of the most influential novels in English.
The story
Jane, an orphan, is brought up harshly by her aunt, Mrs Reed, then sent to Lowood, a charity school where hunger and disease kill many pupils, among them her friend Helen Burns. After eight years there, as pupil and then teacher, she becomes governess to the young ward of Edward Rochester at Thornfield Hall.
Jane and Rochester fall in love, but on their wedding day she learns that he is already married, to a woman kept hidden in the attic of the house. Jane flees, nearly dies on the moors, and is taken in by the clergyman St John Rivers and his sisters, before a mysterious call brings her back to Rochester.
Memories and inventions
Lowood is a portrait of the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, where Charlotte and her sisters were sent in 1824. Her two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, fell ill there and died the following year; Helen Burns is modelled on Maria.
Charlotte had worked as a governess herself and had known an unrequited love for her teacher in Brussels, Constantin Héger. She combined these experiences with elements of the Gothic novel, such as the haunted house, the secret and the fire.
Publication and success
After her first novel, The Professor, had been rejected, the London publishers Smith, Elder and Company accepted Jane Eyre and published it on 16 October 1847, as edited by Currer Bell. It sold so quickly that a second edition followed in January 1848.
Readers wondered whether Currer Bell was a man or a woman, and some critics found the book coarse or rebellious. It has since inspired countless adaptations and rewritings, such as Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which imagines the life of Rochester's first wife.
Anecdotes
Mr Brocklehurst recognised
The harsh clergyman who runs Lowood, Mr Brocklehurst, was immediately identified by many readers as the Reverend William Carus Wilson, founder of the Cowan Bridge school. His family and supporters defended him, and the dispute flared up again in 1857, when Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë described the school.
An Autobiography
The title page of the first edition reads Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, edited by Currer Bell. The fiction that the book was Jane's own life story, merely edited by Currer Bell, added to the mystery around its author.
Frequently asked questions
When was Jane Eyre published?
On 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder and Company in London, under the pen name Currer Bell.
Is Jane Eyre autobiographical?
Partly. Lowood school, the death of Helen Burns and Jane's work as a governess draw on Charlotte Brontë's own life, but the plot is invented.
Who is the woman in the attic in Jane Eyre?
Bertha Mason, Rochester's first wife, whom he keeps hidden at Thornfield Hall.