Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë, 1847
An orphan with no money, no beauty and a ferocious sense of her own worth takes a job at a strange house. A first-person voice that still feels startlingly direct.
Charlotte Brontë
1816–1855
Brontë published it in 1847 as 'Currer Bell', and critics argued over whether the author was a man or a woman. The school scenes drew on the real school that her two eldest sisters attended.
Feels like defiance, identity and freedom.
Looking at someone you shouldn't, knowing precisely what it will cost.
No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless. Books by Charlotte Brontë
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