Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855), 1847
★ 4.16 from 2.4m ratings on Goodreads
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. Jane's voice is plain, stubborn and direct, and the book moves between a lonely girlhood and a dark house full of longing and unease.
Feels like defiance, longing and wonder. About identity, freedom and love.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy a first-person narrator with a strong will and a gothic house holding its secrets close. Be aware that the middle stretch can feel slow and melodramatic, and that Rochester's behaviour troubles many readers rather than charming them.
Why read it
It gives you a voice that still sounds startlingly direct after more than a century, and a heroine who insists on her own worth without money or beauty to back it up.
Pages from the book
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. Winning the argument, then tasting what the victory is made of.
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature. The first time you say the true thing to someone who ruled you.
Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry. What readers say
Readers often find Jane’s independence and moral strength moving; many are swept up by the romance, while others find Rochester troubling and the plot slow or melodramatic. Its dark, gothic atmosphere and feminist themes draw strong admiration, though the love story divides.
Charlotte Brontë.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.
Books that feel like this
Dracula
Bram Stoker, 1897
A solicitor's business trip, a seaside storm and a doctor's case notes, told through diaries, letters and telegrams so that dread reads like found evidence.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Jane Eyre for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy a first-person narrator with a strong will and a gothic house holding its secrets close. Be aware that the middle stretch can feel slow and melodramatic, and that Rochester's behaviour troubles many readers rather than charming them.
- What is Jane Eyre like?
- Jane's voice is plain, stubborn and direct, and the book moves between a lonely girlhood and a dark house full of longing and unease. Feels like defiance, longing and wonder. About identity, freedom and love.
- What should I read after Jane Eyre?
- If you liked Jane Eyre, try Persuasion (Jane Austen), Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) and Little Women (Louisa May Alcott).
A taste of the feed
The particular loneliness of a room shared with someone you once loved.
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples), there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.
Persuasion · Jane Austen
Cold enough that the sky stops being any comfort at all.
Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.
Great Expectations · Charles Dickens
A mind wakes up with no history, and nobody to ask.
“But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.
Frankenstein · Mary Shelley
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