Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre follows the format of a romance novel: a governess falls in love with her employer, they overcome impediments, and they live happily ever after. Add a madwoman in the attic, Thornfield Hall in flames, and Mr. Rochester’s voice calling to Jane across the winds, and you have an unforgettable romance novel.

I admire Jane immensely. Her journey from being a suffering student at Lowood School to an independent woman is as relevant as ever. Through every experience, she asserts her autonomy but never wavers in her moral compass.

In Brontë’s world, love involves every fiber of… show more.

When I was fifteen, I stayed up reading the end of this book under the covers with a flashlight because I could not put it down.

A scandalous bestseller in 1847, this was the first romance to feature an antihero. Mr. Rochester is far from pure and kind. He mocks Jane, who describes herself as small and plain and stands up to him. He has an immoral secret and when Jane learns of it, she leaves him. I doubt I would have.

This book makes you feel the love. It tears at your heartstrings and causes flutters to find your soul. The story, the characters, and the scenes between the two protagonists fill your heart with gratitude, longing, and appreciation - for true love. This is a testament to the ultimate power of the love between two people and what it can accomplish.

This book was the other 19th-century classic novel that I loved as a girl, and I re-read it almost as much as I do Pride and Prejudice. It’s a lot more angsty, but it does contain that essential happily-ever-after (with a few tragedies thrown in). And I think Mr. Rochester’s speeches to Jane might be even swoonier than Mr. Darcy’s to Elizabeth. 

This is one classic that everyone should read because it’s a pleasure to do so. I read this as a 13-year-old, and it quickly became the yardstick against which I measured every other love story. Yes, it’s a love story, and that is the heart of this book, but it’s not a sappy romantic tale. 

This book explores class structures, mental disorders, and a glimpse into another time. Intense yet leashed emotions form the backbone of the story. As a teen and even now, the brooding, dark quality of this tale really appeals to me.

Jane Eyre inspired me to write.

I first read it at school. It did not make an impact on me then (probably because it was compulsory reading); but my English teacher was curious to know my thoughts on it. Looking back, I think she saw something in me that I had not yet seen in myself, and that there was a similarity between me and Charlotte Brontë.

Fifteen years later, I undertook a PhD in English Literature, and Brontë was my focus. When, at that point, I reread Jane Eyre, I was struck by its narrative and descriptive power, so… show more.

For me, this book is the beginning of my becoming a writer and coming into my own. I vividly remember reading the novel for the first time when I had chicken pox in ninth grade in the winter, and it was snowing and cold. It was a revelation.

In this case, Jane is an orphan, but her solitary status spoke profoundly to me and my own loneliness and outsider status in my family. If there’s a character other than Jane Eyre who has meant more to me, I don’t know who she is. If there is a writer who has… show more.

I love this book because it’s about two people who society would never have expected to fall in love.

Jane and Mr Rochester are so far away from each other on the social scale that at the time it was written it was almost impossible to imagine they could ever get married. I also love that Jane is no beauty and is described as plain, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to love.

I also find it moving that both she and Mr Rochester have to overcome huge emotional challenges in order to be together at all. Finally, I… show more.

I first read this novel when I was ten. Pages had fallen out and even though I later found intact copies, I read it over and over to fill the gaps in my understanding.

How I loved the way Jane took charge of her fate with such intelligence, the way she captured Rochester’s heart without demeaning herself. But oh that madwoman she encountered in the attic. What did Jane make of Bertha, this “clothed hyena?”

Unlike Rochester, she didn’t blame Bertha for her violence. And while she understood Rochester’s dilemma she couldn’t agree to stay with him. In an intolerable… show more.

The romantic power of this story has never left me.

I read Jane Eyre as a high-school student studying my favorite subject, English Literature. I loved the gothic gloom and mystery, secrets to be explored and solved. Jane epitomizes the seemingly weak female who ultimately shows the greatest strength while Rochester oozes protector energy, a man with a dark past.

The contemporary protector romances I love today haven’t strayed far from the over-arching themes of the books of my teenage years, and there is comfort in that. I’ve yet to figure out exactly why, but like all of us, I… show more.