Charlotte Brontë • Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is the story of an orphaned girl who, thanks to her strong spirit, manages to escape a life of oppression and become an independent woman. Jane is brought up by heartless relatives and is forced to attend a school for the poor. After a few years she becomes a teacher at the school, but leaves when she is offered a position as governess at Thornfield Hall, a great mansion resembling a medieval castle. The owner, Mr. Edward Rochester, soon becomes Jane’s love interest, but it turns out that Rochester is married and keeps his ‘mad’ wife locked away in a secluded part of the mansion.

One of the great classics of English literature, Jane Eyre is at once a love story, a variation on the Gothic genre, and a harsh depiction of reality from a woman’s perspective. It is also the novel that gave rise to the expression ‘The Mad Woman in the Attic’.