In the Victorian age, choices for gentle-born women are limited. She could marry, become a governess or teacher, struggle as a seamstress, or end up an old maid. For Jane, orphaned and forced to live with her Aunt Reed, only the latter three choices seem feasible. Plain, highly intelligent, and quick of tongue, her lack of fortune and beauty will certainly determine her future. Unloved by her aunt, she is sent to Lowood Institution for girls, where education is provided at a
great cost. Mr. Brocklehurst runs the charity school with an iron hand and the lack of funds means the girls shiver and starve while he basks in his assumed Christian charity.
After an outbreak of typhus where many girls die the institution is reformed and luckily Jane manages to achieve a fine education with the help of Miss Temple, the headmistress who becomes her friend and mentor. After the woman marries, however, Jane realizes that remaining as a teacher at Lowood without her friend would be a numbing existence, so she advertises for a position as a governess. A few weeks later, she stands in the great
hall of Thornfield, the ancestral home of Mr. Rochester, ready to begin instructing her pliable French pupil, Adele.
Weeks later, during one of her many walks, she frightens Mr. Rochester’s horse which throws it master. He is a dour master of the Hall and subject to strange conversation with her, but not pretentious, she shows her intelligence and wit, matching every conversation with her measured insights. He is a large, ugly man, but his intellect and kindness to Jane stirs her admiration and eventually, love. But he seems to prefer Miss Ingram and she falls into despair. During this time of growing love, strange happenings at Thornfield threaten her happiness. Unearthly laughing, burning abandoned candles, and above all, Mr. Rochester’s obvious abhorrence for the estate alert Jane that something is amiss. It is after Mr. Rochester receives a visitor; a Mr. Mason from the West Indies, that Jane must rise above her station and assist the man she loves. When Mason is stabbed and Mr. Rochester goes for a doctor, she must stay in a room where behind the door it seems something akin to a wild animal snarls and paces. Putting any suspicion aside as to the circumstances surrounding Mr. Mason’s injury the naïve girl throws caution to the wind and agrees to
marry him after Mr. Rochester avows his
love for her.
Later at the church, just as the minister is about to unite them in wedlock, a voice rings out, halting the ceremony and revealing a shocking truth. Mr. Rochester is already married and to Mr. Mason’s sister, Bertha! His wife is a lunatic and Mr. Rochester, unable to get a divorce has locked the lady up for her own safety and his sanity. He suggests Jane become his mistress, but true to her faith, she runs away and without money and having left her bag on the coach, she is stranded at Whitcross; a simple sign in the middle of the vast moor. Wandering for two days and facing starvation she is fortuitously taken in by a family at Moorhouse, St. John, and his two pleasant sisters, Diana and Mary. Months later, after she has worked as a teacher in the local village school, the devout and rigid St. John asks her to accompany him to India as his wife and fellow missionary even though he has revealed that they are cousins; Jane’s mother and his father were brother and sister. He insists that Jane is ‘formed for labor, not love.” She scorns his idea of love and on the wind hears a woeful Mr. Rochester’s voice calling out to her across the distant moor.
She discovers, after a two-day journey, a crippled and disheartened Mr. Rochester only attended by two of his most trusted servants. His mad wife Bertha burned Thornfield Hall down not long after Jane fled and while trying to save her, Mr. Rochester lost his hand and his eyesight. His man servant John suggests that this is the penalty Mr. Edward paid for trying to marry Jane while still wed. Jane forgives Mr.Rochester for all his folly and agrees to marry him, subsequently enjoying a happy and fulfilled life.
First published in three volumes under the name Currer Bell in 1847, this soulfully romantic novel gives us great insight into the manners and morals of the Victorian Age. It is suspected Brontë used the pen name not only to preserve her privacy, but because of an earlier response of the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, to some of her poems. “Literature,” he wrote, “cannot be the business of a woman’s life.” Still Charlotte Brontë persevered in her art and the result is this wonderful book. Passionate and well-written the novel is a must read for all connoisseurs of the Age and fans of the Brontë sisters.
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