The opening scenes of
Jane Eyre show its title character and narrator, a plain, shy orphan, grudgingly kept by her
uncle’s widow at Gateshead Hall, in revolt against her bullying cousins and aunt. Jane is sent to Lowood School, where she is half-starved and poorly dressed but where she finds friends who respect her intelligence and hard work. She survives a deadly epidemic and remains at Lowood until the age of eighteen, when she obtains a position as governess at Thornfield Hall.
At Thornfield, Jane teaches a small French child, ward of the absent Mr. Rochester. The servants are kind, but Jane is troubled by wild laughter heard at odd times. When Mr. Rochester returns home, Jane finds him an enigma, unconventional in speech and ugly but possessed of tremendous masculine energy. Jane rescues him from a fire, and sympathy grows between them. When Mr. Rochester hosts a brilliant house party, he courts one of his guests, a proud and beautiful heiress. Jane, deeply in love, knows that he may marry the heiress, but mysterious events force Jane to help her master in secret and encourage her hidden love.
While Jane is struggling to reconcile love with reality, she is recalled to Gateshead. On her deathbed, Aunt Reed reveals that a rich West Indian uncle has been trying to contact Jane. After a long absence, Jane returns to Thornfield, where Rochester declares his love and proposes marriage. Jane writes to her unknown uncle with news of her engagement. Two nights before the wedding, Jane wakes to see an unknown, hideous woman destroy her bridal veil. The wedding ceremony is stopped by the announcement that Mr. Rochester has a living wife. Bertha Rochester, a once-beautiful but depraved West Indian, is incurably insane and confined to the Thornfield attic. Her brother, an acquaintance of Jane’s uncle, was alerted by her letter. Jane flees Thornfield and, days later, collapses, starving, at the door of the Rivers family, near Morton village.
The sisters Mary and Diana Rivers befriend Jane and nurse her. Their brother, Saint-John, installs her in the Morton school, where she teaches under an assumed name. When her identity is revealed, they learn that they are cousins. Their mutual uncle in the West Indies has recently died and left Jane a considerable fortune. Saint-John, a clergyman, asks Jane to marry him and go as a missionary to India. She rejects marriage without love, but she finds it difficult to resist his idealism. One night, she hears Mr. Rochester’s voice call her. She travels to Thornfield Hall, where she finds the house burned to the ground by the madwoman. Rochester is blind from an injury received in an unsuccessful attempt to save his wife, dead in the blaze. Jane’s reunion with Mr. Rochester leads to a blissfully happy ending.