SUMMARY
Jane's Childhood
The novel begins with the titular character Jane Eyre living with her
maternal uncle's family, the Reeds, as her uncle's dying wish. The novel starts
when Jane is ten years old and several years after her parents died of typhus. Mr.
Reed was the only one in the Reed family to be kind to Jane. Jane’s aunt Sarah
Reed does not like her, treats her worse than a servant and discourages and, at
times, forbids her children from associating with Jane. Mrs. Reed and her three
children are abusive to Jane, both physically and emotionally. The servant
Bessie proves to be Jane's only ally in the household even though Bessie
sometimes harshly scolds Jane. Excluded from the family activities, Jane is
incredibly unhappy with only a doll to find solace. One day, Jane is locked in
the red room, where her uncle died, and panics after seeing visions of him. She
is finally rescued when she is allowed to attend Lowood School
Lowood
Jane arrives at Lowood Institution, a charity
school, the head of which (Brocklehurst) has been told that she is deceitful.
During an inspection, Jane accidentally breaks her slate, and Mr. Brocklehurst,
the self-righteous clergyman who runs the school, brands her a liar and shames
her before the entire assembly. Jane is comforted by her friend, Helen Burns. Miss Temple
The eighty pupils at Lowood are subjected to cold
rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus
epidemic strikes. Jane's friend Helen dies of consumption
in her arms. When Mr. Brocklehurst's neglect and dishonesty are discovered,
several benefactors erect a new building and conditions at the school improve
dramatically.
Thornfield
Hall
After eight years as a student and two as a
teacher, Jane decides to leave Lowood, like her friend and confidante Miss Temple
Odd things start to happen at the house, such as
a strange laugh, a mysterious fire in Mr. Rochester's room, on which Jane
throws water, and an attack on Rochester 's
house guest, Mr. Mason. Jane receives word that her aunt was calling for her,
after being in much grief because her son has died. She returns to Gateshead and remains there for a month
caring for her dying aunt. Mrs. Reed gives Jane a
letter from Jane's paternal uncle, Mr John Eyre, asking for her to live with
him. Mrs. Reed admits to telling her uncle that Jane had died of fever at
Lowood. Soon after, Jane's aunt dies, and she returns to Thornfield. Jane
begins to communicate to her uncle John Eyre.
St. John Rivers admits Jane to
Moor House.
After returning to Thornfield, Jane broods over
Mr. Rochester's impending marriage to Blanche Ingram. But on a midsummer
evening, he proclaims his love for Jane and proposes. As she prepares for her
wedding, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks
into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. As with the previous
mysterious events, Mr. Rochester attributes the incident to drunkenness on the
part of Grace Poole, one of his servants. During the wedding ceremony, Mr.
Mason and a lawyer declare that Mr. Rochester cannot marry because he is still
married to Mr. Mason’s sister Bertha. Mr. Rochester admits this is true, but
explains that his father tricked him into the marriage for her money. Once they
were united, he discovered that she was rapidly descending into madness and
eventually locked her away in Thornfield, hiring Grace Poole as a nurse to look
after her. When Grace gets drunk, his wife escapes, and causes the strange
happenings at Thornfield. Jane learns that her own letter to her uncle John
Eyre, which happened to be seen by Mr. Mason, who knew John Eyre and was there,
was how Mr. Mason found out about the bigamous marriage. Mr. Rochester asks
Jane to go with him to the south of France , and live as husband and
wife, even though they cannot be married. Refusing to go against her
principles, and despite her love for him, Jane leaves Thornfield in the middle
of the night.
Other
employment
Jane travels through England using the little money she
had saved. She accidentally leaves her bundle of possessions on a coach and has
to sleep on the moor, trying to trade her scarf and gloves for food. Exhausted,
she makes her way to the home of Diana and Mary Rivers, but is turned away by
the housekeeper. She faints on the doorstep, preparing for her death. St. John
Rivers, Diana and Mary's brother and a clergyman, saves her. After she regains
her health, St. John
finds her a teaching position at a nearby charity school. Jane becomes good
friends with the sisters, but St. John
remains reserved.
The sisters leave for governess jobs and St. John becomes closer
with Jane. St. John discovers Jane's true identity, and astounds her by showing
her a letter stating that her uncle John Eyre has died and left her his entire
fortune of 20,000 pounds (equivalent to over
£1.3 million in 2011, calculated using the RPI[5]). When Jane questions him
further, St. John
reveals that John is also his and his sisters' uncle. They had once hoped for a
share of the inheritance, but have since resigned themselves to nothing. Jane,
overjoyed by finding her family, insists on sharing the money equally with her
cousins, and Diana and Mary come to Moor House to stay.
Proposals
Thinking she will make a suitable missionary's
wife, St. John asks Jane to marry him and to go
with him to India ,
not out of love, but out of duty. Jane initially accepts going to India , but
rejects the marriage proposal, suggesting they travel as brother and sister. As
soon as Jane's resolve against marriage to St. John begins to weaken, she mysteriously
hears Mr. Rochester's voice calling her name. Jane then returns to Thornfield
to find only blackened ruins. She learns that Mr. Rochester's wife set the
house on fire and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. In his rescue
attempts, Mr. Rochester lost a hand and his eyesight. Jane reunites with him,
but he fears that she will be repulsed by his condition. When Jane assures him
of her love and tells him that she will never leave him, Mr. Rochester again
proposes and they are married. He eventually recovers enough sight to see their
first-born son.
Love and passion
A central theme in Jane Eyre is that of
the clash between conscience and passion — which one is to adhere to, and how
to find a middle ground between the two. Jane, extremely passionate yet also
dedicated to a close personal relationship with God, struggles between either
extreme for much of the novel. An instance of her leaning towards conscience
over passion can be seen after it has been revealed that Mr. Rochester already
has a wife, when Jane is begged to run away with Mr. Rochester and become his
mistress. Up until that moment, Jane had been riding on a wave of emotion,
forgetting all thoughts of reason and logic, replacing God with Mr. Rochester
in her eyes, and allowing herself to be swept away in the moment. However, once
the harsh reality of the situation sets in, Jane does everything in her power
to refuse Mr. Rochester, despite almost every part of her rejecting the idea
and urging her to just give into Mr. Rochester's appeal. In the moment, Jane
experiences an epiphany in regards to conscience, realizing that “laws and
principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such
moments as this.” Jane finally comes to understand that all passion, as she had
been living her life up until then, and all conscience, as she had leaned
towards during her time at Lowood, is neither good nor preferable. In this
case, Jane had allowed herself to lean too far in the direction of passion, and
she is in danger of giving up all logic and reason in favour of temptation.
However, Jane finally asserts that in times of true moral trial, such as the
one she is in with Mr. Rochester at the moment, to forgo one's principles, to
violate the “law given by God,” would be too easy - and not something she is
willing to do. Jane's struggles to find a middle ground between her passionate
and conscience-driven sides frequently go back and forth throughout the novel,
but in this case she has drawn the line as to where passion is taking too great
a role in her life, and where she will not allow herself to forgo her moral and
religious principles
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