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Analysis: Chapters 1–4. In the early chapters, Brontë establishes the young Jane’s character through her confrontations with John and Mrs. Reed, in which Jane’s good-hearted but strong-willed determination and integrity become apparent. These chapters also establish the novel’s mood. Beginning with Jane’s experience in the red-room ...
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This quotation, part of Jane’s outburst to her aunt just...
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Jane Eyre: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis. Jane Eyre: Chapter 1. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in , which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. On a dreary afternoon in Gateshead Hall, the ten-year-old Jane Eyre, who has been forbidden by her Aunt from playing with her three cousins, finds a curtained window seat ...
Summary. It is a cold, wet November afternoon when the novel opens at Gateshead, the home of Jane Eyre's relatives, the Reeds. Jane and the Reed children, Eliza, John, and Georgiana sit in the drawing room. Jane's aunt is angry with her, purposely excluding her from the rest of the family, so Jane sits alone in a window seat, reading Bewick's ...
Jane Eyre Full Book Summary. Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the ...
- Charlotte Brontë
- 1847
- Chapters 1–4
- Chapters 5–10
- Chapters 11–16
- Chapters 17–21
- Chapters 22–25
- Chapter 26
- Chapters 27 & 28
- Chapters 29–32
- Chapters 33–35
- Chapters 36–38
Jane fights with her cousin John, and as punishment her aunt, Mrs. Reed, sends her to the “red-room,” where she is struck with the sense that her uncle’s ghost is near, causing her to faint. After Jane awakens in her own bedroom, it is decided that Jane will leave to attend Lowood, a boarding school for girls. Mrs. Reed insults Jane’s character to ...
Conditions at the school are harsh; Jane is humiliated when Mr. Brocklehurst informs the whole school of her “deceitful” character, although her classmate Helen sticks by her, and the kindly Miss Temple declares her innocent. In the spring, many girls fall ill, including Helen, who dies of consumption. Jane excels in her studies over the next six y...
One evening a few months after her arrival at Thornfield, where she tutors the eight-year-old Adèle, Jane meets the brooding Mr. Rochester. Jane later hears an eerie laugh in the hallway, and upon finding Mr. Rochester’s bed curtains on fire, Jane saves his life. The next morning, she is shocked to learn that neither the servants nor Rochester are ...
Rochester returns to Thornfield with several guests, including Blanche Ingram, to whom Jane guesses Rochester will soon be married. One night a fortuneteller visits the manor, and while she is reading Jane her fortune, Jane realizes the old woman is Rochester in disguise and reproaches him; later that night, he asks Jane for help when a man named M...
Upon returning to Thornfield, Jane finally confesses her love to Rochester, who, to her surprise, asks her to be his wife. Preparations for the wedding do not go smoothly, and Jane writes to her uncle, John Eyre, hoping he’ll make her his heir and put her on more equal footing with Rochester. Jane tells Rochester a mysterious woman entered her room...
On the day of Rochester and Jane’s wedding, it’s revealed that Rochester is already married to a woman named Bertha Mason. Rochester confirms that his wife is alive, and has been locked away in a room on the third floor under the care of the servant Grace Poole due to her madness. He brings the wedding crowd to see Bertha, who attempts to strangle ...
Rochester asks Jane for forgiveness, explaining his past and why he doesn’t consider his marriage to Bertha legitimate, then proposes they leave together and live as husband and wife in France. Jane is torn, but ultimately leaves Thornfield on her own, realizing she would never be more than his mistress. She ends up at the doorstep of three sibling...
Jane learns the siblings’ father lost most of the family fortune in a bad business deal, led astray by their uncle who recently died and left them nothing. St. John finds Jane a job running a girls’ charity school, which she comes to enjoy, though she is having dreams about Rochester. She believes St. John is going to marry the wealthy heiress Rosa...
Jane reveals her true identity to St. John when he informs her that John Eyre has died, leaving Jane a vast fortune of 20,000 pounds, and that John was his uncle, too, making them family. Jane decides to split the inheritance with her newfound cousins to atone for their uncle having led the River family to ruin. St. John pressures Jane to accompany...
Jane travels to Thornfield only to find it in ruins, and learns that Bertha Mason set the house ablaze; Rochester, who saved the servants and attempted to save Bertha, lost a hand and went blind. When Jane reunites with Rochester, he asks her to marry him. Jane explains she’s narrating her story after ten years of marriage to Rochester, who regaine...
A child's point of view - this chapter is one of the earliest accounts given by a child from a child's point of view in English fiction. Though it is actually being narrated in retrospect by the mature Jane Rochester several years after the end of the chapter 37, it provides us with the highly suggestive portrait of Jane's thoughts and feelings as a child.
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Jane Eyre Volume 1, Chapter 1 Summary. Back. More. Jane Eyre begins with the adult Jane looking back at her life. She jumps into the story at a moment in her childhood when she’s ten years old. On this particular day, Jane and her cousins John, Eliza, and Georgiana aren’t going to do something: they’re not going to take a walk, because it ...
