Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre (Signet Classics)
This is a totally fantastic book!   I absolutely loved it!  It is an intriguing story that includes hardship, mystery, plot twists and true love.  It gives an interesting view of life in England in the 1800s and the class and society structure as well as an interesting view of the Christian religion at that time.
It begins with Jane's difficult childhood being raised by an Aunt who hates her but had promised to care for her.  Her life with her aunts and mean cousins is rather cinderellaish, but she is not required to work.
Then she is sent to a charitable institution girl's school where the pastor running the school practically starves the girls to death in an effort to help them be frugal self-sacrificing Christians.  After almost half the girls do die when disease breaks out in the school, they are moved to a better building and cared for much better and Jane gets a good education. 
The book then fast forwards to when Jane is 18 and her favorite teacher marries and leaves the school and Jane advertises and gets a job as a governess.
She falls in love with her employer, but there is a mystery in the house, which leads her to leave her true love, almost die, get taken in by strangers, who she later learns are her family and in the end after Jane grows up and matures some and her employer Rochester, who she loves, has had tragedy come into his life, many problems are solved and they marry and live happily ever after.

No comments:

Post a Comment