Jane Eyre Penguin Black Classics

Published on 16 October 1847, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre was originally titled Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. The novel earned its author the distinction of being ‘the first historian of the private consciousness’. Jane Eyre, an orphan, living with her cruel aunt is punished for bullying her cousin and imprisoned in a ‘red room’. This is the same room where Jane’s uncle had died. Locked in, a young Jane is haunted by her uncle’s screams. Memories of an oppressive upbringing follow her like a shadow even at Lowood Charity School where she finds herself at the mercy of an abusive headmaster. As a governess at Thornfield Hall, Jane falls in love with her mysterious Byronic employer, Edward Rochester. Soon, she discovers a bitter truth about him and his ‘mad’ wife Bertha Mason. After a series of crests and troughs when Jane is ready to embark on yet another unpredictable journey, she is compelled to return to the man she had once abandoned.