"Jane Eyre" is a famous and influential novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë.
The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family at Marsh's End and Morton, where her cold clergyman-cousin St John Rivers proposes to her; and her reunion with and marriage to her beloved Rochester.
Partly autobiographical, the novel abounds with social criticism. It is a novel considered ahead of its time. In spite of the dark, brooding elements, it has a strong sense of right and wrong, of morality at its core.
