Jane Eyre [Blackstone Edition] recap

Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up abused by the Reed family and is sent to harsh Lowood School, where her friend Helen Burns dies but Jane gains an education. As governess at Thornfield Hall, she falls in love with its troubled master, Edward Rochester, and accepts his proposal. Their wedding is stopped by the revelation that Rochester already has a living wife, Bertha Mason, confined at Thornfield because of severe mental illness. Refusing to become his mistress, Jane leaves and nearly starves before the Rivers siblings rescue her. She discovers they are her cousins and shares a large inheritance with them. Their clergyman brother St. John asks Jane to marry him and join his missionary work in India, but she refuses a loveless union and returns to Rochester. Bertha has burned Thornfield and died; Rochester was blinded and maimed saving others. Jane, now independent, marries him at Ferndean. His sight partly returns, they have a son, and Jane records a happy marriage of equals.

Ten-year-old Jane Eyre is an orphan living at Gateshead with her wealthy aunt Mrs Reed and the Reed children. Treated as an unwanted dependent, Jane is bullied by her cousin John and punished for resisting him by being locked in the red-room where her uncle died. Terror there leaves her ill. The apothecary Mr Lloyd recognizes her misery and suggests school. Jane finally tells Mrs Reed exactly how cruelly she has been treated, a declaration that brings relief even though it cannot reconcile them. The clergyman Mr Brocklehurst arranges to admit Jane to Lowood Institution. Before she leaves, Mrs Reed tells him that Jane is deceitful and asks that the school suppress her independent nature. Jane departs Gateshead expecting hardship but also hoping for a life beyond the Reed household.

Lowood proves cold, hungry, and strictly disciplined. Jane befriends Helen Burns, an intelligent older girl whose patience and religious forgiveness challenge Jane's anger, and she finds a humane protector in the superintendent Miss Temple. Brocklehurst publicly brands Jane a liar, but Miss Temple investigates her history and clears her name. A typhus epidemic exposes the school's neglect and leads to reforms. Helen, already dying of tuberculosis, passes away with Jane beside her. Jane remains at Lowood for eight years, first as a pupil and then as a teacher. When Miss Temple marries and leaves, Jane realizes how narrow her world has become. She advertises for a governess position and accepts an offer to teach a child at Thornfield Hall.

At Thornfield, Jane is welcomed by housekeeper Mrs Fairfax and begins teaching Adèle Varens, the French ward of the absent owner, Edward Rochester. Jane first meets Rochester without recognizing him when his horse slips on an icy road. After his return he questions her with abrupt curiosity, and an unusual frankness grows between them. Rochester explains that Adèle may be the daughter of a former French mistress, though he doubts he is her father. Thornfield also contains a mystery: Jane hears strange laughter attributed to servant Grace Poole. One night she finds Rochester's bed curtains burning and wakes him in time to save his life. He insists on secrecy and again directs suspicion toward Grace, while his gratitude and manner deepen Jane's attachment to him.

Rochester fills Thornfield with fashionable guests, among them the beautiful Blanche Ingram, and appears to encourage the expectation that he will marry her. Jane believes her own love hopeless because she is poor, plain, and employed in his house. Rochester disguises himself as a fortune-teller to question the guests and test Jane's feelings. Richard Mason arrives from the West Indies, alarming Rochester. During the night Mason is attacked in a locked upper room. Rochester secretly asks Jane to tend the wounded man without allowing them to speak, then sends for a surgeon and removes Mason before morning. He still gives Jane no full explanation, leaving Grace Poole in place despite the apparent danger and asking Jane to trust him while the house's secret grows more threatening.

Jane returns to Gateshead after Mrs Reed suffers a stroke. Her aunt admits that she concealed a letter from Jane's uncle John Eyre, who had wanted to adopt her, and dies without accepting Jane's attempt at reconciliation. Back at Thornfield, Rochester makes Jane believe he will marry Blanche and send her away, then declares that he loves Jane and proposes. She accepts. Uneasy signs attend the engagement, including a chestnut tree split by lightning and the destruction of Jane's wedding veil by a figure in her room. At the wedding, a solicitor and Richard Mason reveal that Rochester is already married. He takes the party to Thornfield's upper floor and shows them Bertha Mason, his severely mentally ill wife, confined under Grace Poole's supervision. Rochester explains the concealed marriage and asks Jane to live with him abroad despite it. Jane loves him but refuses to abandon her moral independence. She leaves Thornfield alone and with little money.

Jane exhausts her money during travel, wanders hungry on the moors, and is turned away from houses until she collapses near Moor House. Diana and Mary Rivers persuade their reserved clergyman brother St. John to admit her. Using the name Jane Elliott and withholding her past, Jane recovers among the siblings and their servant Hannah. St. John finds her work as mistress of a small village school at Morton. Though the position is humble and initially lonely, Jane values the independence and gradually takes satisfaction in teaching her pupils. She observes that St. John and the wealthy Rosamond Oliver love one another, but his severe sense of vocation prevents him from choosing a domestic life that might interfere with his ambition to become a missionary.

St. John discovers Jane's true identity while tracing an inheritance left by her uncle John Eyre. Jane has inherited twenty thousand pounds, and she also learns that Diana, Mary, and St. John are her cousins. Delighted to have a family, she divides the money equally among all four of them. St. John prepares for missionary work in India and recruits Jane to study Hindustani and assist his plans. He asks her to marry him, not from romantic love but because he believes she would be an effective missionary's wife. Jane is willing to work beside him as a sister but knows that marriage without affection would destroy her inwardly. Under sustained religious pressure she almost consents. At the decisive moment, she seems to hear Rochester calling her name across a great distance. She refuses St. John and resolves to learn what has happened at Thornfield.

Jane returns to Thornfield and finds it a burned ruin. She learns that Bertha Mason set the house on fire and then died after climbing to the roof and jumping. Rochester got the servants out but was injured when the building collapsed, losing one hand and his sight. Jane finds him living quietly at Ferndean and reveals that she is now financially independent. Their reunion removes the old imbalance between them: Rochester is legally free, and Jane can choose marriage without becoming his dependent or betraying her conscience. They marry and build a secluded but deeply companionable life. Rochester later regains enough vision in one eye to see their first child. Jane also records that Adèle improves under kinder schooling, Diana and Mary marry, and St. John continues his missionary work in India. After ten years of marriage Jane presents herself and Rochester as equals, while St. John's final letter shows him approaching death with his religious purpose unchanged.

Jane returns to find Thornfield burned and abandoned. Bertha Mason started the fire and died after jumping from the roof; Rochester saved the servants but lost a hand and his sight in the collapse. Jane finds him living in seclusion at Ferndean. Now financially independent and free to choose without becoming his dependent or violating her conscience, she tells him that she has returned to stay. They marry quietly. Jane describes ten years of a companionate marriage in which she serves as Rochester's eyes and is fully at home with him; he later recovers enough sight in one eye to see their firstborn son. Diana and Mary Rivers also marry happily. Adèle is moved from a harsh school and grows into a pleasing young woman under Jane's care. St. John remains an unmarried missionary in India, physically failing but unwavering in his vocation, and his final letter anticipates his approaching death.