Jane Eyre recap

Orphaned Jane Eyre is raised by a cruel aunt, then sent to the harsh Lowood school, where she loses her friend Helen Burns but grows into a self-possessed young woman. Taking a post as governess at Thornfield Hall, she falls in love with its brooding master, Mr Rochester, and he with her, and he proposes. Their wedding is halted by the revelation that Rochester already has a wife: Bertha Mason, a madwoman secretly imprisoned in the house and the cause of its strange terrors. Refusing to be his mistress, Jane flees penniless and is rescued by the Rivers siblings, who prove to be her cousins; she inherits a fortune from an uncle and shares it with them. Resisting a loveless missionary marriage urged by St John Rivers, she seems to hear Rochester call to her and returns to find Thornfield burned, Bertha dead, and Rochester blinded and maimed. Jane marries him, now his equal, and they find lasting happiness.

Jane Eyre is a plain, spirited orphan of ten, raised grudgingly at Gateshead Hall by her aunt Mrs Reed, who despises her and favors her own three children. Bullied by her cousin John and blamed for defending herself, Jane is locked alone in the red-room, the chamber where her uncle died, and is so terrified that she falls ill. Unable to bear the injustice quietly, she at last confronts her aunt with her resentment. Mrs Reed, eager to be rid of her, arranges for Jane to be sent away to Lowood, a charity school run by the harsh clergyman Mr Brocklehurst, whom she warns that the child is a liar. Jane leaves Gateshead friendless but relieved to escape it.

At Lowood, Jane endures cold, hunger, and Brocklehurst's cruel, hypocritical discipline, but finds her first friends: the gentle, dignified superintendent Miss Temple, and a patient, deeply religious older girl, Helen Burns, who teaches her to meet wrong with forgiveness. When Brocklehurst publicly brands Jane a liar, Miss Temple clears her name. A typhus epidemic then sweeps the overcrowded school and many girls die; Helen, already consumed by illness, dies in Jane's arms. The scandal brings reforms to Lowood. Jane remains there eight years, six as a pupil and two as a teacher, until Miss Temple marries and leaves. Restless for a wider life, Jane advertises and is engaged as a governess.

Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall, warmly received by the kindly housekeeper Mrs Fairfax, and begins teaching a lively little French girl, Adele, the ward of the estate's often-absent master. She meets that master, Mr Rochester, when his horse throws him on an icy lane. Abrupt, dark, and moody, Rochester is intrigued by Jane's honesty and draws her into searching conversations, and Jane finds herself increasingly attached to him. Strange things disturb the house: eerie laughter in the night, and a fire set in Rochester's bed, from which Jane saves him. Suspicion falls on a servant, Grace Poole, yet Rochester keeps her on and will not explain, leaving Jane uneasy about the secrets of Thornfield.

Rochester fills Thornfield with fashionable guests, among them the beautiful, scornful Blanche Ingram, whom he seems to be courting, to Jane's quiet pain. During the visit a stranger, Mr Mason, arrives from the West Indies and is mysteriously wounded in the night by something upstairs; Rochester swears Jane to secrecy as he tends him. Jane is then called back to Gateshead, where the dying Mrs Reed at last confesses that three years earlier she hid a letter from Jane's uncle in Madeira, who wished to make Jane his heir. Mrs Reed dies unreconciled. Jane returns to Thornfield, and Rochester, casting off the pretense with Blanche, declares that he loves Jane and asks her to marry him. Astonished and joyful, she accepts.

As the wedding nears, Jane is troubled by omens, and a strange figure enters her room at night and tears her bridal veil. On the wedding morning the ceremony is stopped: a lawyer and Mr Mason declare that Rochester already has a living wife. Rochester admits it and takes the party up to the hidden upper room, where his wife, Bertha Mason, is kept, a violent madwoman who has been the true cause of the fires and the attack. Rochester explains that he was tricked into marrying her for money in Jamaica before her insanity showed, and begs Jane to live with him abroad regardless. Torn between love and conscience, Jane refuses to become his mistress and, in the night, secretly flees Thornfield with almost nothing.

Jane wanders the moors penniless and starving until she collapses at the door of Moor House and is taken in by the clergyman St John Rivers and his sisters, Diana and Mary, who nurse her back to health. Concealing her past, she takes a post as mistress of a village school. St John, cold and ambitious, is preparing to leave as a missionary. He then discovers Jane's true identity and startling news: her uncle in Madeira has died and left her a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, and the Rivers siblings are in fact her own cousins. Overjoyed to have a family at last, Jane insists on dividing the inheritance equally among the four of them.

St John, admiring Jane's usefulness and self-command, presses her to marry him and go with him to India as a missionary's wife, though he offers duty rather than love. Jane is willing to accompany him as a fellow worker but refuses to marry a man who does not love her, and St John coldly persists until he nearly wears down her resistance. At the moment she is about to yield, Jane seems to hear Rochester's voice calling her name across the distance. Shaken and certain, she breaks free of St John and resolves to discover what has become of Rochester.

Jane returns to find Thornfield a burned ruin. She learns that Bertha set the house ablaze and threw herself from the roof to her death, and that Rochester, trying to save the servants and his wife, was blinded and lost a hand. Now free but broken, he lives in seclusion at Ferndean. Jane goes to him, and the two are reunited; she chooses to stay as his wife, and they marry as equals, she now independent and he humbled and dependent on her. In time Rochester recovers enough sight in one eye to see their first child. The couple live happily; Diana and Mary marry well, and St John goes to India, where he labors devotedly and, Jane learns, is nearing death, content in his faith.

Jane returns to Thornfield to find it destroyed by fire. Bertha Mason, Rochester's mad wife, set the blaze and died leaping from the roof; Rochester, trying to save her and the servants, was left blind and with the loss of a hand. Freed from his first marriage by Bertha's death and humbled by his injuries, he lives withdrawn at Ferndean. Jane, now independent through her inheritance, seeks him out, and the two are reunited. She marries him freely and as an equal, no longer the dependent governess but a wife with means of her own. Their marriage is happy; Rochester in time regains partial sight in one eye, enough to see the birth of their son. The Rivers sisters, Diana and Mary, make good marriages and stay close to Jane, while St John Rivers goes as a missionary to India, where he serves with unbending devotion and, as the book closes, is dying in the faith he lived for.