Just Finished Reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë is one of three English sisters...the others are Emily and Anne...who wrote fiction in the early-to-mid 1800s.  I already read Emily's Wuthering Heights...here is a link to my 2014 article about it [link].  Jane Eyre was written in the first person from the vantage point of the title protagonist, an orphaned girl, growing up and encountering romance and moral/ethical quandaries in the setting of rural England around the beginning of the nineteenth century, complete with a rigid, entrenched class-based society.  A very sympathetic character, Jane has to endure unfair treatment in childhood at the home of her aunt, who heaps abuse on her while spoiling her own three children.  Eventually, Jane is sent to Lowood, a charity school primarily for poor orphaned girls.  There she grows into a young woman and then sets out to earn her own independent living.  She is hired as a little girl's governess and encounters the estate's enigmatic owner Mr. Rochester, along with an ongoing dark secret hidden in the third story of the mansion.  Will Jane find romance, and what or who is that mystery that from time to time manifests itself in violence?  And at this point, as is usually the case when I'm discussing what I just read, here is where I tell you, the reader, to just go find out the rest for yourself...I'm not gonna spoil the book!

I have a special affinity for stories written in the first person, and Jane Eyre is a very good story.  It may be hard to find a more likable character than the persevering, sensitive, generous, compassionate, intelligent...and above all, assertive Jane.  The irony of this tale, which for its time was very pro-women, is that the author felt the need to publish it under a man's pseudonym, Currer Bell, instead of her own name, due to the perceived prejudicial attitudes then about women writers.  Of course, Charlotte Brontë is now a great name in English literature, and Jane Eyre is the primary reason.  I felt, as I was reading it, that Brontë was making a comparison study in religion and ethics, and how structured, organized religion often failed to live up to the compassion and morality that it sought to impose on the general population, while "true religion", as Jane Eyre herself practiced it, was very personal and beautiful.  I liked that about this book, which I strongly encourage you to read...