简•爱

I loved Jane's story all the way until the bittersweet end. To look at this story at face value would have it seem almost a romance novel. But it is so much more than that. Jane is a heroine who goes through life braving every horrible thing that may come her way, through it all she never loses her firm grasp in God, as well as in herself. I was very sad when I got to the last page. I wasn't ready to part with Jane and her self respect, her honest care and love for others. Jane Eyre became so real to me that I am at a loss for words. This book has been a wonderful read, I hope that other stories may turn out to touch my heart just as much as this one did.

I am listening to BBC radio dramatization with Sophie Thompson andCiaran Hinds.

The novel is a bildungsroman which follows the progress of its eponymous character, and examines her mental and moral maturity from infancy to adulthood. It focuses on Jane's hardships as a governess, and as a woman from the working class. Thus both the question of women's circumstances and that of class clash are alluded to in the plot by means of the heroine's relations with Rochester, her employer and later on suitor and husband. The novel dwells on the grim realities of the educational system and social injustice; how poor children were exposed to dire circumstances in cheap boarding schools, and how wealth and rank were the only requirements needed in polite society. Thus, in addition to dealing with Jane's process of maturity, the novel is also one of the state of England during the Victorian age; undertaking the task of illuminating those dark recesses which only daring novelists like Dickens had the valor to speak of.