Jane Eyre (Illustrated)

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.

all english classics seemingly run the same boring plot. Eyre does nothing different.