Titel
De titel van het boek is Jane Eyre. De titel is dan ook makkelijk en kort te verklaren; de naam van de hoofdpersoon en tegelijk ikpersoon van dit boek is namelijk Jane Eyre.

Uittreksel
The parents of Jane Eyre died when she was very young. The poor orphan was left to the care of her aunt Mrs. Reed, a widow with three children, John, Eliza and Georgina. They all hated Jane. Her aunt really treated her like the out-slip of the family and her cousins bullied her. Especially John teased her a lot. Instead of being quiet Jane proved to be a strong-minded girl who stood up for her rights and independence. The only one in the house of Mrs. Reed, Gateshead, who’s a little bit nice to Jane, was the servant Bessie.
When John throws a book at Jane one day, Jane gets hurt. She is very angry and attacks John. John’s sisters warn their mother. She of course blames Jane and locks her up in the ‘Red room’. This is the room where Jane’s uncle died and therefore Jane is afraid of the room. She thinks that the ghost of her uncle is still there. In the room Jane gets ill and depressed. She is very angry with her aunt because she did not listen to Jane. She accuses her aunt and cousins of mistreating her gravely. When the apothecary, Mr. Lloyd, comes he asks Jane if she would like to go to school. Jane tells him she would like it indeed. Mr. Lloyd advises Mrs. Reed to send Jane to school. After a visit of the clergyman Mr. Brocklehurst, the owner of Lowood Orphan Asylum, Jane is send away to this very disciplined girls school with a strict regiment. Jane is now ten years of age.

At Lowood Jane becomes best friends with Helen Burns, a sweet girl. There is only one teacher, Miss Scatcherd, who doesn’t like Helen, and therefore she punishes her harshly, even if Helen didn’t do anything. But Helen accepts the sufferings at Lowood.
One day Mr. Brocklehurst visits the school. He is a very horrible man and he only comes to the school to complain about everything. He tells in front of the whole school that Jane is a liar because she had said things about her aunt -in Mr. Brocklehurst eyes ‘generous lady who brought Jane up as her own daughter-. Jane gets punished for this and she is very embarrassed. After school time she decides to tell Miss Temple, a sweet head teacher, the real story. Miss Temple believes her and writes Mr. Lloyd a letter. The letter she gets back confirms Jane’s story so Miss Temple announces to the whole school that the things Mr. Brocklehurst said are not true.
A couple of months later, in spring, a fever attacks the crowded schoolroom because of little food and the cold. Helen gets sick as well, and dies after Jane had come to see her (for the last time). Now Jane has lost her best friend. After this outbreak of typhus some improvements were made.
During eight years Jane’s life is without change, but she was not terribly unhappy. Because she’s a very clever pupil and the first girl in the first class, she becomes a teacher. In this period Miss Temple gets married and leaves Lowood. It changes Jane’s life there. Miss Temple always had been a friend, teacher and a kind of mother to Jane. So Jane decides to place an advertisement for anyone who is looking for a private teacher. A certain Mrs. Fairfax answers it. She asks Jane to become a governess for a little girl under ten years of age. Just before she wants to leave Lowood Bessie, her servant at Gateshead (the house of Jane’s aunt), visits her. Bessie just wanted to see her because she heard Jane was going to an other part of the country. They talk. Bessie also tells Jane about her uncle, one Jane had never heard of (he was a brother of Jane’s father, and her aunt didn’t want to talk about the (poor) Eyre’s), who wanted to see her, before he left to Madeira.
Jane leaves. When she arrives at Thornfield Hall Mrs. Fairfax receives her gently. She is, in contradistinction to what Jane thought, not the owner of the house but the housekeeper of Thornfield. She tells Jane that Mr. Rochester is the master of the house. He is the guardian of Adela Varens, the little girl who Jane is going to teach.
After Jane has taught the French speaking Adela for the first time, Mrs. Fairfax shows her the house. Suddenly Jane hears a very strange laugh and she asks Mrs. Fairfax from who it could be. She tells Jane it is one of the servants, Grace Poole.
Months passed away, and life at Thornfield Hall developed into a routine and Jane likes it, she feels home for the first time in her life. One day Jane goes out for a walk to the village. On her way she passes a man on a horse. Suddenly the horse slips and the man falls. Jane offers to help but the man says he is all right (although he hurt his ankle) and continues his way. When Jane returns at Thornfield Hall, the man from the accident turns out to be the master of the house, Mr. Rochester. From the beginning Jane feels attracted to Edward Rochester in a way. On his part Mr. Rochester is fascinated by Jane’s clever remarks and keen wit.
One night Jane lies in bed but couldn’t sleep when she hears strange noises and the laughing she heard before. She becomes anxious and goes out of bed to go to Mr. Rochester’s room. There she finds out his room is on fire. By putting the fire out she saves his life. Jane tells him that she suspects Grace Poole for setting the room on fire but he hushes her and tells her not to mention this happening to anybody.
The next day Mr. Rochester suddenly leaves Thornfield to see someone. After two weeks he returns with a couple of friends and acquaintances. One of them is the beautiful Blanche Ingram. Jane notices that Mr. Rochester gives a lot of attention to Miss Ingram and that makes her jealous. She tries to ignore the feeling but she is falling in love with her master.

During the party Mr. Rochester goes away for business. In the time he is away a stranger arrives. The man says he is a friend of Mr. Rochester and has had a very long journey. His name is Mr. Mason and he asks if he could stay till Mr. Rochester has returned. On the same day a gipsy, who is a fortune-teller, visits Thornfield Hall. Jane also lets the women predict her future. The gipsy talks with Jane about personal things and also about Mr. Rochester, and how Jane thinks about him. When the gipsy asks her to leave Jane recognizes the voice and hands of the fortune-teller and it turned out to be Mr. Rochester himself, dressed as a gipsy!
When Jane tells him about the visitor, he seems upset. Mr. Mason will stay a few days. That night Jane hears a terrible scream. Mr. Rochester takes her to a room where Mr. Mason, who is stabbed in his arm with a knife, lays unconscious and bleeding. Mr. Rochester asks Jane to nurse him. While she is dressing the wound she hears snarls and the terrible laugh she heard before in the adjoining room. The next day Mr. Mason is secretly removed from Thornfield.
Not a very long time after this incident the husband of Bessie visits Thornfield. He has bad news for Jane. Mr. John Reed, Jane’s cousin, had died and her aunt, Mrs. Reed, was ill. Mrs. Reed wanted to see Jane. Jane decides to visit her aunt. When she meets her, Mrs. Reed tells Jane that a letter had arrived two years ago, from her uncle John who lived in Madeira. In the letter he had asked Jane to become his heiress. Mrs. Reed didn’t grand Jane this luck so she wrote the man that Jane had died at Lowood. Now Mrs. Reed knows she is going to die she wanted to tell Jane about it. Short after this conversation Mrs. Reed dies. After some things are taken care of, Jane returns to Thornfield.
When she is back at Thornfield Mr. Rochester wants to tell her something. He tells her, while he is watching her intently, that he is going to be married. Jane’s heart breaks, she doesn’t want him to marry Miss. Ingram. But he tells her he is not in love with Miss Ingram. He wants to marry her! First she doesn’t believe him, but then she tells him she accepts his proposal. Jane writes a letter to her uncle John to tell him she is not dead and to ask if she still could become his heiress because she doesn’t want to be totally financially dependant to Mr. Rochester.
Two nights before the wedding Jane wakes up in the middle of the night, after she has had strange dreams, because someone is in her room. First she thinks it is a servant but she soon discovers it is a strange woman. The woman takes Jane’s wedding veil, puts it on, looks in the mirror and than tears it apart. When Jane tells the story to Mr. Rochester, he tells her it must have been half dream, half reality and that the woman must have been Grace Poole.
When the wedding takes place Mr. Mason and a certain Mr. Briggs, a lawyer, suddenly interrupt the ceremony. They claim that Mr. Rochester is already married to Bertha Mason, the sister of Mr. Mason. Bertha is a raving lunatic and kept in isolation at the attic of Thornfield Hall. Sometimes she manages to escape and does weird things. The wedding is cancelled and Mr. Rochester tells the story; his father and brother trapped him into this marriage. His wife turned, from a beautiful woman, into a mad woman. Mr. Rochester hired Grace Poole to keep watch over her.
After this story Mr. Rochester decides to show his wife to Jane, Mr. Mason and Mr. Briggs. When the madwoman sees her husband she attacks him.
Although Jane loves Mr. Rochester as dearly as before, she can’t stay with him because of her moral principles. She leaves Thornfield in the middle of the night. After three days of walking she is worn out and near starvation. Luckily she is taken in and cared of by St. John Rives and his two sisters Mary and Diana. Because Jane doesn’t want them to find out who she really is she tells her name is Jane Elliot. Soon she gets along well with Diana and Mary. St. John Rives is a little more quiet and reserved. St. John offers Jane a job as a teacher on a village school for girls, started by him. She takes it.
One day the Rives family gets a letter that says their uncle John had died. They are not very sad because they had barely known the man. They are also a little disappointed because their uncle leaves al his money to another relation. One night St. John comes to Jane. He tells her he had found out who she really is and that her uncle John Eyre from Madeira is dead and left her his money, twenty thousand pounds, so she is rich now. Finally he tells her that he also is named Eyre, and that they are cousins. Jane is really happy she has a real family now and she decides to split the inherited money in four and to share it with her cousins, whose uncle it was as well.

One day St. John tells Jane he is going to live in India and he asks Jane to marry him. He does not love her in that way but he thinks she would be a good missionary’s wife. Jane is willing to come but not as his wife but as a cousin and good friend, but St. John doesn’t accepts that, he wants her to be his wife. When she almost consents she hears a voice in the night calling: ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!” It is the voice of Mr. Rochester, but he is not there, it is a phantom voice. The next day Jane goes back to Thornfield Hall immediately. When she gets there Thornfield is a ruin, destroyed by fire. She is very afraid Mr. Rochester is dead but someone tells her what happened. Mr. Rochester’s lunatic wife had set the house on fire. Mr. Rochester wanted to save her but she killed herself by jumping off the roof. By this accident he lost his hand and his vision.
He now lives in a country house called Ferndean, thirty miles away. Jane goes to Ferndean immediately and finds a weak and blind Mr. Rochester there. When he hears Jane is with him he is very happy. Soon after that they marry. Mr. Rochester remains blind for the first two years of their marriage, but then, one morning he could see a little and he partially recovers the sight of one eye, which enables him to see his beloved wife and first-born son.