Jane Eyre
CHARLOTTE BRONTë, read by THANDIE NEWTON
Jane Eyre is a penniless orphan who becomes a governess and falls for her employer, the brooding Mr Rochester. Discovering he has a lunatic wife, she flees and only submits to marrying him after the wife’s dramatic death.
Despite the familiarity of the story, the novel is problematic for twenty-first-century readers. Why is Helen Burns, Jane’s best friend at charity school, such a prig? Why, more importantly, does Jane allow herself to be bullied by the men who want her? Rochester is lordly and often cruel. The oddly-named religious fanatic, St John, tries to pressurise Jane into a loveless marriage so he will have an assistant in his missionary work.
