The history of the Brontë family, with its record of illness, alcoholism, unrequited loves and early deaths, is as compelling as any of the books written by the Brontë sisters. All three sisters published their first novels in 1847. Anne’s story was Agnes Grey and >> Emily’s Wuthering Heights. 

Charlotte, the eldest of the three, made her debut with Jane Eyre, in which a young governess falls in love with her brooding employer but cannot marry him because of the dark secrets from his past that still haunt him.

 The narrative follows its eponymous heroine from her orphaned childhood and her miserable experience of institutional life at Lowood Asylum, alleviated only briefly by her doomed friendship with the gentle Helen Burns, to her young adulthood as a governess. Despatched to Thornfield Hall to tutor the ward of its master, Edward Rochester, Jane finds herself drawn to her enigmatic employer and he is attracted by her quiet but determined character. 

A marriage is all set to take place when word reaches Jane that Rochester is married already. Indeed his wife, a violent lunatic, is incarcerated in the attic of Thornfield Hall itself. The wedding, of course, is canceled and the would-be bride and groom have to go their separate ways. Reduced to near destitution, Jane is finally taken in by the virtuous and compassionate St Rivers family.

 Only after many more twists and turns of fate, some more improbable than others, are she and Rochester brought together again and the obstacles that stand in the way of their love removed.

 Charlotte Brontë’s novel, one of the most famous of the 19th century, transcends the romantic melodrama and often absurd coincidences of its plot to show readers the slow emotional progress of its heroine and the gradual maturing of her personality under pressure.

Film versions:

The Professor; Shirley Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca; >> George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (a novel which recreates the past life of the first Mrs Rochester, the madwoman in the attic)