Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre as Currer Bell and changed the novel
In October 1847 a London firm released a novel billed as an autobiography by an unknown Currer Bell. The real author was Charlotte Brontë, and her orphaned governess narrated her own inner life with such intensity that one critic later called Brontë the first historian of private consciousness.
Smith, Elder and Co. published the book on 19 October 1847, and Harper and Brothers issued the first American edition in New York in January 1848. It came out in three volumes totalling 38 chapters, and the second edition carried a dedication to William Makepeace Thackeray. The story is a coming-of-age tale placed in northern England during the final years of George III.
Jane's childhood is bleak. Orphaned when typhus killed her parents, she lives at Gateshead Hall with the Reeds only because her kindly uncle asked it on his deathbed. After she fights back against her bullying cousin John, her aunt locks her in the red room where the uncle died, and she faints believing she has seen his ghost. Mrs Reed then hands her to Mr Brocklehurst, who runs Lowood, a charity school for poor girls, and warns him that the child lies.
Lowood is cold, hungry and harsh for its 80 pupils. Jane befriends Helen Burns, who accepts punishment with calm philosophy, and the superintendent Miss Temple clears Jane's name after Brocklehurst brands her a liar in front of the school. A typhus outbreak sweeps the place, and Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms. Exposure of the director's cruelty brings reform, and Jane spends eight years at Lowood, the last two of them teaching, before advertising herself as a governess and taking a post at Thornfield Hall.
Critics credit the book with shifting prose fiction toward the moral and spiritual growth of a single narrator seen from the inside. It mixes social criticism with Christian conviction, and its handling of class, sexuality, religion and feminism struck many as ahead of its time. It is often paired with Pride and Prejudice as one of the best-known romances in English.
Source: Jane Eyre
