For a classic, Jane Eyre is an easy read. The dialogues are simple and understandable, but still wonderfully beautiful. But despite its simplicity, Jane Eyre, never lost its form in being a “classic”.

Jane Eyre, is written in autobiography form. Jane Eyre narrates vital points of her life, starting from her childhood, up to her adulthood.

The major characters are hideously described.

Despite Jane Eyre being described as simple and plain looking while, Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester described as a man with prominent nostrils(the description actually reminds me of a toro/bull) and this is hardly a romantic compliment:

”You are dumb, Miss Eyre.”

under all their physical hideousness and insulting comment about being dumb, lies a stunning and striking love story.

But what do these lovers have in common? Aside from their lacking of pleasant physical characteristics, there is almost nothing that connects them. Jane is as poor as one could be, while Mr. Rochester is overly rich. Jane is a plain governess, while Mr. Rochester owns lands. Jane is eighteen and Mr. Rochester is forty. My list could go on and on, just to point how different these two lovers are and on how they would not suit, but what is it that connects them? It is pure and undiluted love.

Spoilers ahead. Continue at your own peril.The story starts with Jane narrating her childhood. She has lost both her parents at an early age. She is forced to live under the cruel hand of her aunt, Mrs. Reed. But aside from Mrs. Reed, she also has to bear the brutal treatment brought about by her three cousins, namely, John, Eliza and Georgiana. But at one point, Jane decides to step up and strike back at her cousin John. Mrs. Reed then punishes her and sends her to the “red room” where the deceased Mr. Reed used to stay. She then sees a ghost and screams desperately for help. But it is thought that it was Jane’s strategy to escape punishment and she was left there alone. Seeing a ghost is actually very frightful, so Jane gets terribly sick. Mrs. Reed decides to dispose of Jane and send her to an orphan school called Lowood. Jane struggles to fit in at first, but ends up actually spending eight years of her life at Lowood, six years as a student and two as a teacher.

Jane then puts up an ad as a governess. Alice Fairfax, housekeeper at Thornfield Hall, answers her ad, and Jane ends up as governess to a child named Adele Varens, Mr. Rochester’s ward.

Jane has stayed at Thornfield for quite a long time without having met the owner of the house. One time, Jane decides to go for a walk. She stumbles upon a man needing her help. Of course she helps the man. And without her knowing, she finally meets Mr. Rochester for the first time.

At some point in the book, these two fall in love. Jane Eyre admits throughout her narration that she has fallen in love, wherein with Mr. Rochester, there are subtle hints. There is admission is the form as below:

"Because, I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me."

But after a cat and mouse like chase and after Mr. Rochester’s employing certain strategy, which is to make jealousy an ally (he hints that he has desires to marry a certain Blanche Ingram, but it was actually a ploy), we come to a point where these two finally express how much they mean to each other and this encounter ends with a proposal.

But alas! Do not celebrate yet!

On the wedding day, someone objects to the union. Just before the vows of matrimony, a solicitor arrives and divulges that our Mr. Rochester is married!

This makes him sound like a complete bastard. Well, he sort of is. But we couldn’t blame the poor man. His wife, Bertha Mason is mad.

But our heroine, Jane Eyre is strong. Their love is pure. So instead of ending up as Mr. Rochester’s mistress, she flees Thornfield Hall and searches for life without him. She becomes a teacher at a province, manages to secure an inheritance and gains a family in the form of the Rivers siblings.

Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble inscribed.

But of course, this Jane and Mr. Rochester’s love was fated to happen.

Jane, after receiving a marriage proposal from St. John Rivers, decides to search for Mr. Rochester and learn what has happened to him after her fleeing. She sees Thornfield, or rather what’s left of it after a fire. She inquires at the hotel and learns that Mr. Rochester has lost sight and has lost a hand. But still, she runs to him.

…if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I DO love you. You would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.

Despite the added imperfections of Mr. Rochester’s appearance and the burden of having to take care of him, Jane Eyre still loves him and accepts him with open arms. But of course, Mr. Rochester is hesitant.

"I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard," he remarked ere long. "And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?"

"You are no ruin, sir — no lightning-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop."

As I said Jane Eyre is a strong woman. She handled strife and whether it was unbearable, she managed it. And she can handle Mr. Rochester.

"Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life — if ever I thought a good thought — if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer — if ever I wished a righteous wish, — I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth."

Jane Eyre deserves her happy ending. Thank goodness she got it in the end. :)