Oh how I loved Jane Eyre🥰  I went into this book not knowing what it was about at all and was pleasantly surprised to find so much depth, both in character and plot. The language is beautiful and complex, meant to be absorbed rather than simply read. 

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Jane Eyre is often tragic and occasionally humorous. It contains elements of a gothic mystery and social commentary about Victorian England’s class system, sexism, and the treatment of mental illness. It also has a heavy focus on, not religion per se, but morality as it relates to biblical scripture.  More than anything else though, it is a love story. 

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It is, imo, the best kind of classic love story. It’s the kind that keeps you on edge wondering ‘will they or won’t they’, the kind that makes you want to shake both parties involved to say “No, don’t do that! Do this instead.”, and the kind that makes you clasp your chest (or your pearls😉) and say “oh my heart” when declarations are made. Mr. Rochester is so perfectly flawed, he gives Mr. Darcy a run for my favorite classic gentleman and Jane herself is feminist goals for her time🙌

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If you haven’t read this classic, I highly recommend it. My only *tiny* criticism is that it does get slow in a couple parts, but it’s still an easy five stars for me. Jane Eyre will still stand with Pride and Prejudice as one of my favorite classics❤️

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There are several quotable lines in this book, most credited to Jane herself…

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

“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.”

but my personal favorite is from Mr. Rochester.

“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.”