[2] Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.

[3] The novel revolutionised prose fiction, being the first to focus on the moral and spiritual development of its protagonist through an intimate first-person narrative, where actions and events are coloured by a psychological intensity.

[4] The book contains elements of social criticism with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and it is considered by many to be ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the topics of class, sexuality, religion and feminism.

[a] It has five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she gains friends and role models but suffers privations and oppression; her time as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her mysterious employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester; her time in the Moor House, during which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her; and ultimately her reunion with, and marriage to, her beloved Rochester.

One day, as punishment for defending herself against the bullying of her 14-year-old cousin John, the Reeds' only son, Jane is locked in the red room in which her late uncle had died; there she faints from panic after she thinks she has seen his ghost.

Mrs Reed then enlists the aid of the harsh Mr Brocklehurst, the director of Lowood Institution, a charity school for girls, to enroll Jane.

Once they were united he discovered that she was rapidly descending into congenital madness, and so he eventually locked her away in Thornfield, hiring Grace Poole as a nurse to look after her.

After the marriage ceremony is broken off, Mr Rochester asks Jane to go with him to the south of France and live with him as husband and wife, even though they cannot be married.

Jane is tempted but realises that she will lose herself and her integrity if she allows her passion for a married man to consume her and she must stay true to her Christian values and beliefs.

Thinking that the pious and conscientious Jane will make a suitable missionary's wife, St John asks her to marry him and to go with him to India, not out of love, but out of duty.

As Jane's resolve against marriage to St John begins to weaken, she seems to hear Mr Rochester's voice calling her name.

[21] The sequence in which Mr Rochester's wife sets fire to the bed curtains was prepared in an August 1830 homemade publication of Brontë's The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2.

[31] The novel The French Dancer's Bastard, by Emma Tennant, reimagines the back story of Adèle, exploring whether she was Rochester's love child and what her relationship with Jane Eyre is.

"[37] Another critic from the Atlas wrote, "It is full of youthful vigour, of freshness and originality, of nervous diction and concentrated interest ...It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears.

Much of the heart laid bare, and the mind explored; much of greatness in affliction, and littleness in the ascendant; much of trial and temptation, of fortitude and resignation, of sound sense and Christianity—but no tameness.

"[39] The People's Journal compliments the novel's vigour, stating that "the reader never tires, never sleeps: the swell and tide of an affluent existence, an irresistible energy, bears him onward, from first to last.

It is impossible to deny that the author possesses native power in an uncommon degree—showing itself now in rapid headlong recital, now in stern, fierce, daring dashes in portraiture—anon in subtle, startling mental anatomy—here in a grand illusion, there in an original metaphor—again in a wild gush of genuine poetry.

"[40] American publication The Nineteenth Century defended the novel against accusations of immorality, describing it as "a work which has produced a decided sensation in this country and in England... Jane Eyre has made its mark upon the age, and even palsied the talons of mercenary criticism.

Yes, critics hired to abuse or panegyrize, at so much per line, have felt a throb of human feeling pervade their veins, at the perusal of Jane Eyre.

"[45] The Gothic genre uses a combination of supernatural features, intense emotions, and a blend of reality and fantasy to create a dark, mysterious atmosphere and experience for characters and readers.

The barriers Jane experiences, whether related to social class, societal and cultural norms, Bertha Mason, or Rochester, have antagonistic elements.

[53] In the text, Jane's childhood beliefs about religion, as seen in her interactions with Mr. Brocklehurt, shift considerably in comparison to her friendship with Helen in Lowood as a child and in her marital and missionary rejection of St. John as an adult woman.

Mr Rochester claims to have been forced to take on a "mad" Creole wife, a woman who grew up in the West Indies, and who is thought to be of mixed-race descent.

Both women go through acts of suppression on behalf of the men in their lives, yet Jane is looked at with favour because of her supposed "beauty" that can be found in the colour of her skin.

[59] Jean Rhys intended her critically acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea as an account of the woman whom Rochester married and kept in his attic.

Rhys explores themes of dominance and dependence, especially in marriage, depicting the mutually painful relationship between a privileged English man and a Creole woman from Dominica made powerless on being duped and coerced by him and others.

The idea of the equality of men and women emerged more strongly in the Victorian period in Britain, after works by earlier writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft.

R. B. Martin described Jane Eyre as the first major feminist novel, "although there is not a hint in the book of any desire for political, legal, educational, or even intellectual equality between the sexes."

[60][61]The novel "acted as a catalyst" to feminist criticism with the publication by S. Gilbert and S. Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), the title of which alludes to Rochester's wife.

[62] The Brontës' fictions were cited by feminist critic Ellen Moers as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority, and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction.