[1] This 1973 four-hour literary version was originally broadcast as a five-part BBC television drama serial.

[3] Ten-year-old Jane Eyre is an orphan living at Gateshead Hall with her aunt by marriage, Mrs. Reed, and her children.

Eventually Jane is sent to Lowood Institution, where Mr. Brocklehurst embezzles funds for food and clothing and children are underfed.

Conditions improve somewhat after the doctor blames Brocklehurst for poor conditions—the lack of food, wretched water, scant clothing—causing the students’ illness.

Applying for a position at Thornfield, she is hired by housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax as governess to Adele Varens, Mr. Edward Rochester’s ward, the daughter of his former French paramour.

Over two evenings, Rochester questions Jane pointedly to learn about her upbringing at Lowood, ability at the piano, conversational skill, and spirited character.

At the evening's soiree, Jane sees the beautiful but haughty Blanche Ingram flatter and flirt with Rochester.

Mrs. Reed informs Jane that her uncle in Madeira, John Eyre, sent a letter 3 years before inquiring about her.

Hoping to bring some small fortune to Rochester upon her marriage, Jane writes a letter to her uncle in Madeira.

At the wedding ceremony, Mason appears, denouncing the intended marriage and announcing that Rochester has a living wife, his sister.

Rochester takes the officiants to the attic to see his wife, the former Bertha Mason, of Spanish Town, Jamaica, daughter of three insane generations, who he was tricked by the two families to marry for her fortune when he was a young man.

When his father and elder brother died, Rochester shut up his insane wife at Thornfield, keeping her a secret, with Grace Poole to care for her.

Deeming her intelligent, hard-working, and fit to be his assistant in missionary work in India, Rivers offers to marry her.

Jane finds Thornfield a ruin, destroyed in a devastating fire set by Bertha Rochester, who subsequently flung herself from the battlements to the ground.

Henry Mitchell in a 21 July 1982 review for The Washington Post noted of the mini-series that "At its best, it sounds like Jane Austen through a glass darkly and that is very good indeed.

Shepard offers high praise of the cast, stating that, "as its heroine, Sorcha Cusack makes an uncommonly strong, yet reserved, Jane.

Michael Jayston is craggily handsome and strong and more theatrical in his portrayal of Rochester, the imperious, troubled master whose service she enters and whose heart she captures.