Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte

This is the second time I've read this book. This reading surprised me since I didn't realize how much it was a book about violence when I read it as a teenager. There is violence in Jane's childhood, Mr. Rochester, his wife Bertha, and her cousin St John. It seems like Jane and Mr. Rochester can only be equals once he feels inferior to her. The roles reverse where she picks on him. The book follows Jane through her rough life. Her parents die when she is an infant and her mother's brother vows to raise her as his own, but then he dies and makes his wife promise to care for Jane as if she were her own child. Jane grows up in a sad household where no one shows her love. Finally, at the suggestion of a doctor, Jane is sent off to school where she gets along quite well. Many girls die of tuberculosis, but she survives and eventually teaches at the school. Needing a change she advertises as a governess and is taken into a house where an orphaned girl is cared for by a bachelor who is rarely home. Jane ends up falling in love with the guardian "Mr. Rochester" who is engaged to someone else of his standing. This flirting goes on for a while, and then he finally admits he loves her and they decide to get married. When they are at the church she finds out he already has a wife, the crazy woman living in the house. She goes off to find work at another place and wanders aimlessly for a while. Quite by chance she ends up with her cousins and learns an Uncle left her everything from his estate when he died. She ends up sharing it with her cousins and starts a school. Her male cousin wants her to marry him and do missionary work with him, but she refuses because she doesn't love him. Right when she is about to give in she hears Rochester's voice. She goes back to him to find all she finds is a burnt up estate. From rumors in town she finds Rochester at another of his houses, blind and missing a hand. They get married and he recovers a little of his site, enough to see his first born son.