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Jun 09, 2017m0mmyl00 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Young Jane was an orphan, taken in very reluctantly and resentfully by her aunt. She was excluded from normal family life and insulted and degraded routinely. The made her sad, but not cowed; she was well aware of the injustice visited on her. She was fortunately sent to a boarding school to 1) train her to accept her dreary lot in life and 2) get her out of her aunt's hair. But the teachers were kind and saw to it that her willingness to study was rewarded. On completing her studies, she applied for and won a job as governess for a young French girl named Adele at Thornhill Manor. Adele's parentage was questionable, but the master of the house was rarely home, so she fell almost totally under Jane's capable and compassionate care. When the master of the house, Edward Rochester did return, he and Jane met accidentally away from the house; he was riding his horse toward the house and she was out for a walk. He was thrown and she tended him, as per her character, capably and compassionately. She impressed him deeply. From that day, his interest in her grew, but they remained separated because of the difference in their social status. Ultimately Rochester professed his love for her, and she for him. They planned to marry, but at their wedding, when the priest asked if anyone objected to their marriage, an anonymous man spoke up and stated that Rochester was already married...to a mad woman who was imprisoned in a tower room at Thornhill Manor. Jane, who wholeheartedly put her faith in God, could not marry him under those circumstances despite Rochester's begging her to be his wife. She left that night without saying goodbye and wandered hungry and exhausted until she ended up, desperate, on the doorstep of two sisters and their brother. They took her in and nursed her back to health, and they all became very attached to each other so she continued to live with them when her strength returned. Meanwhile, her mother's brother, whom she had never met, died and left her an inheritance; he left her cousins -- his other two nieces and his nephew -- nothing. She learned that the cousins were the strangers that took her in. She saw that as unfair, so she chose to divide the inheritance equally among them. Then she learned that Thornhill Manor had burned; Rochester's mad wife had set it afire and then jumped from the tower to her death. She hurried there to look in on Rochester, as she had never stopped loving her. They reunited, he with a missing limb and eyes and her not caring that he was damaged, and lived happily ever after. The language was lush, the story was complex, the good person won, the not good people were transformed to good people. What more could a reader want?