Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a coming of age story that follows the experiences of it's eponymous heroine, a young woman fresh out of an orphanage, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall. The story is broken into five segments: 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. Throughout these sections, it provides perspectives on a number of important social issues and ideas, many of which are critical of the status quo. It's also unique for the time period in that by being the first to focus on it's protagonist's moral and spiritual development through an intimate first-person narrative