Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë tells the story of an orphaned governess who refuses to surrender her dignity or her conscience, even as she falls for her brooding employer Mr Rochester and uncovers the secret locked in his attic. Narrated in Jane’s own fierce, first-person voice, the novel was radical for insisting a plain, poor woman had as much soul and moral worth as anyone above her. It endures as one of the great accounts of a woman’s fight for independence and love on her own terms.