???Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!??? From a tragic childhood when she is abused physically and emotionally by her inhuman Aunt Reed to a youth when she falls in love with Edward Rochester???her Byronic employer at Thornfield where she works as a governess???only to learn on their wedding day about his lunatic wife, the passionate and principled Jane Eyre endures many a hardships and oppressions. And after she leaves Thornfield, reduced to destitution, the Rivers family becomes her benefactor. What happens when St. John Rivers, her cold clergyman-cousin, proposes to her? Will she accept his proposal or return to Rochester? Addressed to ???the reader,??? Charlotte Bront?????s Jane Eyre became a sensation shortly after its publication.