Audiobook · read by volunteers
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)
Read by Cagirlwithasoutherndrawl, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Kymm Zuckert, Laurie Anne Walden, Kristin LeMoine, Jennifer Stearns, David Barnes, Cori Samuel, Kirsten Ferreri, Sarah Key-DeLyria · 39 chapters · 20 h 36
About the book
Jane Eyre is an orphan with no money, no family to speak of and a strong sense of her own worth. After a harsh childhood and a hard school, she becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets its brooding master, Mr Rochester. The house has its secrets: strange laughter in the night, accidents no one explains, and a growing bond between employer and governess that neither expected.
Charlotte Brontë’s novel is far more than a conventional romance. Its heroine refuses to be diminished by a world that has no obvious place for her, and she insists on independence, honesty and self-respect. In thirty-nine chapters and over twenty hours, this recording brings to life one of the great voices in English fiction, passionate, plain-spoken and unwilling to be silenced.
Introduction
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) grew up in the Yorkshire parsonage at Haworth with her sisters Emily and Anne, who were also writers. Jane Eyre appeared in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell, and it was an immediate success. The book is subtitled An Autobiography, and it is told in the first person by its heroine, which gives the story a feeling of directness and confidence.
The novel follows Jane from a lonely childhood, through the years at Lowood School, to her position as governess at Thornfield and what follows. In the setting of a Victorian world of class and duty, Jane is unusually frank. She insists on being treated as an equal, and she says so. The book contains elements of the Gothic tradition, including the mysterious house and the atmosphere of suspense, but it is rooted in ordinary human feeling. It has been read as a love story, as a story of female independence and as a critique of the social limits placed on women. In more recent decades it has also been the subject of vigorous critical discussion about its treatment of race and empire.
The recording has 39 sections and lasts about twenty and a half hours. It is read by LibriVox volunteers, and listening to several voices gives a distinct colour to the many speakers in the book.
Why listen today? Jane is a heroine whose voice has not aged. She is intelligent, stubborn and warm, and her insistence on dignity feels as fresh as it did in 1847. The book is gripping, moving and at times startling, and it repays a first hearing or the tenth.
Public domain
Charlotte Brontë died in 1855: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text