108 Fun Facts About Jane Eyre

Under what pen name was Jane Eyre first published?

Currer Bell: Charlotte later explained that the sisters chose ambiguous names because 'authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice'.

What lie does Jane's dying aunt confess she once told Jane's rich uncle?

That Jane was dead: her uncle had written asking to adopt Jane and make her his heir, but her spiteful aunt kept the letter from her.

Which London firm first published Jane Eyre?

Smith, Elder & Co.: in 1848 Charlotte and Anne travelled to its London office to prove to their publisher that they were two different authors.

What subtitle did Jane Eyre carry on its original title page?

An Autobiography: the book's success led the public to credit its author with other novels too, so the third edition carried a note denying them.

Which word completes Jane Eyre's opening line, 'There was no possibility of taking a ___ that day'?

Walk: with cold rain keeping the family indoors, ten-year-old Jane hides behind the curtains of a window seat to read.

What is the name of the house where Jane spends her unhappy childhood with her aunt and cousins?

Gateshead Hall: Jane's dying uncle made his wife promise to raise the orphan as one of her own children, a promise his widow resents.

What is the surname of the aunt and cousins Jane lives with as a child?

Reed: cousin John drinks and gambles himself into ruin and is said to have killed himself, news that brings on his mother's fatal stroke.

Jane's parents died of which disease?

Typhus: her clergyman father caught it while visiting the poor of a manufacturing town, her mother caught it from him, and both died.

As punishment for fighting back against the bullying John, where is Jane locked?

The red room: her uncle had died in it, and when a strange gleam crosses the wall she believes his ghost has come and faints in terror.

Which kindly apothecary suggests that Jane should be sent away to school?

Mr Lloyd: when the school's superintendent writes to him, his reply backs up Jane's account and clears her of the charge of lying.

What is the name of the charity school for girls that Jane is sent to?

Lowood: its fees of fifteen pounds a year did not cover board and teaching, so subscribers paid the rest and the girls were called 'charity children'.

Who is the harsh clergyman who runs Jane's school and brands her a liar in front of the pupils?

Mr Brocklehurst: he orders a girl's naturally curly hair cut off as vanity, just as his own wife and daughters sweep in dressed in velvet, silk and furs.

Which older girl becomes Jane's best friend at school and teaches her not to bear grudges?

Helen Burns: when a teacher makes her wear the word 'Slattern' on her forehead all day, Jane tears it off and thrusts it into the fire.

Jane's school friend dies in her arms of which illness?

Consumption: she dies while an epidemic sweeps the school, and the outcry over the deaths brings in benefactors who rebuild it and rein in its director.

Who is the caring superintendent of the school who publicly clears Jane's name?

Miss Temple: after hearing Jane's side, she has her and her friend to tea in her room and cuts them slices of a seed-cake from a locked drawer.

At Jane's charity school, what punishment follows when she drops her slate during the director's visit?

Standing on a stool: the director forbids anyone to speak to her that day, but her friend passes and smiles, giving her strength.

After eight years at her charity school, what makes Jane long to leave and seek a post elsewhere?

Her mentor departs: once the superintendent moves away with her new husband, Jane tires of 'the routine of eight years in one afternoon' and advertises for a post.

What is the name of Rochester's young ward, whom Jane is hired to teach?

Adèle Varens: after Jane flees, Rochester sends her to a strict school, and Jane later takes her out of it and finds her a kinder one.

What was the profession of Jane's pupil's absent mother?

Dancer: Rochester kept her in Paris until he caught her with another man, ended the affair, and next morning shot the man in the arm in a duel.

Who is the elderly housekeeper who answers Jane's advertisement and runs Rochester's household?

Mrs Fairfax: on hearing of the engagement, she warns Jane to keep Rochester at a distance, since gentlemen of his station seldom make governesses their wives.

How does Jane first meet Mr Rochester?

His horse slips on ice and throws him, and later, at Thornfield, he teases her that she must have bewitched his horse.

What is Mr Rochester's first name?

Edward: reunited with Jane at the end, he asks 'Am I hideous, Jane?' and she teases, 'Very, sir: you always were, you know.'

Jane saves Rochester's life one night by doing what?

Throwing water on his burning bed: he thanks her tenderly and won't let her go, yet the next morning he sets off abruptly for a house party.

Which servant does Rochester blame for the strange laughter and other odd happenings in the house?

Grace Poole: she is really the well-paid keeper of Rochester's hidden wife, and her fondness for gin is what lets the prisoner slip out.

Which beautiful, snobbish socialite does Rochester pretend to court to make Jane jealous?

Blanche Ingram: to test her, Rochester let a rumour reach her that his fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and she and her mother turned cold.

While guests are staying, Rochester disguises himself as what in order to question Jane alone?

A gypsy fortune-teller: Jane half suspects the old woman is a servant in disguise, until he asks, 'Well, Jane, do you know me?'

What does a strange woman rip in two in Jane's room shortly before the ceremony?

Her wedding veil: the elegant veil is ruined, so on the morning of the ceremony Jane wears the plain square of blond she had made herself.

What is the name of Rochester's first wife, hidden on the third floor of his house?

Bertha: Rochester says her family knew madness ran in their line and kept it from him until he had become her husband.

Where did Rochester marry his first wife?

Jamaica: Rochester lived there with her for four years and one night even meant to shoot himself, before deciding to take her to England instead.

Which house-guest is attacked and bitten one night, and later steps forward to halt Jane's wedding?

Richard Mason: he learns of the engagement from Jane's own uncle, who had just received Jane's letter announcing her happy news.

After the wedding collapses, where does Rochester ask Jane to live with him as his wife in all but name?

The south of France: he promises a whitewashed villa on the Mediterranean, but she refuses to become his mistress and steals away from Thornfield at dawn.

Where does Jane leave her bundle of possessions when she flees, leaving her destitute on the moor?

On the coach: she rides as far as her last shillings will pay, and only after it has gone does she realise her parcel is still inside.

What false surname does Jane give the Rivers family when they take her in?

Elliott: St John later confirms who she is from a strip he secretly tore off her drawing paper, where she had absently written 'Jane Eyre'.

After inheriting £20,000 from her uncle, what does Jane insist on doing with it?

Sharing it equally: she keeps £5,000 and gives £5,000 each to St John, Diana and Mary, though St John warns she is acting on first impulses.

St John Rivers asks Jane to marry him and accompany him as a missionary to which country?

India: she will go only as his sister, not his wife, so he sails alone, and the novel's final lines suggest he is dying there.

What makes Jane abandon the moors and hurry back to Rochester?

She seems to hear his voice calling her name, and Rochester later tells her he really did cry out for her that night and heard her answer.

What did Rochester lose while trying to rescue his wife from the fire she started?

A hand and his eyesight: he stays blind for two years after Jane becomes his wife, then regains sight in one eye in time to see their first-born son.

What is the name of the old house in the woods where Jane and Rochester finally live together?

Ferndean Manor: Jane announces her return there by taking the tray from the servant and carrying it in to Rochester herself.

Which famous four-word sentence opens the final chapter of Jane Eyre?

Reader, I married him. St John, whose proposal Jane refused, never answers the letter telling him the news.

How does Rochester's first wife die in the fire that destroys Thornfield Hall?

She leaps from the roof: an innkeeper tells Jane that Rochester had climbed up after her when she yelled, sprang and fell to her death.

The second edition of Jane Eyre was dedicated to which fellow novelist?

William Makepeace Thackeray: when he later gave a dinner in her honour, the talk died so completely that he slipped out of his own house to his club.

What is the name of Mr Rochester's dog in Jane Eyre?

Pilot: Jane at first takes the huge dog for a Gytrash, a spirit from her nurse's ghost stories, until she sees it belongs to a traveller.

Jane Eyre's harsh school is drawn from Charlotte's own time at which real institution?

Cowan Bridge: its conditions wore down the Brontë girls' health, and the two eldest sisters died soon after falling ill there.

Which real house near Hathersage in Derbyshire is thought to have inspired Rochester's home?

North Lees Hall: its first mistress, Agnes Ashurst, is said to have gone mad and been confined in a padded room, a possible model for Rochester's wife.

What happens to the horse-chestnut tree in the orchard just after Jane agrees to marry Rochester?

It is split by lightning, and at the ceremony that follows, a stranger reveals that Rochester already has a living wife.

Which woman critic wrote that Jane Eyre combined 'such genuine power with such horrid taste'?

Elizabeth Rigby: Charlotte later put sentences from the review into the mouth of a hard and vulgar woman in her novel Shirley.

What becomes of Jane's rigidly pious cousin Eliza after her mother dies?

She enters a convent: Eliza endows it with her fortune and in time rises to be its Mother Superior.

Which author wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, the 1966 prequel telling the story of Rochester's first wife?

Jean Rhys: her heroine, locked away in England, ends the book by dreaming of flames and setting out with a candle.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, what is the real name of the Creole heiress whom Rochester renames?

Antoinette Cosway: as their union sours her husband renames her, declares her mad and takes her to England, where he keeps her locked away.

Who played Rochester opposite Joan Fontaine in the 1943 Hollywood film?

Orson Welles: he also wanted credit as associate producer, and Selznick protested that it would detract from director Robert Stevenson's achievement.

Which young actress played Jane's doomed school friend in the 1943 film of Jane Eyre?

Elizabeth Taylor: in this version the headmaster's cruel punishments hasten her character's death.

Which James Bond actor played Rochester in the BBC's 1983 serial of Jane Eyre?

Timothy Dalton: he had once turned Bond down as too young, then took the role four years after this serial, in The Living Daylights.

Who directed the 2011 Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender?

Cary Joji Fukunaga: he shot in an unheated medieval house in winter, and his star nearly got hypothermia on the second day of filming.

Which was Charlotte Brontë's first novel, rejected by publishers before Jane Eyre?

The Professor: it stayed unpublished until after her death, when her widower consented to its release, and it finally appeared in 1857.

Which kind of book is young Jane reading when her cousin John hurls it at her?

A book of British birds, Bewick's History, knocks her down, and Jane fights back against her cousin for the first time in her life.

What was Charlotte Brontë's married surname when she died in 1855?

Nicholls was her father's curate; she first refused him and her father fiercely objected, yet she wed him in 1854.

Which beautiful heiress does St John Rivers secretly love but refuse as unfit for missionary life?

Rosamond Oliver soon agrees to marry a wealthy heir, and St John will not even admit that losing her makes him unhappy.

Starving on the moor, what does Jane beg from a girl about to tip it into a pig trough?

Cold porridge is all she eats that day; by nightfall she collapses outside Moor House, where St John Rivers takes her in.

Which Jane Austen novel is often named beside Jane Eyre as one of the most famous romance novels?

Pride and Prejudice left Charlotte Brontë unmoved: she told the critic G. H. Lewes it was a disappointment, like a neat fenced garden with no open country.

Which Daphne du Maurier novel, set at the great house Manderley, is often compared to Jane Eyre?

Rebecca gives its nameless narrator a wealthy widower and a first wife whose memory fills his house, parallels that commentators trace back to Brontë's novel.

Which novel, the only one by Charlotte Brontë's sister Emily, appeared in the same year as Jane Eyre?

Wuthering Heights stayed Emily's only novel because she died in 1848, aged thirty, a year after it was published.

The surname of Charlotte Brontë's heroine Jane Eyre is pronounced exactly like which everyday word?

Air is how it sounds, and the name was real: an Eyre family lived in a Derbyshire house that Charlotte Brontë visited two years before the novel appeared.

Charlotte Brontë deliberately denied Jane Eyre which quality that heroines of novels were expected to have?

Beauty was left out on purpose: Brontë made Jane unglamorous, telling her sisters she would show them a heroine as plain and as small as herself.

Which Oscar-winning dame plays the housekeeper of Thornfield Hall in the 2011 film of Jane Eyre?

Judi Dench took the part opposite Mia Wasikowska's Jane, in a cast that also had Sally Hawkins as the harsh aunt who raises the heroine.

What breed is the huge black-and-white dog that bounds ahead of Rochester when Jane Eyre first meets him?

Newfoundland dogs are famed for lifesaving at sea, and Jane's first sight is of a long-haired, lion-like creature with a huge head gliding past her in the dusk.

Shut away as a punishment at her aunt's house, what does ten-year-old Jane Eyre take a gleam of light to be?

A ghost, she thinks: Jane believes her late uncle is coming for her and faints, though the adult narrator guesses it was only a lantern carried across the lawn.

Which travel tale, normally her most cherished volume, does the shaken young Jane Eyre ask her nurse to fetch?

Gulliver's Travels fails her this once: after her fright the giants look like gaunt goblins and Gulliver himself a desolate wanderer.

Which famous English novelist co-wrote the screenplay of the 1943 Hollywood film of Jane Eyre?

Aldous Huxley was credited on the script alongside John Houseman and director Robert Stevenson, while the score came from Bernard Herrmann.

After leaving her charity school, which job does Jane Eyre take in Rochester's household at Thornfield Hall?

Governess was work Charlotte Brontë knew from experience, having taught the children of several families herself between 1839 and 1841.

Unlike Charlotte Brontë's next novel, Jane Eyre is told throughout from which narrative point of view?

First person narration lets Jane address her audience directly, whereas Brontë's follow-up novel switched to an unnamed third-person narrator.

Jane Eyre's remote mansion, eerie night-time laughter and locked upper storey draw on which literary tradition?

Gothic fiction supplied the atmosphere: critics rank the work as a major novel of its age with themes inherited from an earlier generation of terror writers.

Haworth parsonage, Charlotte Brontë's home when Jane Eyre appeared, lies on the moors of which county?

Yorkshire became home in 1820, when her father was offered the position of perpetual curate at Haworth and moved his six young children to the edge of the moors.

First published ten years into a famously long reign, Jane Eyre is a major novel of which literary era?

Victorian is the label, though the story looks further back: its events unfold in northern England early in the nineteenth century.

After six years as a pupil at her harsh charity school, what does Jane Eyre become there?

A teacher for two more years, Jane rises from first girl of the first class to the staff before restlessness sends her looking for a new situation.

What finally exposes the director's harsh regime at Jane Eyre's charity school and brings about its reform?

A deadly epidemic of fever sweeps through the half-starved pupils, and the inquiry that follows stirs public indignation and moves wealthy donors to fund a healthier school.

By Rochester's own account in Jane Eyre, why did his family steer him into his first marriage?

For her money, thirty thousand pounds of it: the family estate was to pass whole to the first-born, Rowland, so a rich bride was found for the second son.

Which failing of the nurse paid to guard Rochester's secret prisoner lets the captive escape in Jane Eyre?

Her drinking is the weak point: the keeper is trusted in every other way but keeps a private bottle of gin, and her patient gets out when she has had too much.

Which nursemaid, Jane Eyre's one ally at her aunt's house, later visits her at school before she leaves?

Bessie scolds Jane often but also tells her stories and sings to her; years later she arrives married, bringing her small son and news of a daughter she has christened Jane.

Jane Eyre follows its heroine from an unloved child of ten to adulthood, making it a classic of which genre?

Bildungsroman novels trace a character's growth to maturity, and this one closes with Jane at about thirty, some twenty years after its opening scene.

Moody, sardonic and haunted by a guilty secret, Rochester of Jane Eyre is a classic example of which literary type?

Byronic hero is the term: the type first reached a wide public through Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and Rochester is among its best-known later examples.

Which errand has Jane Eyre set out on from Thornfield on the winter afternoon she first encounters Rochester?

Posting a letter for the housekeeper takes Jane two miles to the village of Hay, a trip she volunteers for to escape a long day indoors.

On which evening of the year does Rochester propose to Jane Eyre in the orchard at Thornfield?

Midsummer Eve finds the child of the house in bed early, worn out from gathering wild strawberries, which leaves Jane free to stroll in the garden alone at sunset.

What is the profession of Mr Briggs, the Londoner who interrupts Jane Eyre's wedding to declare an impediment?

Solicitor Mr Briggs acts for Jane's uncle, and months later he is the one searching England for her so that he can pass on an inheritance.

Jane Eyre's bullying cousin John lands in jail and drains his mother's purse through which ruinous habit?

Gambling losses mount until his mother, who has bailed him out twice, refuses to pay again; he dies young, rumoured to have killed himself.

Jane Eyre's vain cousin plans to elope with what kind of suitor before her envious sister betrays the scheme?

A young lord, Edwin Vere, is the prize she loses; she later taunts her sister with the trick, and in the end settles for a wealthy, worn-out man of fashion.

Which of Jane Eyre's accomplishments does Rochester inspect closely on their first evening together at Thornfield?

Her paintings are three strange watercolours, among them a shipwreck with a drowned corpse and a vision of the Evening Star, which he calls peculiar for a schoolgirl.

Which fellow novelist's 1857 biography of Charlotte Brontë revealed the real people and places behind Jane Eyre?

Elizabeth Gaskell drew on her own memories of her friend; the biography's accuracy was challenged as soon as it appeared, yet later biographers have all leaned on it.

Which author's 2001 comic fantasy sends detective Thursday Next into the pages of Jane Eyre to chase a villain?

Jasper Fforde had collected 76 rejections for earlier work before this debut, The Eyre Affair, was accepted by a publisher.

In which moorland village does St John Rivers set Jane Eyre up as mistress of a school for poor girls?

Morton had no school of any kind when he arrived two years earlier; he opened one for boys, then hired a building so that Jane could run a second for girls.

Which servant of the Rivers family first shuts the door on the starving Jane Eyre, taking her for a beggar?

Hannah offers a penny and bolts the door, fearing a thieves' lookout; she has served the household for thirty years and nursed all three Rivers children.

Which language are Diana and Mary Rivers puzzling over with a dictionary when Jane Eyre first watches them?

German is their project because, as they tell their old servant, they mean to give lessons in it one day and so earn more than they do now.

The penniless Jane Eyre offers a village shopkeeper her gloves and which other item for a bread roll?

Her handkerchief, a small silk one from round her throat, is turned down with suspicion, and the gloves fare no better, so Jane leaves the shop hungry.

Who tells Jane Eyre the story of the blaze at Thornfield Hall when she returns to find it a ruin?

An innkeeper at the Rochester Arms gives the account without knowing who she is; he had once been butler to the old master of the house.

Which careless clue lets St John Rivers discover the real surname that Jane Eyre has been hiding from his family?

Her scribbled name, 'Jane Eyre', sits in the margin of a sheet protecting a portrait she is working on; he quietly tears the strip off and pockets it.

Which novel by Anne Brontë, drawn from her years tutoring in wealthy homes, followed her sister's Jane Eyre into print?

Agnes Grey filled the third volume of a three-volume set, the first two being taken up by her sister Emily's longer novel.

Which novel, set amid Luddite unrest in the textile mills, did Charlotte Brontë publish next after Jane Eyre?

Shirley changed a name's fortunes: its heroine was given what had been a boy's name, and the novel's popularity made it a favourite for girls.

On which Atlantic island did Jane Eyre's long-lost uncle John make his living as a merchant?

Madeira is known to Jane's old nurse only as an island thousands of miles off where they make wine; the uncle had written from there offering to adopt his niece.

Which 1943 Val Lewton horror film reworks the story of Jane Eyre on a Caribbean sugar plantation?

I Walked with a Zombie got its title from a magazine article picked by studio executives; the producer then told his writers to model the plot on Brontë's novel.

Which Italian director made the 1996 film of Jane Eyre starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt?

Franco Zeffirelli filmed his Thornfield at Haddon Hall, and later versions returned there so often that the house is now closely identified with the role.

Which actress played the title role opposite Toby Stephens in the BBC's 2006 serial of Jane Eyre?

Ruth Wilson earned BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for the part, in a four-part serial widely judged a successful adaptation.

In which northern English city did Charlotte Brontë begin Jane Eyre while her father recovered from an eye operation?

Manchester may have left its mark on the story: she likely pictured the cathedral churchyard there as the burial place of Jane's parents, and the city as Jane's birthplace.

Jane Eyre's Rochester is said to owe much to Constantin Heger, whom Charlotte Brontë fell for in which city?

Brussels was where she studied and then worked at the boarding school he ran with his wife; she had to leave after falling in love with him.

Which sour schoolmistress at Jane Eyre's charity school constantly punishes Jane's gentle best friend?

Miss Scatcherd strikes the girl's neck a dozen times with a bunch of twigs, and her victim calmly unfastens her own pinafore to receive the blows.

Which insulting word does a schoolmistress fasten to the forehead of Jane Eyre's best friend on a pasteboard label?

Slattern stays bound round the girl's forehead all day, borne without complaint, until a furious Jane tears it off and thrusts it into the fire.

Which newly published narrative poem does St John Rivers bring Jane Eyre as a gift on a November evening?

Marmion, Walter Scott's poem of 1808, is called a new publication, yet a child elsewhere recalls crossing the Channel by steamship, so the story's date cannot be fixed.

Which word do Rochester and his house guests act out in the game of charades staged in Jane Eyre?

Bridewell is mimed in three scenes: a pantomime marriage for the first syllable, a biblical meeting at a well for the second, then Rochester in chains as a prisoner.

Which spirit of northern English folklore does Jane Eyre think of as hoofbeats approach her on a lonely lane?

Gytrash stories came from her childhood nurse: the creature takes animal form to haunt solitary roads and comes upon travellers out late.

Which house near Ripon, with its legend of a woman confined upstairs, is thought to have helped inspire Jane Eyre?

Norton Conyers received Charlotte Brontë in 1839, when she was looking after the grandchildren of its tenants, eight years before the novel was published.