This is a good book for the Middle School set to read. It's about a girl named Franny Dillman who creates an interesting life based on teen problem books that her mother brings home for her. Franny's mother is concerned about Franny reading "adult" books in her closet by flashlight such as Jane Eyre. Franny feels as though she has a boring, tranquil life so to shake it up and make things more interesting, she imagines her life along the books she reads. She makes her life parallel to the plots and the people she goes to school with into characters out of Jane Eyre.

Her mother, wanting to help Franny adjust properly with the real world and her imagination gives her teen appropriate books that just make matters worse, but the situations are hilarious!

I read this book again in college, ten years from the time I first checked it out of my local library. To my delight, it was as I remembered and more--bracingly funny and touching. It's about a girl who reads Jane Eyre in the closet with a bag of potato chips; in the light of day, her hyperactive imagination leads her to view her family and friends as all part of an insidious plotline that tends to borrow from Jane Eyre. This book made me read Jane Eyre, which I love, but I love this book too for its good humor and its sensitivity. Thanks to amazon and the power of advanced search (I could only remember the word franny).

From the time of her uncle's death, Jane Eyre's existence at Gateshead has become unbearable. Her aunt dotes on her own three children and never lets Jane forget that she is living off of the Reeds's charity. After frightening her Aunt Reed with her willfulness and ingratitude, Jane is sent to Lowood School where she continues to exist for eight years.

After placing an advertisement in a paper, she is hired on as a governess at Thornfield where she meets and falls in love with Edward Fairfax Rochester. But a series of odd and dangerous events which take place at Thornfield succeed in tearing them apart until Jane realizes that she must journey alone or else compromise her own sense of self forever.

Jane Eyre is a novel about a woman who comes to realize that she must hold on to herself. Bronte's heroine is strong, willful, and isolated. Her hero is constantly referring to her in an otherworldly sense. But what he sees is otherworldly is simply a strong independent streak. This independence is what the author seems to urge women to cultivate through the character of Jane Eyre. Bronte reinforces the strength of Jane's character by making her plain. By doing this, she forces us to realize the beauty of her character rather than her looks. She has none to recommend her and no fortune to appeal to a man so the reader is certain that it is her character which appeals to Rochester.

The road towards a happy ending is not easy for Rochester and Jane. In fact, even before discovering the truth about the woman in the attic, Jane has taken measures to preserve herself by writing to her uncle in Madeira even though she tells Rochester that she has no family aside from the Reeds, whose connection to her she is forced to admit when Aunt Reed calls for her. This perpetuates the unraveling of their happiness. From the point of separation, however, Bronte sets Jane on the road to self-discovery. With her Rivers cousins, whom she discovers after leaving Thornfield, she comes to realize her full capacity as a cousin, a teacher, and her potential as a servant of God.

By the story's end, when Bronte has led her title character back to a devastated Thornfield, Jane is truly independent in both character as well as finance. There is a role reversal which the reader discovers. No longer is Rochester offering to take care of her, it is Jane, rather, who is in the position of power as she becomes Rochester's helpmeet from the time of their reunion.

Uncommon story for the era. Imagine... an INDEPENDANT woman!

As english is not my native language, i have to overtake the barrier of different language to enjoy the plot, the characters of the book. I have read this book in my native language, and i liked it very much. So, when i saw in the bookstore the book in original language, i do not hesitate to buy it, because i want to feel all the nuances of the interesting life of Jane Eyre. The novel is about the life of poor orphin, who had to live with her relatives without worm and love. However, dificulties did not break down the spirit of Jane. She was capable to find out the strenght, the courage to live honest, love dearly.

Jane Eyre sets the standard for Gothic Romance. It is a classic. Its first person style is easy to read and intensifies the mystery and drama. I read it again and again.

I also had to read this book for school, during summer. I can respect the fact that it was a classic but it just was not a book that I enjoyed. It had many unneeded parts and tended to repeat itself. It was especially boring when Jane landed at Moor House. If you are a hopeless romantic then go for it, but I prefer exciting books. The other book I had to read was Lord of the Flies and I liked it much better. So....there^^;

I became a reader in college. I fell in love with this book during my senior year of High School. My report got a standing ovation and I've yet to recommend it to anyone that did not enjoy it.

Charolette has a refreshing style. She includes just enough scenic and psychological detail. I love it when the author writes to me during parts of the story. The characters are interesting. The plot twists. Good read!

I received this book for a gift when I was twelve and found it incredibly boring. I am now eighteen and for lack of any other books to read picked it up again. To my suprise I could not put it down! The character of Jane Eyre was both inspiring and identifiable. Charlotte Bronte's best novel no doubt, the plot was excellently well crafted. Although a few parts are obvious, this classic romantic novel kept me turning pages furiously!

I thought the book could have been reduced to half the size. If I had the choice to read this book, I wouldn't take the opportunity. It was good, but too detailed. I liked the story, but it was predictable at times.

I think that Jane Eyre was almost the best book. The only problem was the ending. All her life Jane has gotten the short end of the stick. Why for once can't this go her way? Why can't she have a normal husband? Why can't she have a break for once?

If I had a better grip on what it was like to be a woman during the era in which this was written I would probably like this novel a lot more. But to be quite honest I found it to be almost unbearably boring and drawn out. It simply reeks of the style of the times, which was to so forcefully over dramatize everything that work now seems almost comical. The point of the novel was supposedly to show how Eyre was able to overcome the sexism of her time, but in the end it seems as though she gave in to the sexism and ended up getting lucky. The plot is weak, the characters are unrealistic, and the language is far too melancholy. I won't argue that it was progressive for its time, simply because of the fact it was written by a woman and openly spoke out against the sexism in society, but in our times I'm afraid the message has been lost in its tediousness and extremity.

Jane Eyre is justifiably held as one of the best books in print! I selected it because it is recommended in the Lifetime Reading Program and am certainly pleased that I did. Read it, every word, and you will be caught up in the very thoughts of Jane. After, rent the A&E movie version which is much truer to the plot than the other version. Feel free to weep with joy at the end. I did.

Jane Eyre is a masterpiece of it's kind. Charlotte Bronte brings the characters to life as not many authors of this period (that I have experienced) have. The plot is excelent and intriguing, and as evocative as anything I have ever read. Mr. Rochester is a very intriguing hero, not the run-of-the mill Knight in Shining armor, and Jane Eyre is a very different heroin from the usual as well, and a very interesting one. I would definitely reccomend this book to anyone who likes classics!

This book is written in the 1800's. It deals with the romanticism period. It shows the struggle that Jane had to go through in order to find her happiness. She has to show Rochester that she is an equal to him in order to make it in life. She once said, "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?" This shows that Jane was different than most of the women in the 1800's. She was more determined to do things on her own, and things that only men were supposed to do. If you like books that deal with love and determination, then you will like this book.

I love this little boo

The first half of the novel is well done, and enchanting in places. However, plot twists often become confusing, and by the last chapter, we are led to the most implausible surprise-- that Mrs. Fairfax was somehow the evil queen in all this. Nothing in the entire novel prepared us for this, and thus, it felt completely contrived. Perhaps the author was trying to be gothic, but she failed utterly to convince this reader. I felt cheated of the true richness and emotional depth that is "Jane Eyre."

As an editor of the letters of the late Jean Rhys, i felt the same sense of discovery and excitement on reading Emma Tennant's Adele as i did when i first read Wide Sargasso Sea. Again, a character no one had thought or known about had been rescued and brought to the fore. In the case of Sargasso Sea it was of course the first Mrs Rochester, in Tennant's book, the little french girl, Mr Rochester's daughter is the heroine of a novel that goes hand in hand with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Adele moved me deeply;this is a story with which so many will identify. for adele wants one thing more than anything in the world, and that is the reconciliation of her mother and father. That Celine Varens, actress and trapeze dancer, Parisian to her fingertips, has abandoned her daughter cannot at first be accepted by the child; and in this beautifully written account of her life in France and in the grim confines of Thornfield Hall in Yorkshire, Adele brings us both grief, a sense of a rebellion and finally, happiness.
A wonderful book.

"Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story" provides a unique perspective of "Jane Eyre" through the eyes of some of the minor characters in the novel (Adele, Rochester, Grace Poole and Mrs. Fairfax). In this book, we find out about Adele's life with her mother, and explore Rochester's "hidden secret" in greater detail. "Adele" is a wonderful companion to Jane Eyre, and has earned its place next to "Jane Eyre" on any bookshelf.

'Jane Eyre' was one of my favorite books when I was a teenager and if I had read 'Wide Sargasso Sea' right after reading 'Jane Eyre', I would have hated it for deconstructing the heroic image of Mr. Rochester. I'm glad I discovered WSS much later. It's an intriguing, fascinating study of Mr. Rochester and his first wife, Antoinette Mason, the prototype of the 'mad wife in the attic' who played a minor but vital part in 'Jane Eyre'. Antoinette's mother descends into madness following the loss of the family estate to a slave rebellion. To shore up the family fortune and save her from becoming an old maid, and thus a burden, she is married off to Mr. Rochester, newly arrived from England, who knows nothing about her mother's insanity. WSS shows us the other side of Mr. Rochester that Jane Eyre couldn't or wouldn't see: his coldness, his selfishness, and his opportunism. We can understand how, as he did in 'Jane Eyre', such a man would lie to an innocent young woman about his marital status and nearly trap her into unwittingly participating in a sham marriage. Rochester is attracted to Antoinette at first; he is dazzled by her beauty as well as her money and eager to marry her. Once the honeymoon phase is over, he is unable to adjust to his surroundings. Jamaica is antipathetic to everything he grew up with, it's wild, untamed, a study in extremes, anathema to a tidy, organized, narrow-minded European, and Rochester is the typical insular-minded Englishman who despises what he is unable to understand. Antoinette is totally a product of her surroundings and completely at home where she is, and as Rochester feels alienated from Jamaica, so he feels alientated from his wife, and the discovery of her mother's insanity is justification enough for his deepening antipathy for her. He can't accept who or what she is; he can't even accept her name, he insists on calling her 'Bertha', never mind that it's a name she hates, it's what he wants, so it's who she will be. In 'Jane Eyre', Rochester blames his wife's alcoholism for the failure of the marriage; in WSS, it's his brutally cold and insensitive treatment of her that finally drives her to drink. When he takes her away from Jamaica and everything she knows and loves, she retreats into a madness even deeper than her mother's; she can't live in his world, any more than he can live in hers. In 'Jane Eyre' Rochester is the romantic hero and in WSS he is a monster of selfishness; when both are put together, the real complexity of the character finally emerges.

Jean Rhys, the troubled author who was far ahead of her time in the 1920's, felt a strange kinship with Antoinette or Bertha Mason, the madwoman locked in the attic in Bronte's "Jane Eyre." From the first time Rhys read "Jane Eyre" she knew she would someday write her story because she felt she'd lived it.

Like Antoinette, Rhys grew up in the Caribbean, a troubled and hermetic world of Creoles, colonists and former slaves. Antoinette is truly a loner--the reversal of family fortunes causes her to be rejected by her own people, and despised by those who previously were on a lower rung of society. Throughout the novel, Antoinette is used, buffeted and never in charge of her own life. She feels that, as a woman, she is an object, not a person. As a woman, she is not in charge of her ultimate destiny, and this provides the conflict for the novel. Her madness is only an extension of this isolation and rejection.

What makes Rhys a masterful novelist is her use of conversation and immediate events to describe the world in which Antoinette lives. There are no long passages of exposition; we see the world only through the eyes of the characters, mostly at the same time that they experience it. However, the immediate events and conversation or narration are so cleverly constructed that the reader sees through the narrator's eyes and can really see and feel the surroundings. This intimate point of view puts the reader in the skin of the character, but can be a bit confusing because we cannot always rely on the veracity of the narration. The point of view itself switches in the novel from first person to third person, in the second part, and back to first in the third and final portion, where Antoinette is locked in the attic.

The novel is in no way a re-write or version of "Jane Eyre." In "Jane Eyre", the madwoman is not really a character--she's a symbol for evil, for carnal and worldly desires yielded to without regard for the soul. "Wide Sargasso Sea" develops the madwoman into a character. Rhys slyly copies the beautiful symmetry of "Jane Eyre", where events occur in a sort of repetition; in "Jane Eyre", the heroine must leave a hostile home and find a haven, which then becomes hostile because it fails to nourish her soul with love (Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield and then Marsh House. Only when Jane can marry her Mr. Rochester on HER terms, does she find a true home.) In "Wide Sargasso Sea", Antoinette's home burns twice, a similar use of symbolism, here representing rejection by the world.

"Wide Sargasso Sea" is often listed as a "must-read" book --it certainly is a unique book and was far ahead of its time when Rhys wrote it. It's really worth reading.

"Wide Sargasso Sea" is my third Jean Rhys novel. I read "After Leaving Mr Mackenzie," and "Good Morning, Midnight" a few years ago, and I would rate both of those novels as "5 star books." So I came to "Wide Sargasso Sea" with really high expectations, and while I did enjoy the book, at the same time, I don't think it has quite the calibre of the other Rhys novels I've read.

The novel is set in 19th Century and is in three parts. The first part is narrated by Antoinette Cosway, the main character, when she is a child. The second part is narrated by Mr Rochester. He is now married to Antoinette, and in the third part of the novel, Antoinette has become "the madwoman in the attic"--Bertha Rochester--the unloved, bothersome nuisance who stands between Mr Rochester and one of the most famous literary characters of all time--Jane Eyre.

"Wide Sargasso Sea" as a novel on its own merits is an enjoyable story. Rhys captures the unique world of Antoinette Cosway at once showing the beauty of Jamaica and also the corruption and rot at the heart of the culture which was based on slavery. Slavery--although a thing of the recent past in Antoinette's experience--taints everything. Entire estates are in decay, and the creole landowners are suspicious and live in fear. It is a land of great beauty, and the language of the novel conveys the sense of exquisite beauty. I really would argue for a 'scratch and sniff' version of this novel. At times, the descriptive language is so strong that I expected the fragrances of the exotic, lush setting to leap out from the book's pages. The matchless descriptions of the decayed mansions, the colours and lush fragrances of the vegetation, the "orchids that flourished out of reach" all create an atmosphere of impending doom, and Antoinette seems oblivious to it, but at the same time, she is part of it too. Rochester seems to realise that there is something inherently wrong with the situation, but even he is seduced by the evil elements at work. I particularly loved "Massacre"--a place whose name no longer has any meaning, and certainly holds no interest to those already poisoned, tainted, and seduced. Antoinette is a doomed character (and here is the similarity with other Rhys novels); she is doomed in Jamaica, and she will be doomed in the cold sterility of an English attic.

Bertha Rochester from the novel "Jane Eyre" is one of those fascinating minor characters from literature who are pivotal to the action, and yet their roles leave ripples of questions in their wake. We are told by Mr Rochester in "Jane Eyre" that his wife is mad and must be locked up for her own safety and for the safety of others. And yet, somehow for me, this explanation only led me to questions--such as where was Bertha from before she took up residence in Rochester's attic? Additionally, Bertha's displacement does not augur well for Rochester--especially since he has designs on Jane Eyre. The connotations are not pleasant, and Rhys created a Rochester who could also very believably exist within the pages of the Bronte novel. Antoinette Cosway is also very believable as the discarded Mrs Rochester.

While I do not consider "Wide Sargasso Sea" as a perversion of "Jane Eyre", I don't think it's a perfect novel either. One part of "Wide Sargasso Sea" that I considered flawed is the depiction of the woman, Christophine. This character just did not ring true for me. I was also a little confused by the shift in narration, and was not prepared for the leap in time from Anotinette's childhood to adulthood. For several pages, I did not realise that the child narrator of the first part was now a married woman in part II. I was a bit confused by it, and ended up re-reading parts to get everything straight. If you enjoyed "Wide Sargasso Sea," there is a good chance that you will enjoy her other books too--although I would have to add here that if this was the first Rhys novel for me, I doubt that I would bother to seek out her others. I feel that the other Rhys novels were really far superior, and it is surprising to me that "Wide Sargasso Sea" was responsible for her reputation as a novelist--displacedhuman.