This study guide is very useful. It is full of questions and answers for anyone going to be tested on Jane Eyre. The questions are insightful and really make you think. They are very helpful for tests. Teachers would also love this because the pages are reproducible and could be used to give to students as study questions.

"Jane Eyre" has long been one of my favorite books, so when I saw this sequel in a New Zealand bookstore, I snapped it up. I wish I hadn't.

The story is completely at odds to the character Jane was in "Jane Eyre" and completely skips over some of the parts that would have been vaguely interesting. There is a brief allusion to a "vision" she had on the night of Mr Rochester's death that piqued my curiousity...surely, the author would elaborate on such a thing? He did not.

There are many melodramatic plot twists, which is fine if this is supposed to be a parody, but if it's supposed to be viewed as a serious sequel there needed to be much more exposition. *spoiler alert* For example: Why does Jane fall in love with her cousin? The only thing they have in common is that they write...this is not enough to explain the link given the difference in their ages and personalities. And the "scandal" with the lieutenant was hardly a scandal at all.

I felt like the publisher told the writer to hurry things up at the end and things were quickly finished off rather than nicely rounded out. I'm going to have to re-read the original Bronte just to get the foul taste of this book out of my imagination. It's polluted my memory of a classic.

The best thing about it is the inclusion of different aspects of early New Zealand colonial life, which was quite fascinating to a person who lived there for many years.

I found this gently satirical romance novel highly entertaining. I believe it will appeal to anyone who admires Charlotte Brontë's masterly style. The hilarious sexual symbolism is perhaps less accessible to those who see the Victorian era through rose-tinted spectacles, as a time of general sweetness and light. The author comes down particularly hard on the local representative of the Church of England, portrayed as a philandering hypocrite. But anyone with the scantiest acquaintance with the sexual antics of nineteenth century missionaries in the South Pacific will appreciate that this is not merely the creation of a morbidly feverish imagination.

I can't do better than quote from Jane Stafford's review of this novel in New Zealand Books:

If Johanna's World strives to convince the reader of its veracity, Mrs Rochester, from the outset, overtly signals its complete lack of historical truth. Other truths are, however, called upon instead. At the end of Charlotte Brontë's 1848 novel Jane Eyre, we left the narrator married to the gorgeous, albeit mutilated, Mr Rochester, celebrating the birth of their first child. The trouble with realism is that it convinces us the characters have life outside the pages that contain them. The trouble with autobiographical fiction such as Jane Eyre is that we want to know what happened after the conclusion. "Reader, I married him"-but then what? According to Warwick Blanchett, quite a lot. Mr Rochester finds recovery from the Thornfield fire difficult, and succumbs to an early death, though not before losing the family fortune. His children (Hugo and Helen) are safely at school, but what of poor Mrs Rochester? Out on the governess market again, alas, and this time, trying her luck in New Zealand rather than Yorkshire.
The most enjoyable thing about Blanchett's treatment is the firmness with which his tongue is placed in his cheek. Unlike the intensely mundane world of Johanna and her family, with Mrs Rochester we are always aware of inhabiting not just a work of fiction but a work which plays upon that fiction. Delightful literary jokes abound: Blanche Ingram has married and become Mrs Henry Lynn-a composite created from the real-life author Mrs Henry Wood and the title of her famous Victorian bodice-ripper East Lynne. Lost in a bush burn-off, Jane hears the voice of Mr Rochester calling to her, just as she did first time around, lost on the moors. The place-names of the new colony are strangely reminiscent of the geography of the Brontës' childhood games, and the bedroom the heroine is placed in is, of course, red. Jane is much as we remember her from the original novel: intense, feisty, and, for some reason, irresistible to men. In fact, the plot of Mrs Rochester consists almost entirely of Jane working her way through a list of suitors, from the dashing leutenant Trevelyan to the randy Archdeacon Parfitt to the bucolic/Byronic Caleb, son of Jane Eyre's Diana Rivers.
Blanchett is wonderfully true to the tone and style of the original. Landscape and setting are appropriately lush and exotic; storms and tempests appear on cue as the emotional weather of the plot demands. Manners and modes of speech are appropriately Victorian: Jane talks of "relieving the island's ovine population of their winter coats" instead of shearing sheep; women are described as being "the cynosure of all eyes"; Maori singing is described as "keening polyphony". All this could become a little tedious taken to excess. But Blanchett drives his plot along briskly, and judges exactly how long to play what is essentially an extended literary joke.
Literary sequels or spin-offs have become a little sub-genre of their own: from Emma Tennant's Pemberley (sequel to Pride and Prejudice) to Joan Aiken's Jane Fairfax (spin-off from Emma) to the truly dreadful Scarlett (Gone with the Wind Part II). Most confine themselves to a somewhat pedestrian delineation of "what happened next". Mrs Rochester's colonial setting (comparable perhaps to Peter Carey's Jack Maggs, a spin-off from Great Expectations) allows more scope, as Blanchett offers us not just an extension of Jane Eyre, but an imitation of the sort of Maoriland romance that was popular here in the second half of the 19th century.
It can be argued that the maturity of a national literature is measured not in its production of high culture, but in the ease and adaptability with which it processes and makes use of the popular. Romance was the dominant fictional form in colonial writing. Crude and mechanical as it was, romance helped the new population to read themselves, in all senses, into a landscape, in a way that was not just measured by complexity and seriousness of purpose, but by its ability to give play to adaptations of stereotypes of the popular. We need to do more of it today.

I thought it was dippy and pointless. The only reason I read it was because I had to for school. I would recommend everyone to steer clear of "Jane Eyre!!"

This book is sometimes only appreciated as a Victorian love story with engaging characters, but there is an additional depth to Jane Eyre: again and again she is faced with the dilemma of how to respond to social evil: does one endure and forgive (as befits a "lady"), or does one rage against injustice and fight to defend oneself? This is the unusual story of a Victorian woman who fights for herself and lives independently long before society provided any protection and support for this.

This book is for anyone who enjoys a love story of substance. When you read this book you feel as though you are there, living and breathing every word of every page. The heroine edures so much, even a suprising twist of fate, and still manages to come out on top. The characters, though simply defined, are rich in depth and emotion. Jane is an inspirational character while Mr. Rochester is absolutely enchanting, and, at times, enigmatical. That is what makes the story interesting and makes you want to keep turning each page to find out what happens next. It's the only book I've ever read where you get a sense of feeling with each word (that you know what each character is feeling without being told by the author). "Jane Eyre" makes Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice" seem stiff and unemotional.

I love the book. Don't cheat yourself out of reading the fantastic book by just reading the Cliff's Notes. But I do disagree with one point in the Notes. In the commentary on Chapter 19 it reads: "Note his words, uttered as if he were Jane, just prior to this point when he can no longer continue playacting: '. . . my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet- . . ." I believe that if you read the book you'll agree that Rochester is talking of his 'harvest' of love from Jane, not talking as if he were Jane. He wants her to love him and he says that he's acted as he inwardly swore but farther might try him beyond his strength. Meaning that he pretended to be the fortune teller in order to learn how Jane felt about him and to hint to her that he wishes a less formal relationship with her, hinting at his growing love for Jane. The Notes are good though especially at translating the French which in some cases knowing what it means is crucial to the story. All in all it's a good summary but read the book.

This is an excelent book. I am not in high school...I am in 7th grade and I consider this to be one of the most beautifully written pieces of literature that I have ever read. I have read such pieces as A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectaions, and none seem to measure up to the descriptions of Jane Eyre.

I read Jane Eyre for a class assignment and research paper. After 32 years, this is the first book that I read in it's entirety. It was a bit slow at first. Once I got through the first few chapters it grabbed me. This is wonderfully written and has continued my interest in reading books.

This book certainly entertained me for a couple of hours despite its far fetched plot (yet another mad woman?) and not well developed characters. The author thought a lot about how Jane and Rochester might interact as a married couple, given all that had happened to them, but if you are looking for the technique, vocabulary and "voice" of Charlotte Bronte, don't look here. This book is really a glorified romance novel and as such can be enjoyed as mind candy of the most frivilous sort. None of the supporting characters in this book would have behaved in the manner that the author conceives, if she remained true to the time of the story, but it is interesting to see her extrapolate from the original plot and set out on a modern tack. I am sure she had fun writing this novel, although I don't believe she is as deep a scholar of English lierature as is A.S. Byatt who in Posession totally created the "voices" and different language of the two poets. And all the editing mistakes - if I were the author I'd be embarrased with such an edition.

I read this book, despite all the bad reviews I heard about it. And though some parts were a little off, the book itself was interesting. And it helped passed the time. I do agree with most everybody about the sex scenes. They were a little...un-needed and explicit. The overall plot was okay. Interesting though. I didn't expect it. Whoever would have thought Jane and Rochester would meet up with yet another crazy woman.
The one thing I particularily did not like was the fact that Rochester wore an eye patch over his blinded eye. I just can't imagine him wearing one. Edward Fairfax Rochester was definitely not a pirate!

I was eagerly awaiting someone to write a sequel to one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre. While the narrative wasn't terrible, there were too many editing errors in this book to make it one of my favorites. Also, Jane's estrangement from her husband was not believeable - certainly not within character.