Life is not easy for Jane Eyre as she tries to find her place in a sometimes unforgiving world. Moved from pillar to post, she encounters hatred and disdain at every corner. Her younger years spent unloved within the walls of Gateshead Hall. Only to realise the same fate as a governess for the Rochester family’s ward in the splendour of Thornfield Hall as ghosts from the past thwart her efforts to love and to be loved.
It is made clear to her that she is of no interest to the gentry within her world – her class and standing is considered inadequate to even consider such a marriage and she is inclined to believe she will live a life of solitude. However, her initial dislike of Mr Rochester begins to grow into love and yet his past comes back to haunt them both, denying them happiness.
A story about love, acceptance of who you are amid turmoil and snobbery, and the longing to belong is re-told beautifully by Patrice Lawrence, effortlessly taking the reader back to the words of Charlotte in an abridged version for young readers.
Patrice has captured the essence of the original story but has also ensured that mental health, misogyny, plantation wealth and depictions of Caribbean people are portrayed with greater sensitivity and awareness in her version.
“…Reader, I married him…”.
A sentence most Brontë fans will know only too well, and this abridged version of the classic novel retold by Patrice Lawrence, is a fantastic homage to a story that is loved around the world over the vast time since its first publication in 1847. With incredible illustrations by Hannah Peck, this is a fantastic addition to libraries, schools and bed-side tables up and down the country.
