80 pages • 2-hour read
Jane Eyre
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Book Club Questions
General Impressions
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of mental illness, ableism, racism, and gender discrimination.
Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.
1. How does Jane’s direct narrative voice, with her frequent “Dear Reader” addresses, affect your experience of the story? Have you read other Victorian novels, such as George Eliot’s Middlemarch, that employ this technique? How do they compare?
2. What was your initial reaction to the supernatural elements in the novel, such as Jane hearing Rochester’s voice across a great distance? Do these moments enhance or detract from the story?
3. How do you feel about the novel’s ending? Does Rochester’s partial disability and Jane’s inheritance create the equality their relationship needs, or does it feel like an artificial solution?
Personal Reflection and Connection
Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.
1. Jane repeatedly chooses her principles over personal happiness or security. Have you ever faced a similar moral choice between what you want and what you believe is right? How did you approach it?
2. The novel explores different models of Christian faith and practice. Did its depictions of religion, including the conflict between religious belief and personal desire, resonate with you?
3. Consider the various mother figures in Jane’s life (Mrs. Reed, Miss Temple, Mrs. Fairfax, etc.). Which influenced her development most significantly, and how does this reflect your own experience with parents or mentors?
4. Jane finds her family in her cousins Diana and Mary. How do you define family, and how has your definition evolved over time?
Societal and Cultural Context
Examine the book’s relevance to broader societal issues, cultural trends, and ethical dilemmas.
1. How does the novel’s treatment of Bertha Mason reflect Victorian attitudes toward mental illness, colonialism, and race? How have these attitudes evolved or persisted in the 21st century?
2. The novel presents various forms of social imprisonment, from Bertha’s literal confinement to Jane’s economic constraints. What forms of social constraint still affect women today?
3. How does Jane’s position as a governess illuminate Victorian class hierarchies? What modern professions face similar social ambiguities?
4. Throughout the novel, Jane struggles with feelings of being plain and unworthy of love. How do societal beauty standards still affect women’s sense of self-worth today?
Literary Analysis
Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and use of narrative techniques.
1. How does Brontë use weather and nature imagery to reflect Jane’s emotional state throughout the novel?
2. Analyze the significance of the split tree in the orchard. How does this symbol evolve throughout the narrative?
3. Consider the role of fire in the novel, from Bertha’s destructive fires to the warmth of hearth fires. How does this motif develop the story’s themes?
4. How do the novel’s various houses (Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Moor House, and Ferndean) function as both physical spaces and psychological landscapes?
5. Examine how the motif of sight and blindness develops throughout the novel, both literally and metaphorically.
Creative Engagement
Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book’s content and themes.
1. If you were to write a companion novel from another character’s perspective (similar to Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea), whose story would you tell and why?
2. Imagine creating a modern adaptation of Jane Eyre (as Rachel Hawkins did with The Wife Upstairs). Which elements would you keep, and which would you update for contemporary audiences?
3. Design an alternative ending for Jane and Rochester that still maintains the novel’s themes of equality and moral integrity. How would your version resolve their conflicts?
Unlock all 80 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs