Jane Eyre

American

[jeyn air] / ˈdʒeɪn ˈɛər /

noun

a novel (1847) by Charlotte Brontë.

Jane Eyre Cultural

A novel by Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre serves as governess to the ward of the mysterious and moody Edward Rochester. He proposes to her, but Jane discovers that he is already married to an insane woman. Eventually Jane and Rochester are reunited and, in a famous line, “Reader, I married him.”

Example Sentences

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Few heroines of English literature have as distinct a voice as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 2026

Emily's sister Charlotte also wrote "Jane Eyre" here, another classic of English literature.

From Barron's • Feb. 28, 2026

In 1820, the Brontes moved to the parsonage in Howarth, where the sisters wrote masterpieces including Emily's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte's Jane Eyre.

From BBC • Dec. 21, 2023

“Rice said, ‘Everybody knows who Jane Eyre is … and everybody knows who Frankenstein’s monster is.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 26, 2023

Miss Cowper still hadn’t made us start stupid Jane Eyre, so we had all 160 pages to look forward to—not that it mattered, because I wasn’t going to read it.

From "Okay for Now" by Gary D. Schmidt

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023