Jane Eyre

(Oxford World's Classics series). No novel, before or since, has caught so precisely the complex emotions of childhood, where feelings of powerlessness can mix with rage, and a bitter sense of injustice. From the early scenes, where Jane is locked in the red room, and learns to defy her aunt, through the oppressive regime of Lowood School, readers follow the turbulent swell of Jane's feelings. Her psychological struggles with Rochester, her Byronic employer, and St. John Rivers, her icy cousin, carry through the passionate contradictions of childhood. With critical apparatus. 488p.