Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 6

A level 6 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West.

Jane Eyre is alone in the world. Disliked by her aunt's family, she is sent away to school. Here she learns that a young girl, with neither money nor family to support her, can expect little from the world. She survives, but she wants more from life than simply to survive: she wants respect, and love. When she goes to work for Mr Rochester, she hopes she has found both at once. But the sound of strange laughter, late at night, behind a locked door, warns her that her troubles are only beginning.

CHARLOTTE BRONTГ‹

JANE EYRE

JANE EYRE

Jane Eyre begins life with all the disadvantages that nature and society can give her: she has no parents, no money, she is a girl (in a man’s world), and, to make matters worse, she is not beautiful. She is made even more unattractive, in the eyes of the world, by having a strong character: she will not do what she is told to do.

She does not sound like the heroine of one of the great love stories of the world, and yet she behaves like one. The world looks at her, with all her disadvantages, and tells her to expect little from life. But Jane Eyre refuses to listen; she refuses to accept the unimportant place that the world offers to her. She demands that the world accept her as she is: not important, but the heroine of her own life; not beautiful, but deserving of love.

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First published in Oxford Bookworms 1990

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ISBN 978 0 19 479262 2

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of Jane Eyre is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479245 5

Printed in Hong Kong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Photographs in this edition are from the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation motion picture Jane Eyre (1944) and feature Peggy Ann Garner, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, Orson Welles, Margaret O’Brien, Jon Abbott, and Hilary Brooke. The publishers have made every effort to contact the copyright holder of the photographs, but have been unable to do so. If the copyright holder would like to contact the publishers, the publishers would be happy to pay an appropriate reproduction fee

Word count (main text): 31,360 words

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