From a tragic childhood when she is abused physically and emotionally by her inhuman aunt Reed to a youth when she falls in love with Edward Rochester—her Byronic employer at Thornfield where she works as a governess—only to learn on their wedding day about his lunatic wife, the passionate and principled Jane Eyre endures many hardships and oppressions. And after she leaves Thornfield, reduced to destitution, the rivers family becomes her benefactor. What happens when St. John rivers, her cold clergyman-cousin, proposes to her? Will she accept his proposal or return to Rochester?