Our family is neither large nor small. I have a mother, a father and a sister. We all live together in a three-room flat in one of the industrial districts of Kharkiv. We are an average family.
My father Ihor Ivanovych is 45 years old. He is a tall and well-built man with short black hair and grey eyes. He works as a manager at a big plant. He likes his work and spends most of his time there. By character my father is a quiet man, while my mother is energetic and talkative.
My mother’s name is Olha Petrivna. She is a teacher of music and plays the piano well. My mother always has a lot of work to do about the house and at school. She is a busy woman and we all help her.
My sister’s name is Alla. Like our mother Alla has blue eyes and fair hair. She is a very good-looking girl. Alla is three years younger than me. She is a pupil of the 8th form. She does well at school and gets only good and excellent marks. Literature is her favourite subject and she wants to become a teacher, as well as I do.
Our family is very united. We like to spend time together. In the evenings we watch TV, read books and newspapers, listen to music or just talk about the events of the day. Our parents don’t always agree with what we say, but they listen to our opinion.
All of us like to spend our weekends in the country. We often go to the village where our grandparents live. They are aged pensioners now, but prefer to live in the country. My grand-grandmother is still alive. She lives in my grandmother’s family and is always glad to see us. Her health is poor and she asks us to come and see her more often. I also have many other relatives: uncles, aunts, cousins. We are happy when we are together.
Jane Eyre begins at Gateshead Hall, where a young orphan named Jane Eyre lives with her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and three cousins. Though Jane’s relations are wealthy, they are incredibly cruel and never let her forget that she only avoids poverty through their charity. As the relationship between Jane and the Reeds deteriorates, Mrs. Reed decides to send Jane away to Lowood school. Before Jane leaves, Mrs. Reed warns Mr. Brocklehurst (the manager of Lowood) that Jane is a liar, and he promises not to forget it. Offended by her aunt’s deceit, Jane vows never to forgive her.
The conditions at Lowood are very harsh. Mr. Brocklehurst is cruel and hypocritical, forcing the students to remain humble by making their own clothes and sharing beds while his own daughters live in luxury. The girls are given meager portions of often inedible food, and the school itself is freezing. Despite these difficulties, Jane manages to find a friend in Helen Burns, a fellow student. When Helen later dies during a typhus outbreak at the school, Jane is devastated. After the typhus epidemic, the unsanitary and grim condition of the school is publicly revealed, and Lowood is put under new management. Jane stays at the school for six more years as a student and two years as a teacher before setting off for a new job as a governess at Thornfield Hall.
At Thornfield, Jane’s pupil is a young French girl named Adèle. Adèle is the ward of Mr. Edward Rochester, the often-absent owner of Thornfield. When Jane finally meets Mr. Rochester, she is intrigued by his quirky personality and blunt way of speaking. Likewise, Mr. Rochester is fascinated by Jane’s honesty and strong convictions. Strange events occur during Jane’s stay at Thornfield: eerie laughs can be heard at night, a mysterious fire is started, and a guest is even stabbed. Mr. Rochester begins to court a local beauty named Blanche Ingram, upsetting Jane, who now recognizes that she has feelings for him. Jane briefly returns to Gateshead to visit the dying Mrs. Reed and learns that she has an uncle, John Eyre, who is looking for her. To Jane’s surprise, shortly after she returns to Thornfield, Mr. Rochester proposes to her rather than Miss Ingram. Their wedding is interrupted, however, by a man who claims that Mr. Rochester is already married. Jane is horrified to learn that Mr. Rochester’s wife, Bertha, is mad and kept locked up in the attic of Thornfield. Despite Mr. Rochester’s pleas for her to stay, Jane secretly flees Thornfield in the night.
Jane wanders for several days until, nearly starving, she is taken in by St. John Rivers and his two sisters. Jane gets along well with the sisters and is slightly intimidated by St. John. Soon, it is revealed that Jane’s uncle has died and left Jane a fortune. She splits this evenly between herself and the Rivers family—who she has recently discovered are her cousins. St. John urges Jane to marry him and come to India as a missionary’s wife, but Jane, knowing he does not actually love her, refuses. After hearing Mr. Rochester’s voice on the wind, Jane takes it as a sign and decides to visit Thornfield.
When Jane arrives at Thornfield, she is shocked to see that the hall is merely a charred ruin. A local innkeeper tells her that Bertha Rochester got loose one evening and set the hall on fire before leaping from the roof to her death. Mr. Rochester took great pains to rescue everyone in the house and, as a result, lost his hand and his eyesight. Jane goes to visit Mr. Rochester and they reconcile. Jane and Mr. Rochester marry, and his eyesight gradually recovers enough that he can see their firstborn son.