Jane Eyre

By: Charlotte Brontë

Narrated by: Thandiwe Newton

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

"I think the reason we're so struck by [Jane Eyre] is how Charlotte Brontë manages to relate, expertly, what it means to be a human being...and that never changes." (Narrator Thandiwe Newton)

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety. Performing the early Victorian novel with great care and respect, actress Thandiwe Newton (Crash, The Pursuit of Happyness) draws out Jane Eyre's intimacy and depth while conveying how truly progressive Brontë was in an era of extreme restraint.

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Critic reviews

"Narrator Thandie Newton gives a delightful performance of this beloved classic. She delivers the voice of Jane from childhood to adulthood with elegant conviction, breezing through the dense sentences as if they were part of a contemporary novel." (AudioFile)

"[Thandie Newton’s] taut British diction makes a one-woman play out of the orphan girl’s love story, which starts out with all the young-adult tropes - the poor, good-hearted child abused by the spoiled, wealthy boy and his classist keepers, each distinguished by his or her own idiosyncratic cadence - but progresses into what many consider the prototypical Victorian novel. Written in 1847, not long before the start of the American Civil War, the novel makes repeated comparisons between Jane’s captivity, as an impoverished girl in a rich family’s home, and slavery. Newton’s exasperated and aptly melodramatic delivery of Jane’s accusation that her cruel stepbrother is 'like a slave-driver' is a knowing contemporary wink at this timeless yet dated classic." (The New York Times Book Review)