Never read this before and I thought it was really good. She writes clean, strong, prose and there were lots of bits of plot that are either omitted from (or I have overlooked in) the many film/TV dramatisations.
The passage when she is working for and falling in love with Rochester probably only occupies the middle 50% of the book- there is a back story at the beginning and another potential love affair with a Christian missionary. She rejects her cousin the missionary, who insists, needlessly, that they marry before she goes overseas with him as his companion and returns to Rochester to find the house burnt down, his wife dead, her lover half blind and having lost an arm in the fire. They can now marry, as he is a widow.
Really good book, a lot better, from my memory, than Wuthering Heights.
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