Disclaimer: This may not be so much a review as a justification of my appreciation for this book far and above most classics I've been exposed to. It is also riddled with "spoilers," so please don't bother if you want to be surprised over the plot outcome. 
 (If you have somehow managed to avoid spoilers with a book that's been permeating culture for the last 170 years, I don't know what to tell you.) 
 A sweeping and broodingly complex story, told entirely in first-person from the title heroine's perspective. 
 I'm not sure if I slightly prefer Charlotte's writing to Emily's, or if I just vastly prefer Jane Eyre's story to the sheer dreariness of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff was pretty indisputably awful, despite the backstory that tried to make him vaguely sympathetic. The whole "I have been treated poorly, now I will rage against the innocent because those who actually did me harm are too dead to exact my revenge upon!"...yeah, that didn't work for me. >.> 
 (Prettiest descriptions of bog-land ever, though!) 
 Charlotte seemed to be going for a tortured anti-hero with Rochester. Unlike Heathcliff, he actually has regrets over his past mistakes. 
 Did he lock his dangerously unstable wife away in the attic? Yep, he sure did. (But considering the alternative in that era--abandonment in an abominable asylum--there's something to be said for the fact that he at least tried to take care of her.) 
 Did he find solace in a paramour? Yes, indeed. But the paramour wasn't exactly some poor innocent "girl," she was a French entertainer who had a lot more than Rochester hedging her societal bets. She abandons her child with Rochester so she can run off with a musician. Given the child doesn't resemble him and his mistress was famously promiscuous, Rochester has plenty of reason to reject responsibility for the abandoned child... and yet he doesn't. He takes her in at a very young age and finds her a governess. 
 Is Rochester manipulative in his courtship efforts and dishonest with Jane about his marital state? Absolutely. The dude is full-on dysfunctional on the relationship front. And yet... this is the same guy who later runs back into a burning building trying to save his crazed wife, despite the fact that she started the fire and clearly doesn't want to be saved--and he is ultimately crippled for his efforts. (Even though, letting Bertha die by her own hand would have technically solved most of his problems.) 
 That's not to claim that Rochester is any kind of ideal hero material, only that he is a believably flawed-yet-redeemable anti-hero. (One would be hard pressed to say the same for Heathcliff.) 
 I understand that some have only disgust for Rochester. The book Wide Sargasso Sea is built around a far more villainous interpretation of his character, in an effort to expound on the character of Bertha. (Though I think it's written with a bit of disdain for Bronte's original intentions.) But people needn't be in agreement with the quality of the heroine's love interest in order to recognize the quality of the overall work. 
 At its heart, Jane Eyre is more about the development and testing of the heroine's moral and spiritual values than it is about the actual romance. Jane draws the line at bigamy, and doesn't cave to Rochester's desperate, compromised reasoning. Despite her tragic background of having been orphaned and emotionally abused throughout her childhood, she still manages to stand up to the man she loves and leaves him rather than sacrifice her honor and self-respect on the altar of passion. And she still gets her happily ever after eventually, but at the roundabout expense of Bertha's life and Rochester's crippling. (Which is ultimately far more realistic than romantic.)