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Equal: Michael Peavoy as Mr Rochester and Jessica Baglow as Jane Eyre
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Jane Eyre
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
4*
“I AM no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will” — thus Charlotte Bronte’s great heroine Jane Eyre declares defiantly as she rages against a world that not only enslaves women but denounces those who speak out in the name of equality.
It's little wonder that the novel caused such an uproar when first published in 1846, with one reviewer accusing Bronte of being nothing more than a Chartist sympathiser. Given the novelist's withering attack on “good” society, it was a label that she was probably proud to wear.
Bronte's story follows Jane’s life from a poor orphan cruelly treated by her aunt and her banishment to an oppressive religious boarding school. As a young woman she appears to find some happiness as a governess for the rather odd Mr Rochester’s ward.
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