Jane Eyre

The other Brontë novel of 1847 — same moors, opposite moral architecture. Where Jane survives through principle, Catherine Earnshaw is destroyed by passion. Reading both maps the full range of the Brontë moral imagination.

The definitive counter-narrative: Bertha Mason given her own history, voice, and perspective. Impossible to read Jane Eyre the same way afterward — which is the point.

Another Victorian novel about an independent-minded woman negotiating class and passion — but Gaskell's Margaret Hale operates in the industrial north's social conflicts rather than Gothic isolation.

Bildungsroman companion: Pip's social aspiration and Jane's social refusal are mirror images of the Victorian class obsession, seen from opposite directions.

Jane Eyre's direct Gothic descendant: the unnamed narrator, the brooding master of the great house, the dangerous secret, the first wife. Du Maurier transplants Brontë's architecture to the 1930s and strips away the happy ending.

The third Brontë sister's most important novel — another woman escaping an impossible marriage, but Anne's protagonist is already married and the escape is literal. Even more radical than Jane Eyre about women's right to leave.