Jane Eyre is about several episodes in the life of a small, plain-looking English orphan as she grows up with her abusive aunt and cousins, her harsh life at Lowood school where she is later sent, her life at Thornfield Manor years later where she falls in love with her employer Rochester, her time at Marsh's End with the Rivers family where a clergyman proposes to her and finally her reunion and marriage with Rochester.

Jane goes to Thornfield Manor to teach a young French girl, Adele Varens, who is Edward Rochester's ward. Jane falls in love with Rochester who eventually proposes to her. Before they get married, however, Jane discovers that Rochester is already married and that his wife lives in the Manor, guarded by a nurse because she is insane. Heartbroken, Jane leaves him and goes to live with the Rivers family. Later she learns that she has inherited her uncle's fortune and years later she decides to go back to Thornfield Manor, only to discover that it has been destroyed by a fire. She finds out that Rochester's wife died in the fire and Rochester, trying to save her, almost died and is now blind and crippled, living in Ferndean. She finds him and convinces the housekeeper, Mary, to let her see him. In this scene she enters his room, carrying a glass of water on a tray.