
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847
Charlotte Bronte created the founding text of the feminist tradition in the English novel. Jane insists on her own moral dignity against every pressure, and her voice still sounds startlingly contemporary. Every subsequent novel about a woman's interiority has had to reckon with this template, published the same year as Wuthering Heights.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.