How Long Does It Take to Read Jane Eyre?

Short answer: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is about 184,000 words, which takes roughly 11 hours 50 minutes at an average fiction pace of 260 words per minute. A slower reader at 200 wpm needs about 15 hours 20 minutes; a fast reader at 300 wpm, about 10 hours 15 minutes.

Try the book reading time calculator for your own pace

Reading time at different speeds

Reading speed	Total time	Per day over 14 days
Slow, 200 wpm	15 hr 22 min	about 66 min
Average, 250 wpm	12 hr 18 min	about 53 min
Average fiction, 260 wpm	11 hr 49 min	about 51 min
Fast, 300 wpm	10 hr 15 min	about 44 min
Aloud, 183 wpm	16 hr 48 min	about 72 min

Unabridged audiobooks of Jane Eyre usually run roughly 18 to 20 hours, depending on the narrator; check the length of the edition you plan to use.

How the book breaks down

Jane Eyre was first published in 1847 in three volumes, and most editions keep the 38-chapter structure. The three volumes are not equal in length or in feel. The word counts below are counted from the Project Gutenberg text; times assume 260 wpm.

Part	Chapters	Setting	Words	Approx. time
Volume 1	1-15	Gateshead, Lowood, arrival at Thornfield	60,251	about 3 hr 52 min
Volume 2	16-27	Thornfield, the house party, the wedding	70,075	about 4 hr 30 min
Volume 3	28-38	Marsh End, Moor House, Ferndean	54,126	about 3 hr 28 min

The average chapter is about 4,850 words, or roughly 19 minutes, so reading one chapter a day finishes the book in 38 days.

What the reading experience is like

The first quarter moves fast. The childhood chapters at Gateshead and Lowood School are short, vivid and episodic. Most readers find they cover more pages per hour here than anywhere else.

Thornfield is the slow middle. Once Jane becomes governess, the book spends a long time on conversations: Jane with Mr. Rochester, Jane with Adèle, and the crowded house party. Dialogue-heavy chapters with long, formal Victorian sentences slow most readers down, and you will probably read at the low end of your range here. Adèle’s French is left untranslated in some editions, so a footnoted edition may add time.

The flight and the Moor House chapters change gear. After the interrupted wedding, the story speeds up with Jane’s escape, then slows again through the long scenes with St. John Rivers, which include extended religious and moral argument. Expect to re-read some paragraphs.

The ending is short and quick. The last chapters at Ferndean are brief, and most readers finish them in one sitting.

If you read for pleasure, plan for the slow Thornfield and Rivers sections; they are where readers who start with ambitious schedules usually fall behind.

Reading plans

Goal	Words per day	Time per day at 260 wpm
Finish in 7 days	about 26,350	about 1 hr 41 min
Finish in 14 days	about 13,175	about 51 min
Finish in 30 days	about 6,150	about 24 min
One chapter per day (38 days)	about 4,850	about 19 min

For a class or book club, a practical split is one volume per week: Volume 2 is the longest at about 4 hours 30 minutes, while Volume 1 takes about 3 hours 52 minutes and Volume 3 about 3 hours 28 minutes.

Page count and edition notes

Page counts for Jane Eyre run from roughly 400 to 550 depending on the publisher and type size, so use word count rather than pages to estimate your time. The text is in the public domain, and the word counts on this page are counted from the Project Gutenberg text of the 1847 novel. Annotated or critical editions (Penguin Classics, Oxford World’s Classics, Norton) add introductions and notes that are not part of the novel’s word count; allow extra time if you plan to read them.

How it compares

At about 184,000 words, Jane Eyre is long but not extreme. Pride and Prejudice, at roughly 122,000 words, is about a third shorter, and Wuthering Heights, at roughly 107,000 words, is about 40% shorter. Most readers find Jane Eyre easier to read than its length suggests because of its strong first-person voice.

Frequently asked questions

Is Jane Eyre hard to read?

The vocabulary and sentence length are Victorian, so it reads more slowly than a modern novel, but the plot is clear and the narrator speaks directly to the reader. Most readers settle in after the first few chapters.

How many chapters does Jane Eyre have?

38 chapters, split across three volumes in the original edition.

Can I read Jane Eyre in a weekend?

Yes, but it is demanding: you would need roughly 6 hours a day for two days at an average pace. A week is a much more realistic target.

Does the length change between editions?

The novel’s text is the same, but page counts differ, and editions with long introductions, notes or appendices are longer overall. See our pages to minutes converter if you only have a page count.

Is the audiobook faster than reading?

Usually not. Narration speed is slower than most people’s silent reading, so the audiobook takes longer, though many listeners increase the playback speed.