One of the greater pieces of English literature may also be one of the more difficult, if only because it's one of the richer and more complex books out there (not to mention, you have to deal with all that 19th-century English). Jane Eyre has, to put it simply, layers, and it may be challenging for your students to understand everything Bronte's got going on right away. 

Although it has many of the elements of gothic fiction that tend to draw students in—remote locations, dark secrets, foreboding family manors, and even a madwoman in the attic—the story is told through the consciousness of an unusually blunt and sometimes unsympathetic heroine.