We tend to think of the Victorian era as this complete cultural monolith, and of course that isn't true. Yes, sensation fiction was a Victorian phenomenon, but it surfaced later in the period. Jane Eyre was published in 1847, when the Victorian novel as we understand it*, was in its infancy. Like, yes, Dickens had been writing and publishing since the 30s (basically taking over from Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth), and had already published The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839) and A Christmas Carol (1843), but all his other major novels you can think about? David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), Our Mutual Friend (1865); all written from the 50s onward. Think other huge Victorian novels or novelists... Thackeray's Vanity Fair? 1848. Elizabeth's Gaskell first novel, Mary Barton, came out that same year. George Eliot's first novel, Adam Bede came out in 1859. Wilkie Collins, widely known as perhaps the biggest name of early sensation fiction? His first novel was published in 1850, and so was the case with Anthony Trollope.
What I'm trying to say is that yes, of course this kind of plotting existed in late 18th century Gothic literature, and people wouldn't have gotten the vapors over it, but whether you take the side that Jane Eyre was lambasted for coarseness or praised for its force (there's some debate over this, even after the publication of the critical heritage), the general consensus was that of it being a strikingly fresh and original novel. Unscrupulous publishers tried to present Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as being written by the same author of Jane Eyre, that was the level of crazy popularity and impact of the novel (which, btw, makes pretty ridiculous the theory that Charlotte tried to suppress her sisters' work out of jealousy).
So, no, of course Jane Eyre didn't kill anyone of shock, but also, yes, it WAS something shocking and new for its audience. It's worth mentioning in this context, that out of the three Brontë novels coming out that year, Jane Eyre was generally the one considered the tamest. The violence of Wuthering Heights made it definitely more controversial, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by uniting "coarseness", violence, and a heavy controversial political matter at the time (coverture and the rights of married women), was the most controversial by far. This is something a contemporary reader tends to have a hard time wrapping their heads around (cfr. that comic about how Anne was the only normal Brontë sister). There's a balance between understanding the general continuities between Victorian culture and our own, while being aware that in other respects it is a very foreign country to our own.
*yes, of course there was transitional literature of all kinds, silverfork novels following Austen but in the style of Bridgerton in terms of the taste for luxury, excess and dukes, early industrial novels where you can find someone like Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna or Frances Trollope, and newgate novels, which are in a way the predecessors of both detective novels and sensation novels. But all these were, fairly or not, considered very minor literature, general predecessors of the penny dreadful.
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