The Madwoman Upstairs

by Catherine Lowell

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a metaphor, sir.”

  It wasn’t a metaphor.

  Sir John said, “I called to inquire after the state of your father’s books. Have you received another?”

  “You,” I slurred, “are a sniveling worm by the name of Wackford Squeers.”

  “Are you throwing Dickens at me?”

  “It was the only thing I had lying around.”

  He cleared his throat. “The books, Miss Whipple?”

  “You have a one-track mind.”

  “You sound vague and unhappy, which I will interpret to mean that you need my help.”

  He was correct. “All right,” I said. “Fine. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall arrived. A little gem. Eight pounds, three ounces. She’s everything I thought she would be.”

  He ignored me. “Let us set up a time to discuss it, shall we?”

  His voice was aggressive and unattractive. I imagined having a tutorial with him. I did not like the idea. Oxford had taught me that intelligence came with different personalities. Some were happy, some were pleasant, some were arrogant, some were hostile. Sir John’s, I imagined, was the kind of intelligence that would sleep with you and never call you back.

  “Fine,” I said. “But only if we do this on my terms.”

  “Which are?”

  “I’d like to see the parsonage.”

  A pause. “No, I’ll come to you.”

  “Do you want to see the book or not?” I said. “You only see it if I can also get a personal tour.”

  “It is a long trip to the parsonage.”

  “I can handle it.”

  After another thoughtful pause, he said: “I will arrange a time.”

  “Groovy.”

  I had never used that word before, and I took a moment to recover from its unfortunate appearance in my vocabulary.

  “Do not forget to bring the books if you come,” he said.

  “I’ll have to ask first, but I think they will be up for the trip.”

  Another pause. I let out a slow peal of laughter, for no particular reason. We hung up. I let out a yawn. I could see my entourage of books—Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, and Tenant—stacked neatly in the corner to my left. They had won, it seemed. I had let go of myself and become one of them: strange, antisocial, obsessed, uncontrollable, artistic. I was not anticipating the inexplicable fondness that washed over me. I looked at those books and finally understood what it must feel like to be part of a loving, dysfunctional family, the kind everyone else seemed to have. Here was a group of people that I was beginning to love, if only because they were crazy, and mine.

  To: “Ellery Flannery” eflannery@old.ox.ac.uk

  From: “Samantha J. Whipple” swhipple@old.ox.ac.uk

  Subject: RE: Inquiry

  Dear Dr. Flannery,

  Thank you for your e-mail. My essay was due at midnight. Afterward, Dr. Orville and I spent some time analyzing allegory and sexual ethics. I’m sure he can explain it to you better than I can.

  Best,

  Samantha

  CHAPTER 13

  I didn’t see Orville again until the following Thursday. When I arrived at his office, he was standing on a stool, back toward me, pulling books out of the top shelf. He had tossed his tie over his left shoulder. I tried, and failed, to think of something charming to say.

  “You’re late,” he said to the shelves, then stepped down from the stool. He dropped a stack of books on the table. With his glasses pushed to the tip of his nose, he looked like he had just spent the morning contemplating the decline of capitalism. He stooped to pour two cups of tea. He didn’t need to ask me which kind anymore. I glanced at my watch. I was forty-four seconds late.

  Once I had my tea, he sat on the same couch where we had both been only a week before. His eyes were blacker than usual. I sat down across from him, tense. It seemed unnatural that we should go on naturally. I wanted to explain to him that things were uncomfortable and strained between us, in case he hadn’t noticed.

  I asked: “Did you like my story?”

  His voice was flat. “Was it supposed to be a children’s book?”

  “It was a short story about the Brontës,” I said. “A novella, if you will.”

  “Do you actually know what a novella is?”

  “A novel for short people?”

  “Very funny.”

  A hiccup of silence. He was acting unusually cold, as if the two of us didn’t know each other at all. I tried to pick apart his expression, but anticipating the next move of a near stranger was exhausting. I was conscious of nothing except how singularly large his shoulders were, and how small his head seemed in comparison.

  Orville said: “You’ve written me a history of the Brontë lives, but you haven’t thought to include any facts.”

  “False,” I said. “There are facts—you just have to look for them. Dig deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

  “I see,” he said. His face was immobile, like that of a taxidermied goat. “Have you no respect?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You have written Charlotte as a monster.”

  My cheeks reddened, and I didn’t answer. From the look on his face, I had just insulted his own sister. I suppose I had come across the genesis of his bad mood. We sat in suspended silence, as though we were playing roles in an agonizing postmodern play. Orville’s eyes bored into mine.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  The air was thick between us. He said, “Why don’t you just come out and tell me what you wanted to say.”

  “ ‘I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.’ ”

  “This,” he said, “is not the truth.”

  “Maybe not the literal truth,” I said. “But you can understand the Brontës better through my story than through any history book. You see—it all could have happened this way.”

  “It could not have happened.” His voice was sharp. My version of the Brontës must have collided with his, because his eyes had awakened. They were bright and cold. History, I had heard, was a deeply personal affair.

  “Tell me one part that is implausible,” I said.

  He raised his voice. “Anne Brontë did not try to murder her sister.”

  “Ah. See, I’ve decided that Anne Brontë was a madwoman,” I said.

  “A madwoman,” he repeated.

  “Yes. Jane Eyre’s madwoman. Charlotte Brontë’s madwoman. The real-life Bertha Mason. Of course she was a would-be murderer.”

  No response. I waited quietly for Orville to be impressed. I fancied that I had struck a gavel on an imaginary podium, and now I was waiting for the Earth to move. But Orville was not amused. His eyes seemed possessed with a self-generating blackness.

  “That is catastrophically inaccurate,” he said.

  “It might be inaccurate, but it’s still the truth. Do you think that Charlotte Brontë invented the madwoman in Rochester’s tower? No—she saw what her sister had become after five years of being a governess. I think I’ve figured out the grand mystery of what happened to Anne at Thorp Green. She went crazy, just like many governesses did.”

  Orville was not amused. “The author of Agnes Grey was no madwoman.”

  “Yes, but the author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was. Jane Eyre and Tenant are the same story, just told in two different ways. One is narrated by a woman seeking to find a mysterious madwoman lurking in a manor; the other is narrated by the madwoman herself.”

  Silence. As a response, Orville ran his hands through his hair, like a man who understood life too well to be wasting his time with Untermenschen. I thought he would let me spout off about my thesis in more detail, but he said:

  “The problem with you, Samantha, is that you are assuming that the madwoman is, in fact, mad.”

  I blinked. “Yes, a madwoman is mad. That’s why she is called a madwoman.”

  “Do you remember
our first tutorial? We had a conversation about a similar topic.”

  I said, “Yes, I remember.”

  I didn’t remember.

  He said, “Do you recall ‘Porphyria’s Lover’?”

  I thought about it. “Yes. You said that the man who strangled his lover was not mad, that the murder was art and therefore we should forgive him for being an asshole.”

  Orville waited. He looked very tired, or very old, or maybe both. “Not exactly,” he said eventually. “What I told you was that madness can be more rational than you assume. You have made the mistake of many inexperienced readers, which is to assume that literature’s madwomen, like Jane Eyre’s Bertha Mason, for example, are unstable and violent. But I would like you to consider Bertha more closely, and then, if you must, Helen. Bertha Mason has been abandoned by her husband, locked in his attic, and forced to live in a virtual prison. These are actions that have been committed against her, rather than actions that she has taken herself. Consider the moments when Bertha Mason does act of her own volition. She behaves in a pragmatic and calculated way. Starting a fire in Rochester’s bed is a premeditated act. I hardly need impress upon you the innuendo in this scene—or, judging from the vacant look in your face, perhaps I do. The fire occurs precisely as Rochester’s feelings for Jane begin to manifest themselves. Bertha—rebellious, exotic, deeply sexual Bertha—‘sets fire’ both figuratively and literally to Rochester’s bed. And in so doing, the neglected wife reminds her husband of where his true duty lies.”

  I made a face. “Can someone be ‘deeply sexual’?”

  Thwack.

  I gave a small jump. Where had the meterstick come from? Orville was still seated on the couch, but the stick was now in his right hand. Perhaps he kept it behind the sofa, the way I imagined men used to store dueling pistols in their back pockets. He seemed to be attempting to restore a power balance that we had somehow lost in the last few weeks. I sat up straight.

  “Next,” he said, “when Jane is scheduled to marry Rochester, Bertha sneaks into Jane’s room to rip apart her wedding veil. A coincidence? Bertha attacks the very symbol of Jane’s union to Rochester. This is not an act of insanity, Samantha; this is a careful warning to Jane issued by a woman who has already suffered the degradation of marriage herself. Bertha Mason is no more ‘mad’ than you or I. And as for Helen—if the community in which she lives treats her with contempt, it is only because she is a rational, single mother living at a time when rational, single women were condemnable. You view ‘madness’ as wild and violent; I view it as the logical reaction to wild and violent conditions.”

  A stifled thwack accompanied this last remark, but the meterstick hit a stack of newspapers and not the table. It seemed anticlimactic.

  I said, “You are trying to destroy the most interesting character that Charlotte Brontë ever wrote. If you look at the madwoman as what she is—mad—then you admit that Charlotte produced a female character powerful enough to be locked away. If you look at the madwoman as rational, as you do, then you take away the most original character of the nineteenth century. Why write about a madwoman at all, if she’s just a regular woman?”

  “Because the madwoman is far more compelling if she is a ‘regular’ woman,” said Orville. “No—don’t interrupt. If she is a frothing lunatic, then she becomes the most unrealistic part of Jane Eyre, and the one character that transforms the novel into implausible Gothic fiction. If, however, we treat the madwoman as a sane woman who has been locked up, then we force ourselves to acknowledge what did exist in the Brontës’ world: generations of women, who, silent and confined, reined in their passions and lived lives of seclusion. Consider the Brontës themselves. I find it best to respect their creativity rather than attribute their genius to insanity.”

  I didn’t respond. A long silence ensued, the kind that follows the slamming of a door. Orville had won, and he knew it. Somewhere deep down, his version of reality was more real than mine. I felt a cold hostility. My work—my beautiful little novella—seemed empty and useless. Orville added:

  “If you remember, I once told you to consider Grace Poole more carefully.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “If the madwoman in the attic is insane, as you say, then Jane would be frightened of her, no? But Jane does not fear the madwoman. She fears Grace. Grace is a minor character—a plain old invisible servant—who somehow occupies a disproportionately large amount of Jane’s thoughts and fears. Jane compares herself to Grace Poole, hoping not to see any similarity between the two of them. Don’t you see? If there’s a danger in Thornfield Hall, it does not come from Bertha. Jane Eyre is not running the risk of madness. She is running the real risk of spending forty years as a lonely servant, like Grace. The physical madwoman, Samantha, is irrelevant.”

  A pause. My brain was spinning quickly, but I found that I could not answer. As if he sensed my internal struggle, Orville gave a maddeningly bright smile.

  “You’re itching to argue with me,” he said.

  “Except that I can’t think of an argument.”

  “Is it because you’ve finally come around to thinking like an academic, and not a failed novelist?”

  I bristled. He grinned. That smile—I wished he would just eat it. I stared at his coal-black eyes and fought desperately to win.

  “Sir,” I said.

  “What.”

  “If I came to your room in the middle of the night and set fire to your bed while you were sleeping, I don’t think you would compliment me on my logic.”

  “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Common sense dictates that there was some part of these women that was mad, even if they didn’t thrash and froth at the mouth. Spend enough time locked away as a governess, and it’s bound to happen to anyone. Maybe Bertha had well-articulated motives for trying to kill Rochester, but look at the state she’s in by the time her brother finds her. Maybe they weren’t born mad, sir, but at some point, these women were driven mad.”

  Orville raised his brow. “Well, for once, Samantha, perhaps we can find a compromise.”

  Then, as if a long, long torture session had ended, he leaned back in his chair and put down the meterstick. I waited.

  “What? That’s it?” I said.

  Orville, to my surprise, just smiled. The clouds had lifted, it seemed. We had never had a meeting of the minds before. The room had changed. It was lighter, brighter. Everything felt inappropriately happy. My smile faded into a long, studious frown. What were we supposed to do now? Play cards?

  Suddenly, the phone rang. I jumped. I hadn’t heard a landline ring in so long that for a moment, I imagined we were back in the 1960s, in one of those old movies where all the men looked like news anchors. Orville said, “One moment,” and walked to his desk. He picked up the receiver with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Yes?” Orville said. “Oh, hello.”

  I listened to the faint voice on the other line. A woman? My interest was piqued in spite of myself.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “Can this wait?”

  Not a woman he liked, apparently.

  “All right, go on,” he said, glancing at his watch. “You mean now? Only if it’s brief. I am with a student. What? Yes. Yes, fine. Very well—come up, I am here.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye. I wondered if I had just gotten a taste of what it would be like to be married to him.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “One of our dons would like to inspect my doorknob.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “She is picking out a new one. A student broke into her room.”

  Just then, the world seemed to stop.

  I stiffened. “Rebecca Defoe?”

  “Yes, exactly. Now—where were we?”

  Panic hit me in the upper throat, and I found it difficult to breathe. The room took on an out-of-focus quality. Was Rebecca coming here? I needed to leave.

  Abruptly, I stood. “Well, this has been great. Anything e
lse?”

  Orville glanced at his watch. “It’s been twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty really great minutes.”

  He narrowed his eyebrows. “You’re pale. Is something the matter?”

  “I’m always pale.”

  “Your eyes, too, they are very large.”

  “The better to eat you with.”

  He sat down and leaned back in his chair. He had a curious expression on his face and I looked away, certain that all my sins had become visible. My eyes blurred. He was different; I was different; this entire day was different. Already, our tutorial seemed to belong to the long-distant past. I was sweating. I needed to leave. All of a sudden, I was living in the present tense, moment by moment. The clock ticks. The tutor’s mouth moves. The girl standing slowly goes mad.

  I said, “I’d like to go home.”

  “I told you that we were not finished yet.”

  “I’d really like to go home.”

  “To your tower? Are you ill?”

  “To Boston.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Please, sir.”

  But he didn’t let me leave, and I couldn’t exactly refuse him, so I sat back down. The minutes oozed past. We tried to continue our conversation. If the madwoman were not, in fact, mad, then what were the implications for Jane? For Grace? For Gothic fiction? I asked to use the restroom and was flatly denied. Orville chatted on and on, and I sat where I was, waiting for the executioner.

  Then, there it was—the knock on the door. My whole life, I knew, was about to end. There was a strange predetermination to the situation. I suppose the mistakes you make on page three always come back to bite you on page one hundred and eighty-three. Surprising, yet inevitable.

  Orville, who had stood up to switch on the kettle, said: “Would you mind opening it, Samantha? This will only take a minute.”

  I stood. Somewhere inside, I was screaming. All the fragile little worlds I had meticulously created for myself were collapsing like paper lanterns.

  I opened the door.

  There she was—of all the horrors. Rebecca Smith. I recognized her immediately. She had long, dead-looking hair that wasn’t quite gray and wasn’t quite black, but was instead a shiny charcoal color, one that made her look like a statue that had been rained on for several years. Her eyes were bleak and watchful.