A Girl Walks Into a Book

by Miranda K. Pennington

  The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and to speak.

  “I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:—I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life—momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in—with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.”3

  How Jane feels about Thornfield is how I feel about her entire book, especially the end. And then Rochester turns the whole scene on its ear:

  “Where do you see the necessity?” he asked suddenly.

  “Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.”

  “In what shape?”

  “In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,—your bride.”

  “My bride! What bride? I have no bride!”

  “But you will have.”

  “Yes;—I will!—I will!” He set his teeth.

  “Then I must go:—you have said it yourself.”

  “No: you must stay! I swear it—and the oath shall be kept.”

  “I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!”

  “As we are!” repeated Mr. Rochester—“so,” he added, enclosing me in his arms. Gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: “so, Jane!”4

  Jane is no fainting flower, however swoony I am over her. She mocks her suitor until he finally wins her over, his “incivility” being his best proof of sincerity:

  “Your will shall decide your destiny,” he said: “I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.”

  “You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.”

  “I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.…

  “My bride is here,” he said, again drawing me to him, “because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?”

  Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.

  “Do you doubt me, Jane?”

  “Entirely.”

  “You have no faith in me?”

  “Not a whit.”5

  But yes, yes, of course, my dear Edward, we will marry you. Yes we said we will yes. This scene is possibly the greatest in literature. Maybe even in the history of the printed word. I may be exaggerating slightly, but imagine the peace and prosperity that would have followed if whole religions had been founded on this moment instead of all the messiness that came after “Let there be light.” Too much?

  Fine. Blasphemy aside, it has everything I love—a smart-mouthed heroine demanding her due, a previously aloof, suddenly impassioned hero speaking eloquently, a murky secret to add a foreboding air, and a storm whipping up in the background, as though all of nature were suddenly involved in the welfare of this unlikely pair. True, nature is thrashing about crying “noooooo,” but still—nature is invested.

  After initially being swept off my feet, in successive readings I became a literary detective. I scrutinized Rochester’s every word from the moment they meet until the scene where he proposes, to see if it was possible to detect his burgeoning feelings for Jane. Through older and wiser eyes, it is, obviously. Charlotte Brontë repeatedly shows Rochester on the verge of speaking and then breaking off in a fit of repressed emotions, or unsubtly goading Jane’s nascent jealousy, or glaring meaningfully into the fire. She cultivates an air of romantic tension so dense it seems like there should be a literary haze wafting through Thornfield. But then, I was distracted. We were so giddy, Jane and I, we missed the glaring red flag of Rochester’s aside, mid-proposal, when he mutters that Jane, having no family to interfere with them, is “the best of it.” Anyone who celebrates how penniless and alone you are while they are asking you to enter into a binding legal agreement is not to be trusted. But it flew directly over my head, because, to borrow a gesture: Reader, I loved him. I loved his sarcasm, I loved his schemes (heartless though they were). I was utterly convinced he was as miserable and repentant as he purported to be. Though I am puzzled by the tedious game of charades he played with his society guests and still have no idea how “Bridewell” is worth illustrating with three tableaux, I would give nearly anything to hear him sing. I imagine he sounds like Brian Stokes Mitchell and Ezio Pinza combined.

  Alas, on the day of their wedding, the intervention of a Mr. Mason and his attorney brings to light the horrible truth: Rochester already has a wife, the notorious Bertha Mason, who rages in his attic. Her brother Richard has returned to Thornfield, even after that nasty biting incident, to see that justice is done. Since we’re here, I should acknowledge that Jane Eyre is often criticized for Rochester’s treatment of Bertha. However, his accommodation of her violent mental illness was much better than she’d have gotten in any mental health institution at the time: a private suite of rooms in his mansion and a full-time attendant (albeit one who tipples). What other options did he have? Divorce laws at the time were fairly draconian, she couldn’t function independently, and at least he didn’t abandon her in the Caribbean. I’m inclined not to hold the attic part against him as much as the whole “lying about his imprisoned wife to his unsuspecting fiancée” thing.

  For those of you who feel strongly the opposite, I refer you to Wide Sargasso Sea, where your concerns will be addressed and accommodated by the incomparable Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea takes a maligned and misunderstood character and gives her not only a voice, but a whole world of her own. I think it’s noble and exciting to take someone like Bertha Mason, who in Jane Eyre is primarily an obstacle and an agent of chaos, and re-center her within cultural and mental health contexts that treat her more justly. The complexity of Sargasso and the proliferation of other Jane Eyre reinterpretations are testaments to what Charlotte left us, and to how fruitful exploring her work can be (or how disturbing, in the case of lamentable erotica that imagines a BDSM Rochester and Jane, or worse still, the steamy Wuthering Nights). You can call me a traditionalist, but I still prefer my Jane straight from the source.

  After the revelation at the altar and its humiliating aftermath, Rochester urges Jane to come away with him, promising that they’ll live like brother and sister in his Mediterranean villa. I might have believed him,* but Jane does not, and her self-respect will not allow her to remain with a man who hoped to make her his mistress. She flees Thornfield in the middle of the night, leaving all the clothes and jewels that would have belonged to Jane Rochester behind.

  This is the moment of Jane Eyre that has the most to teach impressionable love-struck young women: Self-Respect Must Triumph Over Self-Indulgence. It is also the moment most frequently disregarded as foolhardy and unnecessary garbage by impressionable love-struck young women. Particularly when Rochester, his mansion, and the promise of a life together may be all we’ve ever dreamt of. While my moral compas
s was, to put it charitably, still under construction, nearly every time I read it I thought, Why doesn’t she just stay?! Nobody has to find out! What I didn’t know was that it takes strength to walk away even when it’s obvious that staying has become impossible. Years and several Brontë books later, I would finally understand. But even then, I would have to force myself to emulate Jane’s self-discipline, and would do so imperfectly.

  Jane is saved from perishing on the moors by the Rivers siblings, St. John, Diana, and Mary. It’s refreshing to see Jane with her peers after being constantly at the mercy of rich people. After being a despised child, a capable teacher, a devoted governess (or maybe she was terrible—Adele’s education fades to the background after Jane and Rochester become an item), and a bride-to-be, Jane is finally just herself, and St. John sets her up as the instructor of a small village school.

  When Jane has spent a year supporting herself in this quiet way, St. John discovers, through a series of educated guesses and literary coincidences, that his dutiful friend is actually a long-lost cousin to the Rivers family on her father’s side.* Allow me to stop and unpack this family tree for a moment, because I have spent hours thinking about it and friends don’t let friends obsess over backstory unattended:

  Figure 3.1: The Eyre family tree.

  Long story short, St. John’s mother and Jane’s father were sister and brother, inexplicably never given first names. They had another brother, John, a wine merchant in Madeira, who has died and made Jane his Eyre. Sorry, heir. She promptly shares her fortune with the Rivers family, creating the first happy home she’s ever known (at least the first one not about to be destroyed by attempted bigamy). Then St. John ruins everything and proposes marriage to Jane—not out of romantic attachment, but out of an insistent belief that she will make a fit companion for his missionary’s life in India. Despite her misgivings and St. John’s utilitarian, truly horrible proposal, Jane is on the verge of accepting him when she hears Mr. Rochester’s voice crying out to her on the wind: “Jane, Jane, Jane!”

  I don’t question this bit of magic intervention at all. It’s never accounted for, never explained. It is perfect. My battered paperback practically falls open to it. I would not have been surprised or disappointed in the slightest to find out Mr. Rochester was secretly a wizard, and that the third act of the novel concluded with him revealing his hidden powers. No more skeptical of the supernatural than I, Jane hastens back to Thornfield to find it a broken ruin. An obliging passing shepherd fills her in on the necessary exposition—there was a fire, Bertha Rochester is dead, Mr. Rochester has been blinded and maimed, and he has exiled himself to a small manor house farther out in the country. That’s a level of comeuppance not usually seen outside of Greek mythology. You’ve got to love an author who makes room for mysterious inciting incidents and epic twists of fate while cultivating an atmosphere of realism so vivid, many critics maintained an unshakable belief that Jane Eyre really was an autobiography.

  Aspects of Jane Eyre’s Lowood school were so accurately depicted that her neighbors recognized the Cowan Bridge, the school on which it was based, which lent more credence to rumors of real-life “originals.” When Charlotte dedicated the second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray, contemporary audiences began to suspect not only that “Currer Bell” was a woman, but that she was Thackeray’s mistress. Unbeknownst to Charlotte (and the rest of fashionable London), Thackeray’s wife actually was mentally ill and living in seclusion upstairs in his London home. Charlotte was mortified when word of this speculation reached her (but not so mortified as to refrain from basing her subsequent books on real-life people and places—in fact, she struck even closer to home with Shirley).

  As a teenager, I embarked on a series of self-destructive infatuations with young men who had some of Mr. Rochester’s poor manners but none of his redeeming qualities (aside from the occasionally compelling baritone), inspired by Jane’s success in finding true and tender love in the heart of an outwardly rough and sarcastic man. I was always so eager and they were always so indifferent and together we were an absolute disaster—sometimes the explosive kind, sometimes the fizzling kind, but always the kind that leaves you wondering why you bothered. After yet another dismal dating interlude where I dumped a well-meaning sweet guy for an aloof one who unceremoniously abandoned me, I reread Jane Eyre and had an epiphany. All of my boyfriends were St. Johns. Every single one of them. Whether they expressed his anger or merely his tediousness, that’s who they were. But being young and not a bit Jane-ish, I went along with them, because I so, so wanted to be in love.

  At least I was able to realize, amidst my tribulations, that there was another explanation for always feeling different. Sometimes I wanted to swoon in the face of a swearing, swaggering dynamo; sometimes I wanted to stomp around with a snarl and romance the governess. I had overwhelming feelings for distant young men and engaging young women. A friend who came out as bisexual in middle school went through such an ordeal of teasing and humiliation that I decided to keep my realization to myself. Although I was attending a fairly progressive high school, “that’s so gay” and worse slurs were still thrown around on a regular basis. I finally felt like I had faded into the background after the bullying gauntlet of middle school; I didn’t need to revisit the experience.

  Besides, I knew how to flirt with boys. I’d been practicing on my male classmates for years. It passed the time. But I’d never knowingly flirted with girls. I didn’t have a script. I was intimidated by long hair and cosmetics prowess and cute sundresses. I assumed nobody was going to be attracted to me anyway. And forget about breaking it to my family—I thought they’d never understand. Though nobody is likely to be astonished when an androgynous bowl-cut-having child who turns into a basketball-jersey-wearing, dress-despising teenager then comes out as bisexual, I stayed in the closet until my twenties, pining for both Jane and Rochester without letting anybody be the wiser.

  My first copy of Jane Eyre listed “Charlotte Brontë” as the author, so I didn’t find out about “Currer Bell” or Charlotte’s other pen names until I was older. I was fascinated by the way she used the freedom provided by male personas to tell stories the way she liked to tell them. When did she go from Charles Townshend, who brusquely dismissed his critics, to Miss Brontë, who desperately hoped to be taken seriously as a lady? As I’d later find out, the transformation must have begun in Brussels.

  A Wish for Wings

  Mary’s letter spoke of some of the pictures & cathedrals she had seen—pictures the most exquisite—& cathedrals the most venerable—I hardly know what swelled to my throat as I read her letter—such a vehement impatience of restraint & steady work. such a strong wish for wings—wings such as wealth can furnish—such an urgent thirst to see—to know to learn—something internal seemed to expand boldly for a minute.

  —Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, August 7, 18411

  In the summer of 1841, while working as a governess in her second and final position, Charlotte began planning to open a school with her sisters, despite the fact that none of them particularly cared for teaching or scheduling or structure or young people. They probably assumed that being able to organize things their own way would make up for the nuisance of having to admit pupils.

  That September, Miss Wooler, Charlotte’s former teacher and employer at Roe Head, wrote to say her sister had decided to give up her school at Dewsbury Moor, and offered the Brontës the chance to take it over.2 It was an established institution in a familiar region, fully furnished; if they had actually wanted a school, it would have been a godsend. However, although Charlotte asked Aunt Branwell to loan them money for the undertaking, the scheme never quite took hold. This is as indicative of Charlotte’s ambivalence about teaching as anything else. To buy some more time, Charlotte decided she and Emily should go study abroad to enhance their qualifications.

  It’s true, the credentials of a foreign institution and improvement in their French, German, and music would have ma
de the Brontës’ school more prestigious. But really, Charlotte had been bitten by wanderlust. Mary Taylor, one of her school friends, had been regaling her with stories as she traveled around Europe, and Charlotte was intrigued. In a letter to Emily, Charlotte even suggested she intended to seek employment and remain abroad rather than returning home. With the help of the Taylor family, the Brontës found a pensionnat—a school for locals and boarding pupils—in Brussels in the rue d’Isabelle. It was run by a married couple who taught German, French, and Italian, and would allow the sisters to give English lessons. Patrick, Emily, and Charlotte traveled through London, crossed the Channel, and arrived in Belgium in 1842. Charlotte was twenty-six, Emily was twenty-four. It was a pivotal moment in Charlotte’s life; her experiences there would pervade her work until her very last novel.

  WHEN I arrived at Ithaca College for my freshman year as a music major, I had lofty expectations of dazzling my teachers and classmates. I had coasted through chorus rehearsals and voice lessons for years, and I expected to find the formal, full-time study of music as easy as playing for my family in the living room. Unfortunately, I realized after a semester that I was definitely not cut out to be a professional musician.

  Much like Charlotte valued education but hated teaching, I loved music but hated practicing. The solitary drudgery, the monotonous repetition—I had what Charlotte had called “a vehement impatience of restraint & steady work.” No performance would ever be perfect, and nothing less would ever be good enough. Not for my ambition, not for my pride, not for the casting directors of the world, or the bright lights of old Broadway. The fact that there was no easy road in the direction I had always wanted to go turned me off the whole idea for good. This has been a bit of a lifetime problem.