A Girl Walks Into a Book

by Miranda K. Pennington

  I talked to friends, I talked to counselors, I tried, of course, to talk to Eric himself. The first day, he offered me a brisk apology, and when I was still upset he acknowledged he’d been wrong to lose his temper. He didn’t seem to see the crack in our foundation. The next night, armed with the validation of people with more relationship experience, I tried again. It was an uphill battle in the pouring rain. It was apparently very important to him to be in a relationship that allowed him to absolutely lose his shit at the woman he loved, without consequences. I curled up in a ball, clutching Roxy, who was panting with worry, and tried to make sense of it.

  Eric had always had tempestuous relationships before, and thought the occasional explosion was normal. The fact that we’d never had a big fight in nearly three years of dating was an anomaly in his eyes, not an ideal. True, I had never gone through significant ups and downs with another person, but I had endured my share of confrontations. There had to be a better way to handle them than abandoning all veneers of civility just to get to the Long Island Medical Center. Besides, my sensitivity was something I hoped he’d recognize and want to protect, not something to brush aside.

  “I can’t be with someone who screams at me,” I finally said, in a moment of courage.

  “Then I guess I have a lot of thinking to do,” Eric said with contempt, before going to sleep on the couch. When I woke up the next morning, after he had already left for work, it was time to map out my exit strategy. I made an appointment to see a nearby apartment share, emailed movers for a quote, and made plans to crash with Kate in the meantime. The only thing that calmed my nerves was faith in my own competency—if I needed to go, I could go, and it would be okay. Jane Eyre 101.

  Before leaving for work myself, I packed up the essentials. A few days of clothing, toiletries, food and toys for the dog, my laptop, the teddy bear that had accompanied me around the world, and the battered copy of Jane Eyre that had started this whole thing. My plan was to go to work, come home after my shift to break the news to Eric, and then head to sanctuary in Brooklyn.

  When I walked in, he was at his desk in the corner, quiet but still defiant. I think he expected to go for round three. He thought the fact that I didn’t want to live without him would conquer my sense of self-preservation. He had reckoned without the combined power of the Brontës. I quietly explained that I didn’t want to be with someone who tried to diminish my joy in what I loved, who didn’t want to protect me where I was vulnerable. Because if I can’t go to my partner with my pain, my fears, who can I go to? I wasn’t going to try to talk him into being someone he wasn’t. I didn’t have the answers. I couldn’t script my way out of this.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “So what now?” he said.

  A long pause. And then, a moment of truth.

  “I think I have to go,” I said.

  He could have said nothing, and let us shake apart. Or tried to thunder me into staying, which is what Rochester would actually have done. Instead, something remarkable happened. Eric left his desk and joined me on the couch.

  He took my hand, and quietly said, “Please, don’t go.”

  In the next few hours, I watched him voluntarily demolish all the walls he’d bricked around himself. I didn’t have to say much; he was finally ready to talk. He still didn’t know why he was so tangled up about marriage, but he knew full well he’d been an ass—and not just that week, but for months, he’d spent the entire time fending me off as I worked to knit our lives together. He’d been scared and stubborn and arrogant, and he apologized wholeheartedly.

  The next few days felt wrapped in cotton—we were each gentle and ginger. I felt bruised; he knew how thin the ice was. We dismantled the tiny wedding, and since all our tickets were nonrefundable, I took two of my closest friends to Maine for a strange weekend of spa treatments and restaurant reservations in the shadow of our phantom nuptials (which I do not recommend). The lock we’d placed on the dock of Old Port was gone—whether it had spontaneously cracked like the Dark Crystal or was removed by the board of tourism to make room for the next batch, I couldn’t be sure.

  Every day since, I’ve looked for Eric’s concerted efforts to be open, to listen and to reach out to me—the way he did when I fell for him, while we worked side by side. For months after we decided to stay together, I was defensive at the slightest conflict. I am still impatient, always racing ahead, prone to great expectations, and hating to have them thwarted. But I stand up for myself more consistently in matters large and small, whether Eric likes it or not. Eric is still more patient and more cautious than I am, still goofy and sweet in turns. Our solid foundation, six years of friendship, is always there when we reach for it. We jockey for independence and seek out moments of collaboration, usually in good humor. We have to remember to be romantic, and to get away from the city together as often as we can. I always thought “relationships take work” was a cliché that referred to making decisions or compromising on big choices like furniture or apartments. Now I know it’s a daily effort to be attentive, to fight the urge to tune out, to apologize for hurt feelings even though you said exactly what you meant, to coordinate making dinner or walking the dog without sighing in exasperation because we just did this a day ago. It’s just what I hoped for, when we both work at it, and plenty I didn’t expect. As Charlotte herself said of matrimony, “it tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself.”7

  WHEN Jane and Rochester finally got married (and let’s not forget their first wedding attempt was a way bigger disaster than ours), they just slipped down to their local church. Afterward, Jane casually informed the household servants they’d been married. “Huh,” they said. Life went on. It was not a fairy tale after all—two people met on a windswept road and decided to keep walking it together.

  During the last snow of winter on the first day of spring, Eric and I stood in front of a Justice of the Peace at City Hall—or rather the Marriage Bureau at a federal building a block away. Out front, where enterprising New Yorkers will sell you everything from wedding rings to photography services, stand up as your witness or polish your shoes, I bought pale pink roses for Sally, who was our witness, photographer, and maid of honor all in one; I chose hot pink roses for myself, and a white one for Eric’s lapel. I wore a silver bracelet from my mother, blue glass earrings from my Aunt Bobbie, purple ballet flats Sally had brought for me to borrow, and a tea-length black dress.

  The whole ceremony took two and a half minutes. We didn’t anticipate we’d actually get to say the vows we’d written, so when the officiant asked Eric, “Do you have anything to say to Miranda?” and paused expectantly, we had to wing it. Eric said this was the happiest day of his life. When it was my turn, I went blank, and truthfully said it meant a lot that we’d even made it there that day. When we were first dating, I used to hold my breath before saying “I love you,” which Eric said felt like a tiny leap of faith, every time. We agreed to make that leap together, as often as we could. The officiant almost forgot to have me slip Eric’s ring onto his finger.

  We called my parents to tell them the news. My dad welcomed Eric to the family and put us on speakerphone, my brother gloated that he’d known about it the whole time, and my mother icily congratulated us from across the room. A few weeks later, we made plans to go down to Virginia for a visit—what the Victorians would have called a bridal tour. Mom began planning a small gathering for her best friends that immediately became a formal dinner at a nearby historic house, decorated with large pictures of Eric and me, and featuring a suspiciously white three-tiered cake. It was not a wedding, but it was all the proof my mother needed that had she been allowed to throw me one, it would have been a tremendous success. I do think part of my resistance to a big wedding was a lingering uncertainty that anyone would care to attend, and it was wonderful of my mom to show me that I needn’t have worried. It was a beautiful party full of family and friends who’ve known me practically all of my life. I have no regrets—except to wish
I’d brought home more of the cake.

  WHEN Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nicholls were quietly married in 1854, his profession on the marriage license was “clerk”; hers was “spinster.” Ellen was fairly antagonistic toward Nicholls, but when Charlotte finally walked down the aisle, Ellen helped her with her bonnet and Miss Wooler gave her away.

  Charlotte approached the married chapter of her life with independence and low expectations. Her letters reflect respect, compassion, and appreciation for her husband, if not passion or adoration: “I make no grand discoveries—but I occasionally come on a quiet little nook of character which excites esteem—He is always reliable, truthful, faithful, affectionate; a little unbending perhaps—but still persuadable—and open to kind influence. A man never indeed to be driven—but who may be led.”8 Her higher estimation of Arthur began when she accompanied him to his hometown in Ireland on their honeymoon. Seeing Nicholls through the eyes of his family and his neighbors helped her reexamine his strengths; he was greeted enthusiastically and praised highly wherever they went together. I recall the first time I saw Eric and his brothers all together with their families—particularly the way he played with his nephews and niece. Let’s just say it was not ineffectual that even on the day of The Incident, I received a picture of him holding a newborn.

  Like Gaskell, who said, “I like his having known… all she has gone through… and being no person who has just fancied himself in love with her because he was dazzled by her genius,” I do appreciate that Arthur knew Charlotte as a writer—and probably loved her well before he knew about her literary fame.9 After all those years of hiding her literary life from Ellen, it must have been marvelous for Charlotte to know that the man who loved her also loved her work. Talking with Eric about my writing has occasionally been more fraught than discussing how long to stay at either family’s Thanksgiving.

  An unfortunate (but not unexpected) consequence of Charlotte becoming Mrs. Nicholls was that his clergy duties kept her from writing. Most of the surviving letters written during her marriage feature some form of “Arthur is calling me, I must go,” or, “My time is not my own now; Somebody else wants a good portion of it—and says we must do so and so. We do ‘so and so’ accordingly, and it generally seems the right thing—only I sometimes wish that I could have written the letter as well as taken the walk.”10 If they had lived longer together, I imagine Charlotte would have reclaimed her time eventually. Even without having kids, truly functioning as part of a couple is tricky, for a variety of reasons. My writing thrives when I have several weeks at a time to log four- or five-hour shifts without distractions, until the dog’s persistence drags me out into the world to blink at the sun and stretch. If Eric and I get serious about having kids, I know the balancing act will get even more precarious. I’m looking forward to it anyway. Most of the time.

  As if it wasn’t enough for Arthur to co-opt Charlotte’s evenings, he also interfered in her correspondence, particularly with Ellen; Charlotte quoted him as saying “such letters as mine never ought to be kept—they are dangerous as lucifer matches.”11 He even exacted a pledge that Ellen would burn Charlotte’s letters, threatening to censor the content if she refused! Instead of giving him a Shirley Keeldar–style dressing down on the rights of women correspondents, Charlotte found it amusing, and said, “It is a man’s mode of viewing correspondence—Men’s letters are proverbially uninteresting and uncommunicative—I never quite knew before why they made them so.… As to my own notes I never thought of attaching importance to them, or considering their fate—till Arthur seemed to reflect on both so seriously.”12 This is the Victorian equivalent of the “you’re not going to tweet that, are you?” conversation we have at our house regularly before I post something ridiculous Eric has said online. Maybe Arthur’s tone was lighter than comes across in Charlotte’s letters, or maybe she fully intended to write whatever she wanted regardless, but her laugh-it-off reaction seems odd. Arthur’s attitude is at best patronizing and at worst heretical, at least in the eyes of this fan, who treasures her ability to snoop in Charlotte’s private correspondence. I have to acknowledge he was also right to be cautious; neither of them could have imagined how many people would read Charlotte’s letters in the next two hundred years.

  The fact is, I do not think I like Arthur Nicholls at all, even though he was clearly a comfort to Charlotte as her father’s health failed, and even more so as her first trimester of pregnancy left her seriously ill. Nicholls obviously loved Charlotte very much. The house in Ireland where he retreated after Patrick Brontë’s death, which he later shared with his second wife, was full of Charlotte’s drawings, her letters, her books, and even those precious Young Men’s Magazines. Many of the Brontëana collections around the world take their provenance from the auctions of the Nicholls estate.

  But first of all, he seems like a bore. Second, his handling of Charlotte’s legacy was exasperating—when he and Patrick hand-selected Elizabeth Gaskell for Charlotte’s biography, they guaranteed that Charlotte’s reputation as a shy, sheltered girl who grew into a weak and sickly woman would endure for decades. Nicholls folded the Branwell portrait in quarters and put it on a shelf, and worse yet, agreed to publish The Professor without significant revisions after Charlotte’s death. Even Charlotte knew The Professor was beyond redemption! And it is! Unless maybe I just need to read it again.

  I’m frustrated with Charlotte, too—I don’t know how to reconcile the wild, romantic young woman, whose Jane Eyre reached into my heart and switched the light on, with the practical thirty-nine-year-old bride who just didn’t want to be alone anymore. I decided being with Eric was worth the price of his imperfections and that I could trust him to accept mine—but when it came down to it, I would have managed being alone again just fine. Then again, who am I to judge what Charlotte determined would suit her best as she got older? At least she picked a husband she could tease.

  I suppose it makes me angry that Charlotte spent the last two years of her life on a man who kept her from her work—whose career she knew would keep her too busy to write, and whom she didn’t even love, not the way she knew love could be. In her final illness, she wrote to Ellen Nussey, “I want to give you an assurance which I know will comfort you—and that is that I find in my husband the tenderest nurse, the kindest support—the best earthly comfort that ever woman had. His patience never fails and it is tried by sad days and broken nights.”13 That is some consolation. After her death, Nicholls fulfilled his promise to continue caring for Patrick Brontë until his death at the age of eighty-four—he outlived the last of his children by six years.

  Charlotte Brontë Nicholls died on March 31, 1855, of “phthisis” associated with tuberculosis. It was exacerbated by hyperemesis gravidarum, the excessive pregnancy-related vomiting and dehydration lately suffered by the Duchess of Cambridge during both of her pregnancies. We can be reasonably sure Charlotte knew she was expecting, because she wrote to Ellen asking about a mutual friend’s pregnancy symptoms; she found the similarities reassuring, but in the end her illness was much worse.

  It will have to be enough that Charlotte got what she wanted. It doesn’t matter that it’s not what I wanted for her.

  THERE are moments you don’t see in literature when authors pan forward ten and twenty years—the dynamic contractions and expansions that mark the days and weeks and months of a life together. It’s odd to have to remind myself that in my marriage, the only behavior I can successfully modify is my own. I’m constantly squirreling away parts of myself that don’t fit the “couple” version of me. Later I rediscover the art supplies, the romance novels, the Bollywood DVDs, the old radio shows, the video games, and realize how much I missed whatever it is I instinctively hid. Eric doesn’t ask me to set these things aside—it wouldn’t even occur to him, any more than he’d think to conceal parts of himself. No, I hide these things voluntarily, and then consider myself bereft.

  I don’t ever want our marriage to become a dilapidated mansion
with rooms boarded up or curtains drawn, whole wings abandoned while we crowd into the kitchen to step on one another’s toes, or worse, stomp out into the night. I want this marriage, our marriage, to be a much kinder ending than a shipwreck. And so far, it is. We have low moments, when we find unexpected corners that jab or rough spots that chafe. I measure our lives with my eyes on the minute hand, while he marks leisurely hours and feels content instead of anxious. I am learning it’s okay to be mad; he’s learning it’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s difficult, but I make myself turn toward him to ask for what I need, again and again if necessary. I try to remember he likes it when we go to the store together, that his feelings get hurt sometimes too. I count myself lucky that Eric is a decided romantic, better at big gestures than anyone I’ve ever known. I never doubt that he is glad we got married.

  To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, we returned to the island in Maine where we got engaged. We took the same ferry, visited the same restaurants, and laid the ghost of the canceled elopement to rest. One evening we walked over to the rocky beach where Leslie got married. On the way, we talked through that unpleasant year. It felt like releasing a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. I filled my lungs all the way up for the first time in ages. After everything, I would still choose Eric. I do, in fact, every day. Almost every day. By the end of the day, for sure.

  Sometimes I mourn that starry-eyed girl who had such faith that marriage would mean she felt adored and beloved forever; that’s a fairy tale nobody could have provided. But I don’t feel sad for too long. Instead of a perfect happy ending, or even her favorite weird ones, she has found a partnership worthy of Shirley, a healthy sprinkling of caution from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and a M. Paul Emanuel of her very own. That shining spark of Jane Eyre’s passion has survived too, and she prizes it all the more for nearly having lost it.