Secure Jane Eyre Drafted By Charlotte Brontë Edition

probably read this first when I was aboutand loved books like sitelinkWhat Katy Did at School and the sitelinkMalory Towers Series, I'm not sure if I loved the books as any little girl might or because I wanted to go away to school to escape my mother/didn't want to go away to school because i would feel abandoned.


My mother didn't love me and wanted me to go to boarding school, There was a very good one in the nearest city I lived in a village aboutmiles away, My father wouldn't hear of it, he went to work in the city every day and I remember him saying to my mother, how would I feel if I was left there and he came home every day They had a big row which I overheard and my mother suggested a compromise, that I come home at weekends.
My father wouldn't go for that either,

Then I was supposed to go to Cheltenham Ladies' College, but after a brief interview they declined to have the third member of my family, The other two, cousins, one on my father's and one on my mother's and coincidentally we all have variations of the same first name, had both been expelled.
Probably about boys, I forget now, but we were all 'early developers' that way and we weren't like really wellbehaved either, Being expelled runs in the family, me too, several times, And my brother but he was expelled from Hebrew school only, He put a firecracker in the headmaster's desk, which my father had also done and also got expelled for but we didn't know it until my brother got into trouble.


I didn't want to go and not be with my father who loved me, but I did want to go and get away from my mother and to some extent my younger brother, the golden child who didn't have to do anything, no chores, nothing, and got everything he wanted.
That was rubbed in by the housekeeper we had a livein housekeeper who never lost an opportunity to show how much contempt she felt for me, She made my brother's bed, washed his underwear, hung up his clothes and shined his shoes, as she did for my parents, bu tnot me, It wasn't that the chores were onerous, it was that I was the only one in the house excluded from having them done,

My father though, had hated boarding school, He was expelled from several, He used to run away, He had a strange upbringing, He also lived in a village, and there were boy cousins there was only one girl in his generation of a lot of boys in another village and a lot more in the city.
Whenever any of them got into trouble they would just go and stay with an aunt instead of going home, He told me no one really minded who turned up at the dinner table and they were always ready with excuses, So then he would get away with having run away for a couple of days until the school called his mother, my grandmother who loved me very much, and she would have to track him down and there would be hell to pay.


On his third school, he wrote the classic note of novels, I saw it and wished I owned it, He wrote to his mother, "Don't try to find me, I have gone and joined the army, " She went and got him back and persuaded the school to take him back, He hated school. He wanted to be a farmer and went to Agricultural College rather than university, but on his father's death had to join the family company, So my father was really keen on not sending me away and not forcing me into a career I really didn't want,

So in Jane Eyre going to boarding school, I could see myself as the outcast, the one who wasn't accepted, the outcast, the plain girl as my mother was always rubbing in, fat, plain, awful hair, thunderthighs and best dressed in brown, grey, bottle green or navy, never pink, red, or flower prints.
So I felt like Jane, I identified with her, Although I was a hair model in my teens and later in films, I never felt more than adequatelooking until mys when I started to see myself in a more positive light.
I thought if I could get away maybe I could become part of a group, people would like me, I also thought I could get away from the endless berations of my faults and the accompanying beatings,

I reread it at aboutand understood the book much more, I've probably read it, and it's 'prequel', Jean Rhys's sitelinkWide Sargasso Sea half a dozen times, Jean Rhys was from Dominica, an island I know well, When I was first there her family home in Roseau had become a guest house and that was where I stayed,

Not much of a review of an excellent book, but it was why I loved it so much, “Jane, be still don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation,

I am no bird and no net ensnares me I am a free human being, with an independent will which I now exert to leave you.
”

I am glad that inCharlotte Bronte made the decision to publish her novel under a male pseudonym, Currer Bell had a much better

chance of being published than Charlotte Bronte and, with reviewers and readers assuming that she was in fact a male writer, allowed the novel a chance to be weighed properly without prejudice.
Jane Eyre became a bestseller, The question is, of course, would the novel have been so successful or even published at all if CHARLOTTE BRONTE had been emblazoned on the cover I like to think that some editor would have realized the bloody brilliance of the story and would have published it anyway, even if they didnt spend any money on promoting it.
Would readers have bought it Hopefully, word would have trickled out about how compelling the plot was, and people would have overcome their natural prejudice for reading a novel by a woman.


So isnt it fun that Charlotte tricked everyone, including her own father She did not confess her efforts to him until she had become successful, Even writing these words, I have a smile on my face thinking of this successful bamboozlement of publishers, editors, and readers,

The story, of course, is larger than the book, Most people with any kind of inquisitive nature have been exposed to the bare bones of this novel without ever reading the book, Maybe they watched a movie based on the book, or maybe they have heard it referenced, Once read, it is impossible for people not to use aspects of this novel as common reference points for other readers,

Take Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester himself, the master of Thornfield Hall, He is a brooding, complicated, dark, and intelligent creature, He is a force of nature who conforms the world around him with every stride he takes or every word that drops from his lips, He is the embodiment of the Lord Byron character, It doesnt matter that he is not handsome, He is powerful. Women swoon in his presence and, after a carefully administered smelling salt, might start calculating what he is worth a year,

Rochester is completely taken by Jane Eyre, practically from the moment they meet, The drama of their meeting is one of those great cinematic scenes in the history of literature, Bronte incorporates many scenes into the novel that are, frankly, gifts to future movie renditions, Rochester has never met anyone quite like her, He is not alone. Everyone who comes into contact with Jane Eyre knows they have met a unique person, She is a kind and pleasant person, but she will not brook any discriminations against her character,

Mrs. Reed her aunt, Mr. Brocklehurst director of Lowood School attended by Jane, Mr, St John Eyre Rivers minister who asks to marry her, and even Mr, Rochester, all attempt to conform Jane to the acceptable, deferring Victorian woman of the time, To call this a feminist novel does put it in a box which constrains it too tightly, Jane or Charlotte, either one, would loosen those bindings and let it breath as Charlottes intentions with this novel go well beyond the confines of any specific genre.
I found her ideas of female equality, embodied so wonderfully in the character of Jane, inspiring, ”Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their effort, as much as their brothers do they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer, and it is narrowminded in their more privileged fellowcreatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex, ”

I hear you, Charlotte,

Can you imagine the impact of such words on your typical, Victorian housewife A woman who has lived her whole life being the daughter of her father, the wife of her husband, the mother of her sons.
She has been passed from the care of one man after another, If she were fortunate enough to be born pretty, she has that brief moment of power when suiters contend for her hand, but probably, ultimately, her father would decide who was best for her to marry.
How about the impact of reading this novel on the typical, Victorian man Did he look up from this book and peer over at his wife, she looking rosy in the firelight, knitting away at some frivolous thing, and think.
. . does she want more Or maybe he sees his pretty daughter enter the room on the verge of womanhood, and does he consider the possibility that she wants or deserves more

There is no spark of revolution inspired by this book, but I do hope that this book may have chipped away at some of the archaic ideas of inequality.
Maybe a few women readers realized that some of those secret desires they have harbored their whole life were not such strange concepts, When Jane stands up to the conformists she encounters, she is willing to take the punishment because she knows in her soul that what she believes about herself is incontestable.


This is no better illustrated than in her interactions with Im sorry to say this because it isnt completely fair the odious St, John Eyre Rivers. He wants to marry her but only for the sake that he believes she will make a wonderful, useful, missionary wife, He doesnt love her. She is willing to go, but only as a “sister,” not as a wife, Jane refuses to compromise, but there is this moment where she is teetering in the balance, Im mentally screaming to her at this point, ”I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrowhis hold on my limbs, ” He is a cold man who would have gladly marched OUR Jane off to some godforsaken part of the world to die some horrible death from disease or from simple neglect.


I know the plot and yet, Im still completely invested in every scene, There is always the possibility that Ive fallen into an alternative universe and I am reading some other version of Jane Eyre with a completely different ending.
I can assure everyone this did not happen,

When Jane is residing with Mrs, Read, she describes her place to sleep as a “small closet, ” I cant help but think of the closet under the stairs atPrivet Drive, Like Harry Potter, she is also an orphan but still with a rebellious streak because she is also sure that she is supposed to be someone other than who she is currently perceived to be.
The relief she experiences when she learns she is getting away from the condescending attitude of the Read house and going away to school at Lowood also reminds me of Harrys relief to discover he, too, is escaping to Hogwarts.
Though I must say Harry, despite the trials and tribulations he experiences, draws a better straw than Miss Jane,

I really enjoyed the gothic elements those were, to a degree, completely unexpected, ”Oh sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured faceit was a savage face, I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!

Ghost are usually pale, Jane,

This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes, Shall I tell you of what it reminded me

You may,

Of the foul German spectrethe Vampyre, ”

There are noises in the night at Thornfield Hall, There is an unknown tenant locked away in the rafters of the house, There are secrets. There are unexpected fires. There are scandals waiting to be known, In fact, the twists of the plot were considered so outrageous for the time that the book acquired a reputation for being “improper, ” This helped to boost sales further,

The Bronte family was very close, They grew up conceiving their own stories and fantasies and acting them out in impromptu plays, All three girls and the brother, Branwell, were writers, Tragically, they all died young, Charlotte outlived them all, dying inat the age ofwith her unborn child, Branwelland Emilyboth passed away in, and Anne died the following year at the age of, Can you imagine having to bury all your siblings It must have felt like the spectre of death was stalking the Brontes,

What makes Rochester unique is that he does eventually see Jane the way she sees herself, ”Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of his eyes, ” I will remember that line ”desire of his eyes” for a long time, She is a hidden gem in rooms full of people, Charlotte Bronte makes some good points through Janes eyes at how unaware wealthy people are of the true natures of those who serve them,

I would talk about the love story, but what is there to say, It is one for the ages, I would say that Charlotte Bronte never found her Rochester in real life, but some letters have come to light, written to a man named Constantin Héger, that suggests that maybe she did.
He was married to someone else, and when Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the biography of her friend, she carefully edited out those very revealing letters of a love that could never be.


Jane Eyre, may you always find the readers you deserve,

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