In Which I Finally Read Jane Eyre

I may be the last person in the world to read Jane Eyre. And, as it turns out, I am getting paid to do so.

Here's the story on that. A few months ago I wrote about attending a talk by Deborah Lutz on Victorian mourning jewelry and death relics (here). She is the author of The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, a look at the lives of the Brontë sisters - Charlotte, Emily, and Anne - through the objects that were meaningful to them. It was short-listed for the 2016 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.

After the talk I introduced myself. She only recently moved to my fair city to become professor of English at the University of Louisville. As it turns out, Ms. Lutz is also the editor of the
soon to be published fourth edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Jane Eyre. We made a date to meet for coffee and as I sipped my espresso I admitted to her that I had never read Jane Eyre.

Gasp.

The next day she contacted me and asked if perhaps I would proofread the latest (and she hoped final version) of the manuscript for the Norton edition. She could pay me a small stipend. "Since you have never read the book, you would certainly bring fresh eyes to the text," she assured me.

And so dear reader, that is why now I am assiduously reading the life and times of Miss Jane. I am on deadline, of course. The manuscript is printed out on standard copy paper with the actual text centered and justified. The print is small. There are footnotes. I have scheduled myself two hours a day to read its 400 pages which will put me just in at the May 1 deadline.

I must admit Ms. Brontë has an engaging writing style and I am quite caught up in her tale. I will say that the punctuation is bizarre: she must have thought she was going to be paid by the colon and semicolon. Those little marks run rampant on the page! And to think she wrote the book with a dip pen. By candlelight. (You can see a copy of her handwritten manuscript on the British Library's website here: Jane Eyre.)

There has been much hullabaloo about Miss Charlotte this year. Yesterday, April 21, was her 200th birthday (a day she shared with Queen Elizabeth who turned 90).

I have a feeling that reading JE will send me off on a Bold Brontë Adventure and I will be researching and reading more about Miss Charlotte and her sisters.

A worthy enterprise indeed.

The Brontë Cabinet by Deborah Lutz

 

An example of Victorian mourning jewelry

featuring woven hair.

Somewhere in the collection of jewelry passed down to me from my grandmother there is a locket containing a snip of hair from a long dead relative. I can't remember now if it was from my great-grandmother or one of my great-aunts. I just remember as a child being fascinated (and a bit grossed out) that anyone would keep such an object.

Yesterday, I attended a lunch and lecture event featuring author and University of Louisville English professor Deborah Lutz. She spoke about this very Victorian practice of saving a lock of hair of a deceased loved one to be woven and placed into a ring or brooch.  

A pretty strange practice indeed, this way of capturing the memory of a loved one but one that was so common, Ms. Lutz said, that the art of weaving hair for jewelry became a thriving business with its own tools and instruction manuals. 

But it wasn't just for keeping the memory of the dead alive. There was the exchange of locks between lovers or family members. She cited the scene in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility when Edward Ferrars is asked about his new ring that is set with a braid of hair. He claims it is hair from his sister but really it is a lock from the cunning Lucy Steele.

Most often though, hair was used in mourning jewelry, woven into wreaths or tied with ribbon and tucked into a book. Ms. Lutz said this was the secularized version of honoring the relics of saints.

Today, she said, parents might preserve a child's hair in a baby album and pet owners might keep a snippet of hair from a beloved dog or cat.

Ms. Lutz also talked about the changing attitudes toward death and dying. Unfortunately, what she didn't talk about was her new book The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects. It has been shortlisted for the 2016 PEN Literary Award for Biography. It is published by Norton and is her fourth book.

In it Ms. Lutz takes a look at the Victorian era and the lives of sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne through the meaningful objects from their family home in Haworth: the collar worn by a family pet, portable writing desks, miniature books, letters, and walking sticks.

Deborah Lutz after her lecture.

I admit that I am not as fascinated with the Brontës as many readers are (I never did see the attraction of Heathcliff and have never read Jane Eyre...), but this reminds me of the consideration of the life of Jane Austen by Paula Byrne that I wrote about here: The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. I love this idea of telling a biographical story through objects so I might just have to give The Brontë Cabinet a try. Who knows, perhaps it will lead me to become a Brontë fan after all.