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 Finish Line

Charlotte Brontë

The race is finished; I have crossed the line and stand in the winner's circle.

All that chatter just means I have completed Derby Day and Other Adventures by A. Edward Newton. He ends his book with two tales of the Brontës. One chapter about his first visit to the parsonage where the father, son, and three daughters lived in Yorkshire. A dreary, desolate place by all accounts.

The final chapter has to do mostly with information about Charlotte and her life. I was surprised to read that Mrs. Gaskell, of Cranford fame, had written a biography of Charlotte. Later, it was discovered that she had left out or simply ignored certain information that didn't fit her idea of who Charlotte was. Since then who knows how many books about the Brontës have been written.

According to Mr. Newton, it was a friend on his who called on Mr. Nichols, Charlotte's widower, after he had returned to Ireland and remarried. With the offer of some coin, this friend walked away with a chest full of letters, stories, and other Brontë personal papers.

Also, there was a story about an unrequited love of Charlotte's, a married tutor, whom she met in Brussels. Some letters of hers, expressing undying devotion, came to light.

Of course, by then, all the Brontës were dead.

I don't consider myself a fan of the family. I have never read Jane Eyre. I may have read Wuthering Heights in high school, but am more familiar with that story through film. And I must admit, even after reading about them, the Brontës are not on my To Be Read list.