Becoming Jane Eyre Page 13

  That morning, lifting her eyes in the dazzle of early light, she saw the gulls wheeling above and a man and a woman accompanied by a small black dog. At first she had not recognized them, but had only thought they were standing too close for people in a public place. Then she had noticed that the woman’s hand was on the man’s face, in an unmistakable gesture of tenderness, a caress, and she had seen the red of the young man’s hair.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Strife

  Through the changing seasons of the year, Anne continues to watch her brother drift further into his own world. She works on her second novel, one about a woman tied to an increasingly degraded man, a woman who finally escapes her husband and comes with her child to inhabit a new place, a mysterious tenant with an unknown past, like Charlotte’s Mr. Rochester. She writes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall all through the winter and spring while extraordinary events occur in Charlotte’s life.

  Jane Eyre comes out before her own and Emily’s books. Newby has asked for more work on Wuthering Heights, so that their books will not come out until December. Jane Eyre is published by George Smith to instant success, whereas their books are either ignored or compared unfavorably to their sister’s. Anne tries not to read the reviews, not to think about them. She struggles to take pleasure in Charlotte’s great success. She turns with determination to the writing and publishing of her second book for solace, hoping to do better this time, to write something with a wider canvas, something that will not be forgotten.

  Now Charlotte holds another letter in her trembling hand. She looks flushed and cross. Recently, Charlotte has seemed so happy, delighted with one good review after another arriving in the post. Has her Jane Eyre not been called a “book of decided power,” “one of the most powerful domestic romances,” “full of youthful vigor and imagination”? Her book has even had a great run in America.

  Yet today Charlotte’s hair, usually so neat, and the skirt of her gray muslin dress are in disarray. Her cheeks, often so pale, are flushed. She waves her new letter in the air at her sisters and announces in an irate tone, “Your publisher, that shuffling scamp, is up to his old tricks! We have to put a stop to this! I don’t know how you can continue to deal with this unscrupulous man! Why did you let him publish your new book, Anne?”

  Anne puts down her sewing and looks across the room at Emily, who takes her feet from the fender and looks back at her. In this the two sisters have remained united. Newby, though he has delayed the process and though there were many errors in the text, has published both Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights, as he has promised. He had taken a chance with their first books. Wuthering Heights has been called tasteless and shocking: “Readers would be disgusted, almost sickened, by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance.” Even when praised, it was mistakenly regarded as an early and artless book by the writer of Jane Eyre.

  Despite, or perhaps even because of these reviews, the books have not sold badly. Newby, unscrupulous though he may be in the use of Charlotte’s name and in publishing only two hundred and fifty instead of the promised three hundred and fifty books initially, has managed to promote the sales. So how could they not remain with him, who has even brought out a second edition of their books and has promised to publish both their second novels, despite all this storm of opprobrium? Of course Anne turned to him for her second book.

  Emily comes forcefully to her younger sister’s rescue. She draws herself up, puts one hand on her hip, and says, “What do you mean? Newby gave Anne decent terms this time. She has already had fifty pounds from him. Her book is doing quite well, almost as well as your own, despite your recommendation not to bring it out.”

  Charlotte stares at Emily with something like furor in her eyes. Anne presses her hands together and says a silent prayer: God give us peace. She looks around the small room and feels the lack of space. A close summer evening. She can hardly breathe. Often, these days, she is overcome with breathlessness, particularly at moments like this. She gets up and opens a window, breathes in the air. She can hear the church bells chiming the hour.

  These days there has been increasing dissent among the sisters over the smallest of things. Anne and Emily are sometimes aligned stubbornly, bitterly, against Charlotte, clinging to their publisher; sometimes Emily, deeply hurt by the scathing criticism and incomprehension of her “disagreeable” book, faces off against the others.

  Anne notices Emily’s pale face and belabored breathing. She, too, breathes with difficulty and suffers perhaps even more from this constant and unfavorable comparison with her sister’s book. Anne has seen the reviews Emily keeps in her desk, those that compare her book unfavorably to Charlotte’s. The critics have not understood her.

  Emily has told Anne she longs to escape this world, which she calls “this shattered prison.” Anne cannot follow her there. Indeed, she has worked constantly to finish her second novel, refusing even to go out walking with her sisters. She has taken a certain satisfaction in being the first of the three to publish a second book, and with some success, albeit a scandalous one.

  Now, as Emily lifts her head, she sits down beside her and gives her a grateful look, puts her hand on her arm.

  Charlotte has told her youngest sister that her new book is just too close to the naked truth. “You need to varnish, to soften, to conceal,” she counseled her, speaking of their brother’s rapid descent almost to madness. But the public has perused with great interest the story of the drunken husband and his unfortunate wife, much of which came from her observation of her brother and her own experience at Thorp Green.

  Charlotte says, “If I can’t say what I think to you two, to whom can I speak? I’m sorry to have to say this, but I still think the publication of that book a mistake. In any case, this is going too far. I have thought this over all day and I just feel I cannot stand by and do nothing with my publishers accusing me of dishonesty!”

  “What has Mr. Newby done now that displeases you so?” Anne asks. Charlotte comes to her, thrusts her letter from George Smith into her hands, and stands over her while she reads.

  “Newby has told the American publishers your novel is the second written by the author of Jane Eyre. He maintains all our books have been written by the same person,” Charlotte tells them. She pulls out a chair and sits down at the dining room table beside Anne and turns to her. She puts a clenched fist on the table. Her nose looks large and red and her eyes flash as she adds, “We have to do something about this. It’s not fair to George Smith, who has been so correct in all his dealings with me. He had promised them my second book! I don’t care if the public confuses our identities, but I can’t have my publisher suffer.”

  Anne looks at Charlotte’s flushed cheeks and the harsh glitter in her eyes. Is this really what bothers her sister, or does she not want to be associated with their work? Is she afraid that the unfavorable reviews of their books will influence the reception of her own? Is she tired of their riding on the coattails of her Jane Eyre?

  For a moment, Anne almost wishes none of them had ever written a book or certainly ever brought their words before the public. Is the game worth the candle?

  Despite Charlotte’s disapproval, Anne has been determined, indeed, felt it was her duty, difficult as it might be to render it, to warn her readers of all the dreadful consequences of inebriation. She needed to reach out to others who might be similarly afflicted. She labored hard to reproduce truthfully and without recourse to sentimentality or obfuscation exactly what she has seen at close hand in the houses of the wealthy where she has worked: the swearing and brawling, the maudlin speeches, the boasting and blaspheming under the influence of drugs and drink.

  She has wanted to warn the public, too, of allowing a child excessive freedom. She has tried to stress the necessity of bringing up a child, whatever his class or kind, with the sort of discipline that was essentially lacking in Branwell’s life.

  And is not her Huntingdon akin to Charlotte’s Rochester?
Still, she sees Charlotte’s point and understands her ire.

  “What are we to do?” Anne asks her older sisters, as she did the year before. She has no wish to antagonize Charlotte further.

  Charlotte continues, “This is just another example of your publisher’s duplicity! It would have been much better to change houses.”

  Anne looks across the room at Emily, who is smiling with a defiant coldness that alarms her. Charlotte says, “We will have to straighten this out. This charge will have to be refuted. We will have to reveal our identity, tell George Smith who we are, that we are three—three sisters.”

  Emily, who has been sitting very still, now rises and paces in her deliberate and energetic way. Hands behind her back, she is followed by her big dog, who pushes his head into her hand. Her eyes dark with anger, she says, “We all promised never to reveal our identities. We understood that from the start. You cannot strip me of this essential cover! I could never have envisaged writing my book otherwise. First, you forced me to publish my very private poems, for an uncomprehending public. Now you want to expose me to the public. It is all very well for you, with your success, to step out of the shadows, but think about me. You know what the critics have already said about my book. What will they say if they discover it was written by a woman, the daughter of a country parson? Have the kindness to leave me out of this.”

  “But everyone thinks our books were written by one person—and that is not true!” Charlotte says.

  “What does it matter what the world thinks? We know the truth. When we are dead will be soon enough for everyone to find out,” Emily says, turning on her heels and staring fiercely at Charlotte.

  “But I cannot do this to my publishers,” Charlotte replies firmly, looking up at Emily. “It is a practical matter. You must understand that. It’s also a question of my integrity.” She adds, “Besides, there have been other sources of confusion I would like to clear up.”

  Anne cannot deny her eldest sister’s reasoning. She says, “She is right about this, Emily. Charlotte and I should go immediately up to London to see her publishers and sort this out. There is no other way.”

  “As you wish,” Emily says, eyeing Anne coldly. She turns toward Charlotte and adds, “If you are going ahead with this, you should first tell Papa. Let him read Jane Eyre. Let him into the secret, before all the others. Let him share your success.”

  “Read him some of the good reviews you’ve had,” Anne urges Charlotte. “He will surely be very proud.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Rapprochement

  She will tell her father about her book, Charlotte thinks, if not about theirs. Though a few reviewers have attacked her “coarseness, lack of femininity,” these reviews seem only to have spurred the sales. Her only sadness is that her sisters’ books have been compared so unfavorably to her own.

  The letter that gave her more pleasure than all the good reviews together came from the great Thackeray, the living author she admires most. When she dedicated the second edition to him, she discovered why he had sat up all night reading her book: she has told his story of a mad wife shut away, a husband tied reluctantly to this burden. This is a coincidence that has worked in her favor. Perhaps fame is always a series of circumstances of this kind.

  But now people are saying that she was a governess in his household and the model for his Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. She will have to step out of the shadows of her anonymity. She will have to declare her gender, her name, at least to her publishers, if not to the world at large.

  She will always be grateful to George Smith. The Professor, though he had rejected it, elicited such a kind letter from him that she had almost preferred it to a cursory acceptance. He asked if she had anything else in hand. Indeed, she told him, a three-volume work, almost finished. Then she had completed Jane Eyre, spurred on by these encouraging words and the thought that a receptive publisher was waiting to read it.

  She has given her readers a happy but believable ending: “Reader, I married him,” she has written. Mr. Rochester, damaged by the inhabitant of the upper floor at Thornfield, as her father has been by his son, is not the man he was. She has described a happy marriage, one where Edward Rochester, going to consult an eminent oculist, gradually recovers his sight. He is now able to find his way without being led by her hand. Like her father, he can see the sky again, the hills around him, and his darling boy, who has inherited the color of his eyes.

  She has ended her book with an account of the curate, St. John, who has continued resolutely along the way he has chosen as soldier in the army of the Church. “Firm, faithful, and devoted; full of energy and zeal and truth, he labors for his race,” she has written about the man Jane refused to marry, who is dying in India while she lives on happily with her Edward at Ferndean in England. She has taken her revenge on all the narrow-minded, self-absorbed, and self-righteous curates in her life, who have used religion as a way of controlling others, of proving they are better than the rest. Yet, prophetically, she has given him the last word. She ends her book with St. John’s words, which are also the last in the Bible, from the Book of Revelation, “My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily he announces more distinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly, I more eagerly respond, ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus.’ ”

  Thanks to this book, she has reached the large public she has always dreamed she might reach. When Anne asked her if she was surprised by this success, she told her she was not entirely surprised. The emotions she has felt writing this book have been such that she felt her readers, too, would experience them.

  She will let her father know that all those hours she sat writing by his side in the half dark in Manchester and the days she worked on her return to Haworth have not been in vain. She fears her father might hear of it from another source. Were he to read this book, would he not recognize parts of his daughter’s life, perhaps even different facets of himself in its pages? She must be the one to take off the mask, to speak up and declare her identity.

  “I’ll tell him after dinner,” she tells her sisters.

  But she stands before the door of his study for a long moment with her book in her hands. What if it were to anger him? Can she really step out of the shadows of her childhood, her deference to him, and admit she has written not just the light poetry that he has done himself or even a novelette like his own Maid of Killarney, which he might have condoned, but this book that has been both acclaimed and denounced as shocking, coarse, anti-Christian, and antiestablishment? Can she own these words, which speak of the longings of a woman for fulfillment, for love, for the same rights as a man? How will her father, an eighteenth-century man, a parson from a backward Irish village, respond to such a cry for liberty and love from a woman, his daughter, the one who nursed him in the blindness she has reproduced in these pages?

  Then she realizes that she will follow Anne’s suggestion. She will have recourse to his snobbery, to his pride. She will read him the glowing reviews, where her work has been compared favorably to the great writers of the day. He will respond to the praise from the world of letters, if not to the words of her book.

  She knocks on his study door, and awaits his summons to enter, holding her book behind her back, the best reviews folded in its pages. She finds him sitting at his writing table, bent over in the pool of light from the lamp, making notes in the margin of his Modern Domestic Medicine in his strong hand, crossing his t’s widely, his two clay pipes and his spittoon before him. She is filled with pity at the sight of him straining his eyes, no doubt, to find some hope for his beloved son.

  She approaches quietly and looks over his shoulder at the open page on delirium tremens, which he is studying with the help of his large magnifying glass. She is suddenly filled with rage. Is his only concern, then, still his boy? Why does the prodigal get the feast and not the dutiful child? She has always disliked this parable, felt its injustice. Her brother has always been her father’s obsession, a sore he continues t
o lick at, as a dog would. He has never felt the same way about his dutiful girls, who have struggled so valiantly, have taken care of him and his household, and have suffered so painfully from their lungs. Why is he not studying a page on asthma, which afflicts poor Anne? Does he not hear her struggling to breathe all through the night?

  “What is it?” he asks curtly, looking up at her. He has had another bad night with his boy, and his blue eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  Again, she hesitates to bear news that may not bring him joy. Her success will only make his son’s life seem more lamentable. Perhaps his own as well? He has sold few copies of his books. Since the death of his wife, he has not published a word. But now she cannot retreat. Also, she wants him to read this book. Her written words settle all accounts. She tells him she has been writing a book, and she would like him to read it. He responds without any apparent surprise, saying, “I’m afraid the manuscript, my dear, would try my eyes.”

  All that scribbling, he thinks. He remembers the scratching of the pencil in the dark, day after day, as he lay in that room in Manchester. Is this the product? He has been blinded like Saul and then regained his sight, but his eyes are still not strong. How can she expect him to read her illegible, cramped hand? He knows her tiny script discourages any perusal, indeed, was probably invented for that reason as a child. Why is she not content to show her sisters her work, as she usually does?

  As if he didn’t have enough on his mind with her brother begging him for money to spend on drink and drugs or wrestling with him in the night for the gun on the wall, so that he never knows which one of them will emerge alive in the morning to stumble down the stairs. Last night he had sat up until late in the parlor, his head in his hands, listening to the shouting and cries, the beating on the upstairs door, the screams coming from the locked bedroom where the boy had been confined upstairs. He thinks of it as a kind of madness that comes upon his son and takes him away from him. Suddenly he is elsewhere, this beloved boy, a stranger to him.