pencil and small squares of paper and began Jane Eyre’s story, she could barely keep up with her thoughts. She wrote in a white heat, stopping only to dash out to the butcher for a few chops and to boil some potatoes or butter some bread for their tea. Her father, ever the good patient, lay in silence. The nurse applied leeches to his temples, and then she knitted or dozed in her chair by his bed. No one asked Charlotte what she was doing with the empty, silent hours in the darkness.
After several weeks the bandages were removed, but there were anothertwo weeks of confinement in a sunless and quiet room. Finally the time came to pack up and go home. Patrick’s sight had been restored. By that time, Jane Eyre had fled her lover and Thornfield Hall. She had taken a carriage as far as her money had allowed her to go, and now she was on a strange road and Charlotte had no idea what would become of her.
Charlotte packed the manuscript pages into her trunk; at the train station in Manchester she consigned it to the porter, then took a seat next to her father in the crowded compartment. On the journey home, while her father gazed out the window, Charlotte realized she had not even had the time to read what she had written. She would return home and stash it away on a shelf in her closet with other unfinished stories and pick up the monotonous activities of her busy life.
It would be nearly a year before she would complete the novel, and she would never fully understand that, in an attempt to capture her love for a man, she had created a myth. Jane’s lover would have Constantin Heger’s weakness for chocolate and cigars, his dark features, and an athletic physique that had the power to arouse her, but there would also be symbols of the father—powerful, distant, sightless—(she would say to him, “I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been accustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel disposed to see me, and I’ll come then; but at no other time”). There would be hints of the noble Zamorna of her childhood stories, her oldest and dearest hero, a tortured, complex man. With this rough material mined from memory and the subconscious she created Edward Rochester, a man of intelligence and sensitivities equal to her own, a man entirely beyond her social reach. He would be blinded at the end, but she would restore his sight; plain, small, and insignificant though she might seem, he would find that she could fascinate a man like him and win his heart.
Her subconscious had understood—if she did not—that the obstacles to happiness were not merely external; it would take more than a slyly manipulative wife to thwart their union. Jane would be foiled by aviolent, horrific creature, a madwoman, barely human at all. Although scarcely articulate, Mrs. Rochester would embody all the darkness of Charlotte’s psyche: fire, fear, blood, sensuality, the foreign and the exotic—all these things trapped and enclosed in a room in an attic in the past.
Chapter Nine
T here was little at home that winter to excite Charlotte’s enthusiasm. She wrote frequent letters to Ellen, commenting with wry humor on the dreary events of life in Haworth. Mr. Nicholls had returned from Ireland without a wife and seemed to have no prospects of obtaining one. Although he had been fully ordained that year and could have sought a living of his own, he appeared to be quite content to tend to the business of his church school and play second fiddle to her father. Patrick secretly scorned his curate’s lack of ambition, but as Arthur was by all accounts conscientious and hardworking, Patrick refrained from voicing such cynical opinions and counted himself fortunate to keep Arthur in Haworth.
Branwell could be thanked for what little excitement enlivened their days—although it was generally of the unpleasant kind. His drinking debts continued to mount, and their father was getting unpleasant letters from the proprietors
After several weeks the bandages were removed, but there were anothertwo weeks of confinement in a sunless and quiet room. Finally the time came to pack up and go home. Patrick’s sight had been restored. By that time, Jane Eyre had fled her lover and Thornfield Hall. She had taken a carriage as far as her money had allowed her to go, and now she was on a strange road and Charlotte had no idea what would become of her.
Charlotte packed the manuscript pages into her trunk; at the train station in Manchester she consigned it to the porter, then took a seat next to her father in the crowded compartment. On the journey home, while her father gazed out the window, Charlotte realized she had not even had the time to read what she had written. She would return home and stash it away on a shelf in her closet with other unfinished stories and pick up the monotonous activities of her busy life.
It would be nearly a year before she would complete the novel, and she would never fully understand that, in an attempt to capture her love for a man, she had created a myth. Jane’s lover would have Constantin Heger’s weakness for chocolate and cigars, his dark features, and an athletic physique that had the power to arouse her, but there would also be symbols of the father—powerful, distant, sightless—(she would say to him, “I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been accustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel disposed to see me, and I’ll come then; but at no other time”). There would be hints of the noble Zamorna of her childhood stories, her oldest and dearest hero, a tortured, complex man. With this rough material mined from memory and the subconscious she created Edward Rochester, a man of intelligence and sensitivities equal to her own, a man entirely beyond her social reach. He would be blinded at the end, but she would restore his sight; plain, small, and insignificant though she might seem, he would find that she could fascinate a man like him and win his heart.
Her subconscious had understood—if she did not—that the obstacles to happiness were not merely external; it would take more than a slyly manipulative wife to thwart their union. Jane would be foiled by aviolent, horrific creature, a madwoman, barely human at all. Although scarcely articulate, Mrs. Rochester would embody all the darkness of Charlotte’s psyche: fire, fear, blood, sensuality, the foreign and the exotic—all these things trapped and enclosed in a room in an attic in the past.
Chapter Nine
T here was little at home that winter to excite Charlotte’s enthusiasm. She wrote frequent letters to Ellen, commenting with wry humor on the dreary events of life in Haworth. Mr. Nicholls had returned from Ireland without a wife and seemed to have no prospects of obtaining one. Although he had been fully ordained that year and could have sought a living of his own, he appeared to be quite content to tend to the business of his church school and play second fiddle to her father. Patrick secretly scorned his curate’s lack of ambition, but as Arthur was by all accounts conscientious and hardworking, Patrick refrained from voicing such cynical opinions and counted himself fortunate to keep Arthur in Haworth.
Branwell could be thanked for what little excitement enlivened their days—although it was generally of the unpleasant kind. His drinking debts continued to mount, and their father was getting unpleasant letters from the proprietors
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