So in my Not Insane In The Brain post, I mentioned Emily Gilmore and asked if she is mad bc she cannot keep a maid for longer than a week. One of Rochester's reasons for Bertha's insanity is that servants wouldn't last long in her household. (Which, I remind you, we only have his word for.) I've been rewatching Gilmore Girls and in episode 5.1, after Richard and Emily decided to separate, Richard does actually suggest she suffers from mental illness. He says (not exact words): "I knew the mental illness that runs in your family would catch up with you." Emily answers that Aunt Cora was not mentally ill, she was athletic.

In this same episode he also as good as locks her in the basement, though it's played out as a joke.

This is the stage of the show where Emily has a small villain arc in S4. She finds out Richard has been having annual lunch with his old flame Pennilyn Lott. She's very hurt by it, understandably, but he acts as if it's not a big deal. Also his mother dies and Emily (who never got on with her and doesn't owe the woman shit) starts making all the arrangements (bc Richard is wallowing) and while going through her mother-in-law's stuff she discovers a letter from her to Richard, urging him not to marry Emily; essentially wanting him to abandon her at the altar. Cracks have appeared in their marriage all throughout S4, after Richard goes into business with Jason and Emily feels like her husband doesn't listen to her. She has a meltdown at a shopping mall too. And she hates his moustache. I'm with her on that.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Mental-Illness-Literature-Charlotte-Perkins-Gillmans-The-Yellow-Wallpaper

Gilman's most famous work, her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", published in 1892, is about a woman suffering from mental illness after being confined to a bedroom in the attic of a vacation home by her husband, John, for the sake of her health. She becomes obsessed with the room's repulsive yet alluring yellow wallpaper. Gilman wrote this story to bring light to women's role in society, explaining that women's lack of autonomy negatively affects their mental, emotional, and physical well-being. She used it as a call to action for readers to recognize the legitimacy and complexity of illness and benefit in therapies for treatment, namely in women, and to overcome sexism in treatment

Idk why the link doesn't display, but it's about mental illness and the (mis)treatment of it in the short story The Yellow Wallpaper.

Bertha Mason Rochester in Jane Eyre is called the "madwoman" because she lights beds on fire, stabs people, sneaks into rooms and rips veils, lights the house on fire. But when you look more closely at her actions, they make perfect sense. She sneaks out one night after ten years of being locked in the attic by her husband. Her caretaker has fallen too deeply asleep and Bertha has stolen the key. She does not injure her caretaker who is being paid to do a job. Bertha lights the bed of the man who is locking her up on fire. She never lunges for the maids who come to help tend her. But she stabs her brother who knowingly leaves her locked in an attic. When she is in a room with the woman who her husband is going to marry, she does not hurt the young, unknowing fiancée (Jane Eyre herself). Bertha rips up the veil that Jane will put on in the morning to marry Bertha's husband. Bertha doesn't hurt Jane: she warns her.

Fucking this, I said the same thing. Bertha never harms Jane, and she has the perfect opportunity to do so! (And I also see her ripping the veil as a warning to Jane.) She doesn't harm Grace or Leah or Mrs Fairfax. The only people she attacks are her husband and her brother--and the latter she couldn't have anticipated, bc Richard's visit was unannounced. When they all go upstairs after the crashed wedding, she doesn't go after Richard, or the vicar or the lawyer, or Jane--the only person she attacks is, once again, Rochester!

Article is dated 2015 but I thought I'd still share it.

In many ways, Rochester is the villain of the piece, what with his lying, his bigamy and his brutality. Him or Jane’s heartless Aunt Reed, or hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst who treats her so badly at school. Bertha’s just misunderstood, demonised and rightly furious. And at the end of the novel, she becomes something else. She sets fire to Thornfield Hall, and stands on its battlements, her “black hair … streaming against the flames”. It was supposed to be her house, it became her prison, and now she’s its blazing queen. She jumps to her death and it’s a horrible, violent end, but it’s also a radical leap of faith that sets her free.

There's a town in Sicily called Bronte, so naturally I now headcanon that Rochester's Italian mistress Giacinta was from there.

A Happy Ending or An Unreliable Narrator?

Was the ending truly a happy one--or is Jane lying to us?

Let's take a look: Jane Eyre ("I am no bird no net ensnares me") married her much older former master, who, due to his limited use of limbs and visual impairment, requires care. We know there's no hired carer, because Jane explicitly says she was the one who looked after him (hence why she had to send Adele to school) and also, as I noted in my recap post, it's not likely they'd be able to hire anyone. They've got no room for a live-in staff and a live-out one won't be able to make their daily way to Ferndean, which is located away from habitable civilisation.

Ferndean Manor, we are told, is not in a good state. We are told that Rochester didn't move Bertha there because the damp walls would eventually result in her death. This is the house where the Rochesters now live. Jane, however, tells us nothing about any repairs being done. Neither does she mention any decorating, purchasing furniture, wallpaper, carpets, curtains, pictures on the walls--zilch. She got a lot of pleasure out of cleaning Moor House in time for Christmas (shortly after she discovered she and the Riverses were cousins). Just look at this:

“My first aim will be to clean down (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?)—to clean down Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.”

This one paragraph contains more home cosiness than the entire last chapter. The "I have now been married ten years" paragraph may be very poetic, but it tells us nothing. She was his eyes, then he regained some sight, so he can pretty much move about by himself. She says they visit Diana and Mary, but that's all. Nothing else about how they spend their time, the long summer days or the long winter nights.

And then, that "when his first-born was put into his arms" line. Even Katniss Everdeen isn't this cold about her kids, and she didn't want any. She only had them because Peeta talked her into it. There's nothing in the book that would indicate whether Jane wanted children, but neither is there anything that would indicate she didn't want them. Presumably she did, married life would have meant kids (unless, idk, they lived sexlessly, or there was birth control). She only mentions how Rochester felt about the kid ("On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy."), not her. It's baffling.

Lastly, the final words are dedicated to St John. Why? She receives his letter from India, in which he tells her he feels death coming. She gets tears in her eyes. Does she wish she married him instead?

Of course, that would not have been a better option than marrying Rochester in any way, but she may have thought the grass was greener in St John-landia.

So to sum it up, there's certainly an argument against it being a happy ending. Take it any way you wish.

Personally I don't care. I actually think she was, indeed, happy. I may not see caring for a spouse in a dump like Ferndean in Bumfuck Nowhere a happy ending, but that's me. Jane, however, does. This is a woman with a very limited worldview, who has never been anywhere and not met many people, who fell in love with the first man who crossed her path, who at barely twenty years old believes nobody will ever love her the way the Roch did. She doesn't think that she deserves anything better than what she got. So yeah, she was happy.

But like I said, I don't care. What I do care about is that Bertha was happy after her escape and divorce from Rochester.

I can't believe I have not mentioned this book yet. (Truthfully I forgot about it, but luckily just recently I randomly remembered it!) It's retelling of Jane Eyre, but it's gender-swapped. Hence John Eyre.

Yorkshire, 1843. When disgraced former schoolmaster John Eyre arrives at Thornfield Hall to take up a position as tutor to two peculiar young boys, he enters a world unlike any he’s ever known. Darkness abounds, punctuated by odd bumps in the night, strange creatures on the moor, and a sinister silver mist that never seems to dissipate. And at the center of it all, John’s new employer—a widow as alluring as she is mysterious. Sixteen months earlier, heiress Bertha Mason embarked on the journey of a lifetime. Marriage wasn’t on her itinerary, but on meeting the enigmatic Edward Rochester, she’s powerless to resist his preternatural charm. In letters and journal entries, she records the story of their rapidly-disintegrating life together, and of her gradual realization that Mr. Rochester isn’t quite the man he appears to be. In fact, he may not be a man at all. From a cliff-top fortress on the Black Sea coast to an isolated estate in rural England, John and Bertha contend with secrets, danger, and the eternal struggle between light and darkness. Can they help each other vanquish the demons of the past? Or are some evils simply too powerful to conquer?

There's a rec for you.

It just occurred to me, with regards to Bertha's knife, the one she stabbed Richard with. I always presumed she took it from the kitchen, during one of her nightly escapades out of the attic. It seems the most logical place, as that's where you usually find knives. So--why was it not discovered that a knife was missing? Did the cook not notice? How many knives do they have in the Thornfield kitchen??

It's possible Mary, the cook, could have thought another servant took it for whatever purpose they needed, but if it wasn't returned for some time, did she not get suspicious? (Unless Bertha got it only a short time before she attacked Richard.) The servants knew there was a "lunatic" under Rochester's roof and they knew the "lunatic" occasionally slips out of the attic. They should have been more cautious. Or, Rochester should have trained them better, I should say. I don't want to place any blame on the servants. I like to think of Mrs Fairfax as a good housekeeper.

Bertha could have taken the knife from another room, but I can't think of another place she would have got it from. It's not mentioned if Thornfield has a weapons room or anything like that--and if there was one, then it should have been doubly locked, under the circumstances... Kitchen is the most obvious place to go when you need a knife. And it would be empty at night.

The "I suppose she has no knife now" and "One never knows what she has, she's so cunning, yadda yadda" after the aborted wedding is just... callous, like they're being so carefree about a person the author constantly tries to portray as dangerous. I very much defend Grace on this blog, I wrote a fanfic of which half is from her POV, in first person, but I admit I struggle with that line of hers. I put it down to her being overly dramatic or trolling, though it's a lazy way out. Anyway, Grace is only an employee. If she can be so casual about her charge picking weapons left, right and centre, and yet her boss still keeps her and pays her generous wages, then that's says something about the boss.

All of this is just another proof that Bertha was not mad. Because if she was, and if she was truly that dangerous, there would have been better safeguarding at Thornfield. Or else it's just incompetence, in which case, fuck you, Edward, for putting your staff in such danger!

A little Jane Eyre crack

(No, not Rose and her St Olaf stories!)

These two come not from me but from other writers.

First, Lin Haire-Sargeant's book Heathcliff - The Return to Wuthering Heights. No, it's not the wrong sister. However, there's is no way of mentioning it without spoilers--so spoilers below.

***SPOILER*** It's a story of Heathcliff's three years away from Wuthering Heights. In this reimagining, Heathcliff is the son of Rochester and Bertha. Much of the plot takes place at Thornfield and features the familiar merry company. It's definitely an interesting concept, if nothing else. ***END SPOILER*** 

The second crack appears in Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend. You might be familiar with Adrian Mole diaries. The best known are the early ones, when he's a teenager in the 80s. He was still kinda adorkable then, plus the first two books give us such a good picture of Thatcher-era Britain. Unfortunately, he then grew up into a total loser, but that's beside the point. Weapons of Mass Destruction takes place 2002-2004; as you can no doubt tell from the title, Iraq war gets a lot of coverage. Adrian is in his mid-30s here. The bookshop he's working at starts a monthly book club and one of the titles is Jane Eyre. When they meet to discuss it, a character called Darren Birdsall says (entry of 26th February 2003):

"I reckon that George Bush is sort of like Mr Rochester and that Jane Eyre is a bit like Tony Blair."

Mr Carlton-Hayes, the bookshop owner, asks who Saddam is.

"Saddam is the mad wife in the attic."

Even I couldn't come up with something that crazy, so props to the late Sue Townsend.

Supernatural Bertha?

When I got to the part in my recap where they enter Bertha's room and she's crawling on all fours, an idea struck me--could she be a werewolf? Maybe she's just turned because it was full moon, which would explain why two days ago she looked human. The substance that Rochester gives Richard would then be an antidote. You could actually make a decent story out of it.

As a matter of fact, you could write Bertha as any supernatural creature. Vampire is the obvious one, it's even supported by the text. Also something else:

What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell:

From chapter 26 of Jane Eyre.

Compare with:

What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell;

From the 11 August entry of Mina Murray's journal in Dracula.

I'm not hot on vampires or werewolves myself, but I thought it was interesting. Maybe an idea to explore for someone out there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has already written it.

I wonder if Bertha Mason was mentally ill before Rochester locked her in the attic, or if she went mad there giving him a convenient retcon.

“reader, i married him” my sister in christ he locked his first wife in the attic

New Book Club for Autumn 2023!

Announcing Wildfell Weekly, a substack read-a-long for Anne Brontë's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall!

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.

A new tenant has taken up residence in old Wildfell Hall and Mr. Gilbert Markham finds himself very intrigued. But the widow Mrs. Helen Graham is more than what she seems, and as rumors about her start to fly, she reveals to a doubting Gilbert the truth about the disastrous marriage she left behind.

Anne Brontë differed from her sisters Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) in favoring a Realist rather than Romantic approach to her writing. In Tenant she explored themes of domestic violence, alcoholism and addiction, gender relations, motherhood and marriage, and the ability of women to define their own lives with an unflinching desire to depict what she saw to be true. While now considered among the first feminist novels, critics of Anne's day were shocked by a book they found coarse, brutal, and overly graphic.

So starting October 26, 2023 and until June 10, 2024, let's read together a story one nineteenth century critic called "utterly unfit to be put in the hands of girls"!

Find More Information about the Project and Subscribe Here!

Jane: I must respect myself.

The man who lied to her, tried to cheat her into an illegal marriage, was generally pretty mean to her: my wife’s dead lol wanna hook up

Jane: ok. be right over.

Why Are You Doing This?

I wrote the recap, totalling some 49000 words, as a single post on Blogspot, because I needed to get it out. It took me four months. Later, to make it a more reader-friendly experience, I broke down the recap into smaller chunks and posted them on this sideblog.

Some of these thoughts I've had in my head for a while, some are new. The redemption of those three characters--Blanche, Richard and Grace--has been on my mind since about 2018, when I first got the idea of writing a fanfic. The way I see it is: if I want to write Bertha's story, in which I present Rochester as a villain, there is no need to villainise any other character. Also I'm somewhat of a contrarian (can you tell?) and Jane's descriptions of these characters made me want to make them good purely out of spite. This goes for the merry company too. Blanche is, as I said, not that important at the end of the day, Grace is not explicitly a bad guy, and, as for Richard, his mere presence at Thornfield indicates the good of his character. That's how I see it. If I need any other villain, I use Dr Carter, and even that only to a limited extent. I claim the innkeeper is telling tales, but he's not villainous. I understand he has an inn to run. And he has his biases, just like the rest of us.

And then, with a story told in a first person narration, there's always room for unreliability.

Let me tell you something. I came to UK to be an au-pair. Sort of a similar situation as a governess, though one that doesn't require any qualifications. So forgive me when I'm not exactly thrilled about a story of a poor, plain governess marrying her boss. My employer was a single mother with a daughter, so no men in the house, but I can assure you, nobody is going into this position with the intention of snatching anyone's husband. 

Years ago I read the book Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and what I liked about it most was that even though the main character, the titular girl, got close to her boss, the artist Vermeer, while working as a maid in his household, eventually helping him with his work and sitting for him as a model, nothing ever took place between them and she sensibly married the butcher. I was in my mid-20s when I read it and I remember quite distinctly how I compared it to Jane Eyre and thought, oh thank the gods it's not like that. Sure, Vermeer--a real life person--had a wife and about a dozen kids but an author can deal with that. And the heroine didn't spend her life pining for a married man, she got married and had family of her own. There's a film too, with Scarlett Johansson.