Posts Tagged ‘jane eyre’

Ah, Jane Eyre. You have sucked up innumerable hours of my time and God knows what kind of space in my head and heart over the years.  And your covers always tend to feature bland, bleak, gray-clad governesses who don’t really point to an appealing book within.  In honor of Charlotte Brontë’s timeless classic (and as a way of announcing my intention to play along with the Brontëalong over at An Accomplished Young Lady), here are some Jane Eyre covers that won’t bore you to death (click to enlarge!):

From left to right, top to bottom:

1)  Perhaps my favorite modern-day cover, Megan Wilson‘s silhouette for the Vintage edition;
2)  White’s Books’ gorgeous, somehow-still-moody floral take;
3)  Dame Darcy takes on an illustrated Jane Eyre for Penguin;
4)  The edition I first encountered in the library at Blessed Sacrament Parish in San Diego…Fritz Eichenberg’s incredibly illustrated box set from the 1940s;
5)  A pulp fiction fake take on J.E. that made me giggle;
6)  A gorgeous 1950 cover by Grau Sala via Jane Eyre Illustrated, your source for even more gorgeous Jane Eyre covers, dust jackets, and illustrations through the years.

This is the story of a woman whose work was lambasted as unchristian, immoral, anything but the work of an upstanding lady.  She was nervous in temperament and given to moody depression and moments of utter despair, sadness that the unfettered moors of her childhood home heightened.  She wore spectacles and had ruddy cheeks and a few missing teeth.  And she gave us Jane Eyre, another plain, poor woman who changed the world.

This was Charlotte Brontë, and she’s been on my mind recently for many reasons.

To me, reading is as immersive and essential as breathing, and there are some authors who are more than my favorite writers…they feel like my intimate friends.  Charlotte Brontë is one of those women, and she’s the subject of my first Heroine Mini-Series featuring three pivotal moments in her life.

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That shuffling scamp! Charlotte read the letter swiftly, taking in the news once, twice, until she could scarcely see for anger.  He had done it again.  Thomas Newby, the man who had published Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, was spreading a vicious rumor, this time in the United States.  Seeking to expand his fortune and capitalize off of the controversy surrounding Charlotte’s incendiary Jane Eyre, he had led the American publishing house Harpers to believe that the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell all belonged to one person and that Jane Eyre, the American rights to which they had just bought, was in fact the work of one author instead of three.

That shuffling scamp! The Brontë sisters had never been ones to make public spectacles of themselves, but after the months of terrible reviews and public scrutiny, this was the last straw.  Charlotte and her sister Anne tromped four miles across unforgiving moorland, enduring a thunderstorm before falling into a carriage that carried them to London.  Barely rested and painfully aware of their countrified appearance in the midst of a bustling city, they sought out the offices of Smith, Elder.  Charlotte herself had carried on a years-long correspondence with her publisher, George Smith…under the pseudonym of Currer Bell.  And now his name, the name of the man who had fought for her book and brought it into the world, was being smeared an ocean away.

That shuffling scamp! Charlotte insisted, gently at first, more passionately when denied, that she must see Mr. Smith at once.  And there he was, “young, tall, gentlemanly,” stepping forward courteous and confused at the sight of these two thin, timid-looking women.  Charlotte thrust a letter into his hand, one he had addressed with his own hand to “Currer Bell, Esq.”  He started, sputtering.

“Where did you get this?”

“At the post office.  It was addressed to me.”  She let the words sink in before she continued.  “We have both come that you might have ocular proof that there are at least two of us.”

To be continued…

One of the most gratifying parts of writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf was discovering the backstories behind the women who wrote some of my favorite books.  And it wasn’t all fun and friends.  During the course of the book, I got to look at the underbelly of some of these women’s lives:  depression, chronic illness, opium addiction, adultery, even suicide.   And you know what?  I loved every minute.

Why embrace the serious sides of my literary heroines when many of them left such happy, pert, intelligent women as their legacy?  (Anne of Green Gables or Lizzie Bennet, anyone?)  Why not just focus on the picture they wanted to present to the world…the picture of the productive, happy writer who left her dirty laundry between two covers and moved on with life?

I was reminded of this question when reading this article about Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dirty little opium secrets (or not-so-secrets, as the case may be).  For me, the answer is all about context.  When we look at the real lives of these writers, their accomplishments in the face of great trials and hardships are even more impressive.  Louisa May Alcott wrote her books in a state of constant, crushing financial worry…and if she hadn’t known what it was like to be poor, she could never have given us the image of four sisters sewing their way through dire straits and attempting to burden the load they must shoulder.  Could Charlotte Brontë have made Jane Eyre‘s Lowood School so terrifying if she herself had not survived a similar experience?

Now that I know the backstory behind my favorite books, I feel even more grateful that these women took time out of their lives to give something to us, people they never met or even imagined.  Not that I subscribe to the thought that writers must be tortured (that’s probably material for a whole ‘nother post), but I think they’re at least allowed to be human.  When we deny a Jane Austen or a Frances Hodgson Burnett her humanity, we miss out on the rest of the story.

I’m deep in the thick of things, and writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf is simultaneously easier and more challenging than I thought it would be.  I feel kind of schizophrenic…by day, I’m instructing people on how best to use Twitter to promote their businesses and doing marketing plans.  But a huge part of me is busy sifting through the complexity of Louisa May Alcott’s relationship to her father and wondering about the architecture of corsetry in the Antebellum South.

Here are some tidbits I’ve come across in the past several weeks:

• Jane Eyre, illustrated:  A great collection of artistic interpretations of everyone’s favorite plane Jane, Jane Eyre
• Pioneer Girl:  A blog devoted to Laura Ingalls Wilder fact and fiction
• A fascinating look at the history of Times New Roman (and its connection to children’s book illustrator [famous for The Secret Garden and A Little Princess] Tasha Tudor)

Also, if you’re interested in issues of girls and boys reading (I sure know I am), check out my contribution to Newbery Honor winner and all around superstar Kirby Larson’s blog (coming next week sometime).  Preview here…