I fell for “Jane Eyre” the first time I read it, so many years ago, and I re-read it every five years or so. I have met others who do the same thing. Right now, one of my plans is to paint a picture of the chestnut tree that is split by lighting the night that Jane agrees to marry Mr. Rochester (the first time, that is, before the wedding that doesn’t take place, causing Jane to run away, of course, later she comes back — oh, read it yourself).
So when I found “Becoming Jane Eyre,” by Sheila Kohler, on the shelf at my public library, I checked it out. This novel imagines how Charlotte Bronte came to write her masterpiece. Early on, this passage struck me with some force, as I thought it viscerally expressed what it can be like to grow the tiniest germ of an idea. Here, at a time when she is also tending to her blind father, Charlotte is wrestling with what to name her book’s heroine:
“It comes to her out of thin air. She is not sure if she has heard such a name. Was there someone she knew with that name? Does it come from the family arms she once saw in a church, or the river she knows well, the beautiful valley of the Ayre? Or is it a name that comes from air, perhaps, or fire? Fire and ire will be in the book: rage at the world as it is. Unfair! Unfair! Ire and eyer: she is the one who now sees in her father’s place. She has become the voyeur, the observer. Plain Jane, Emily Jane, her beloved sister’s second name, Jane, so close to Joan, brave Joan of Arc, Jane so close to Janet, Jeanette, little Jane. A name that conjures up duty and dullness, childhood and obedience, but also spirit and liberty, a sprite’s name, a fairy’s name, half spirit, half flesh, light in darkness, truth and hypocrisy, the name of one who sees: Jane Eyre.”
Thanks so much for reading my book so carefully. Sheila Kohler