Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler Page A

herself quite unfit to perform. Her employers hardly glanced at or addressed a word to her or, if they did, treated her with obvious condescension. “Would you mind fetching my shawl, my dear? Like a fool I’ve left it in my bedroom,” a guest asked her as she sat in her deck chair on the lawn.
    On her first morning she was brought in for a brief interview with the housekeeper and given a lengthy list of chores to be performed. “Of course, in your spare time, there will be the sewing to attend to,” said the woman, who had a frizz of false curls on her forehead, which reminded Charlotte of her aunt’s. It was made abundantly clear that she was here to perform the greatest possible quantity of labor for the least amount of money.
    When she wrote home to Emily and Anne, telling them not to show her letter to her father or her aunt, informing them that her days began at six and ended at eleven, she suspected that they would not believe her. It was slavery: thankless work without dignity. The two small, rude children had no notion of obedience. Unable to resort to any sort of punishment, she had only the weapons of perseverance and firmness. She was obliged to resort to holding the little boy down on the floor until his fury abated, in order to avoid his hands and feet.
    She realized, too, to her consternation that, like her father, she did not enjoy the constant presence of children—or certainly not these children, spoiled, indulged in every way, who treated her with no respect, yet expected her to follow them wherever they led. The boy was principally interested in the traps he kept for birds or moles in the garden. When he rode his hobbyhorse in the house, he whipped it mercilessly and dug his heels into its flanks. To teach them anything, she was obliged to catch and hold them in their seats, while they screamed and kicked and bit and spat in her face.
    They had been forbidden to play in the stable yard, because of the danger of the horses’ hooves. But one morning, the little boy slipped from her grasp and ran after his older brother into it. “Come back here immediately!” she found herself screaming. The little boy stopped, looked back at her, and grinned. He picked up a stone from the dust, and before she realized what he intended, reached back with his arm and threw it at her with all his strength. It struck her on the forehead and narrowly missed her eye.
    Stepping into the schoolroom the next morning to see her children, her employer stood briefly by the fire and remarked on her governess’s swollen eye. “You have injured yourself ?” the woman asked without much interest.
    When Charlotte shrugged and said nothing, the boy was moved to say that he loved his governess. She praised her son’s affectionate nature and sailed out of the room.
    After the children had gone to bed, there was the pile of sewing to be done. She sat alone in the schoolroom, listening to the sounds of merriment, the strains of music and adult conversation coming from below. While she toiled, the others dined and conversed or danced. She could not even hide in her room with a book or take up her pen. She was expected to sit up mending or hemming or sewing dolls’ clothes by candlelight, straining her already weak eyes on a tiny muslin bonnet, wee socks, or a minuscule petticoat before finally climbing the stairs to the servants’ floor, where she lay awake.
    During the day she slipped silently through the grand rooms. She never looked at herself in the mirrors. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of her shadow in the grass. She knew she was growing thin. She was constantly hungry, but unable to eat at the table with the wild children. She wanted nothing fancy, not the trifles or blancmange or hare’s tongue she saw being taken into the dining room below, just a moment of quiet on her own with a simple dish and a book. Above all what she missed was a new idea or a stirring thought coming from without. She became increasingly aware