Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler Page B

of intellectual stagnation. She was afraid that she might become like these people, her intellect deteriorating, her heart petrifying, and her very soul contracting.
    Nor did her employer’s husband show much interest. She rarely saw him except on Sundays, when the family went to church. During the week he was busy with various employments, roistering around the countryside, foxhunting or horse-jockeying. He was a practical farmer and a hearty bon vivant . If he caught sight of her, he would offer a cheery greeting of some kind, which would give her a momentary lift in spirits.
    How different these fashionable people acted from those in her Angrian fantasies. There she could perform heroic acts herself or wait lovingly for the hero’s return. Here, as the days went by, she began to wonder who she was. In the evenings, surrounded by groups of guests, she would feel most alone. She sat still in her corner with her knitting until she could not bear it, then slinked off to her own room. Her breath grew short; her hands trembled; she often found herself on the verge of tears.
    Her employer admonished her one wet June morning as she followed her charges down the stairs. “You really must endeavor to acquire a more sociable and cheerful disposition, for the children’s sake. Something franker, more natural, as it were,” she said as the children ran to embrace their mother. “Such a long face is not good for them, is it, my darlings?”
    She stood there before her employer, battling with tears. The woman drew herself up and launched into one of her sermons.
    “You are a victim of wounded vanity, my dear,” she said, “You are proud and therefore ungrateful. You are, after all, paid a handsome salary, and if you don’t make an effort to quell your ungodly discontent, you are likely to go to pieces on the rocks of morbid self-esteem and end up in an insane asylum.”
    Humiliated thus before the children, who stared up at her with some satisfaction, she lost all self-control and burst into tears. She rushed back up the stairs and threw herself on the bed, in a passion of grief and rage. She sat weeping and drumming her fists against her knees in the window seat, studying the garden in the mist and cloud, a dismal scene of wet lawn and storm-beaten shrub. How could the woman speak to her thus!
    In what way was this woman, with her animal spirits and limited mind and education, better than she? Her husband had inherited his position from his father, whose wealth and, indeed, this estate were procured by the efforts of children working thirteen hours a day. Yet she, the governess, was ordered to walk at a distance behind the family when they went to church on Sundays. Or if permitted to ride in the carriage with them, she was placed in a position far from the window and with her back to the horses, stifled to the point of sickness.
    She considered leaving the place. There were moments when she would have preferred to be dead. But she decided to stay and survive. She would toil on. With the thought of her father’s example, her family’s affection, her intellectual and moral superiority, she determined that she would not give in; she would preserve her dignity.
    Then, one July morning, there was a visit with the family to the house with the battlements. The girl, in her pink satin frock and lace gloves, was quiet for once, and the noisy boy was left behind with the maid. On her best behavior on this summer ride in the open carriage, the girl even tried out a few words of French that she had learned from her governess. She turned her pale, small-featured face up to the sun, which shone serenely on the still, green fields. “ Quelle belle journée, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle? ” she said almost pleasantly. As they entered the gate, the church bell was tolling the hour.
    Charlotte looked up at the gray front of the three-storied mansion with its battlements and rookery, listening to the cawing of the dark birds that circled the