The Brontesaurus

by John Sutherland

  The central character, Sarassine, owns two sexual realities: the reader (and narrator) believe her a beautiful woman. In a stroke-of-thunder denouement she/he is revealed to be something other. Barthes makes much of the window, and the opening scene, as a prime example of the ‘metaphorical’ code, and the paradoxes it embodies.

  Dorothy Van Ghent, had she lived to read S/Z, would have been justified in chortling. ‘Go figure,’ she might have said.

  Footnote

  1. Mirror glass is as rich metaphorically, but differently so: it reverses reality. Lewis Carroll plays with the idea in Alice’s expedition through the looking-glass.

  APPENDIX

  Jane Eyre abbreviated

  by John Crace

  John Crace is the parliamentary sketch writer for the Guardian newspaper, for which he also writes the regular Digested Read feature. He is the author of several books including, with John Sutherland, the multi-volume The Incomplete Shakespeare.

  ‘You are not a pleasant girl,’ said my aunt, Mrs Reed. ‘You have been found being beastly to my dear son, John. You are to be locked in the red-room.’

  Reader, how I longed to say that it was John who had bullied me, not I him! But in truth I was beside myself; or, as the French say, out of myself. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, forever condemned? I had not asked to be an orphan nor to be lodged with my aunt.

  As day turned to night, a dark terror enveloped me and I did sense the ghost of my dead uncle pass before me. My head spun wildly and I did scream but to no avail and ere long I fell unconscious in gothic terror. It was not until the following morning that I was released and summoned before my aunt.

  ‘You are still a very unpleasant girl,’ my aunt observed.

  ‘And you are a very unpleasant woman,’ I replied with unexpected boldness for a ten-year-old girl.

  ‘Enough, I say. It is time you were taught some manners. Henceforward you are to go to Lowood school to be taught some manners by Mr Brocklehurst.’

  Lowood school, how aptly named it was. For seldom had I felt so low as when I arrived at that institution.

  ‘You are a mean and unpleasant girl,’ said Mr Brocklehurst, forcing me to stand upon a chair in front of the entire school of wretched, impoverished orphans. ‘You shall remain standing until you learn some manners. Only then will you be allowed a bowl of gruel.’

  ‘But sir, I am just a proto-feminist who likes to speak her mind,’ I replied.

  ‘There, there,’ said the matron, the kindly Miss Temple – truly my life was blessed with nominative determinism for Miss Temple was to become my Miss Sanctuary – as she put me to bed. ‘You may be very plain, plain Jane, and your teeth might also be in a hell of a state, just like Miss Brontë’s, but I don’t think you are intrinsically evil. Just try not to rub too many people up the wrong way.’

  That night, I heard a coughing in the dormitory.

  ‘I am dying of consumption,’ said an enfeebled Helen Burns. ‘But do not cry for me, because I am stoical unto death and accepting of my role within this book to be the voice of martyred innocence.’

  Reader, I know I am defective in many areas of my character – false modesty being one of them – but I never tired of spending time with Helen Burns. Mainly because she died almost immediately thereafter. But reader, let it be known that never a day went past for the rest of my life when I did not think upon her with affection even though I was never to mention her again.

  Hitherto I have recorded in some detail the events of the first ten years of my insignificant existence, but of the next eight I have little to say other than that I found myself unexpectedly happy – a state of affairs that served no purpose to my narrative. And so it was that in my eighteenth year, I found myself journeying to Thornfield – how aptly named again, for my adventures there were to be most thorny – where I was to take up a position as governess to Adèle, a young French girl who was ward of a Mr Rochester.

  ‘Bonjour plain Jane,’ said Adèle. ‘Avez-vous come ici to teach me Franglais?’

  ‘Bien sur,’ I replied. ‘But moins of the plain Jane. I’ve got everyone else telling me I’m not beaucoup of a looker without vous wading dans.’

  The days passed easily enough, though I did once or twice imagine I heard the sound of a vampyre in the attic, and it wasn’t until some months later that I finally met Mr Rochester. Reader, it happened like this. I was out walking late one night, when I heard a horse galloping along the lane followed by the cry of a man.

  ‘You spooked the horse and made him slip,’ said the man.

  ‘Don’t you start blaming me for things before we’ve even met,’ I said. ‘People have been doing that to me all my life.’

  ‘You must be Janet,’ he said.

  ‘Jane,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s what I said. Now, Janet you must walk with me and tell me how young Adèle is shaping up.’

  Over the following weeks we had many such conversations and I fancy Mr Rochester came to appreciate my northern bluntness. ‘Plain by name and plain by nature,’ he used to say teasingly. Reader, I hesitate to say this but I began to find a certain attractiveness in Mr Rochester’s high forehead and haughty demeanour, but being so plain I never once imagined those feelings to be reciprocated. Even when I rescued him from a fire in his bedroom, the cause of which he never did satisfactorily explain.

  ‘Tell me, Janet,’ he said, some days later.

  ‘It’s Jane.’

  ‘Tell me, Janet. What do you think of Miss Blanche Ingram? Do you not think she is a fine specimen of woman and would make a good wife.’

  I had had reason to observe Miss Ingram and Mr Rochester closely for some weeks and could only agree that she was indeed tall, comely and in possession of most of her teeth.

  ‘That settles it, Janet,’ he declared. ‘I shall be wed. Will you still love me?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy,’ I replied, struggling to repress my turbulent emotions.

  ‘Then we shall be wed,’ he bellowed. ‘I was only pretending to love Blanche to see if you really loved me. For at heart, I am a deeply insecure man with extreme trust issues.’

  Reader, forgive me. I know I am meant to be a feminist role model and that I ought to have told him to get stuffed if he thought I was going to get married to someone who could play such abusive mind games. But reader, I am plain and I was unlikely to get a better offer. Besides, I did really fancy him and it wasn’t his fault that he had had such a tortured life and he could be quite nice when he tried.

  To my surprise, his family were greatly pleased by our betrothal and the weeks before we were to be wed passed agreeably while preparations were made, though it was quite annoying to one day find my wedding dress had been ripped in half.

  ‘It’s those ghosts, Janet …’

  ‘Jane …’

  ‘They get everywhere round here. Never mind, I’ll get you another.’

  Reader, imagine my excitement on the big day when the clergyman asked Edward if he would agree to take me, Janet, as his lawful wedded wife. Reader, imagine my horror when a breathless solicitor turned up at the church and announced that the wedding could not go ahead as he was already married.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said Edward. ‘I was going to tell you, but it just completely slipped my mind. It’s like this. I was very young and when my parents told me to get married to this rich creole woman, Bertha, I did as I was told. Only it turned out she was mad; it’s possible she even has syphilis and has given it to me. Anyway, I was then so distraught to be with a madwoman that I went to France where I had an affair with Adèle’s mother – though I swear on my life I wasn’t the dad – and when she dumped me I shagged several other women before coming back to—shire.’

  ‘Oh Edward, we all make mistakes,’ I said; despite all I had heard, I loved him still.

  ‘Thank you, plain Janet. I knew you’d understand.’

  We took the coach back to Thornfield, there to be greeted by a huge, dark,
deranged woman.

  ‘Ah, that’s the other thing I forgot to tell you. Bertha’s been living upstairs all along. It wasn’t ghosts you were hearing, it was her.’

  ‘Nnnnnng,’ grunted Bertha.

  ‘Such a pity Miss Brontë hasn’t allowed her a single word in the entire novel,’ said Edward. ‘Still, I’m sure she would have corroborated every detail of my story, Wouldn’t you, Bertha?’

  ‘Nnnnnng.’

  ‘Now plain Janet,’ Edward continued. ‘That just leaves us to decide what to do next, now we can’t get married. Here’s what I propose. You come with me and live as my mistress in Marseille and I’ll do my best not to give you syphilis.’

  ‘Mr Rochester,’ I said, drawing myself up to my full four feet six inches. ‘I may be very plain, but I do have some self-worth. I will not be your mistress.’

  ‘Oh go on.’

  ‘No.’

  With that I collected my possessions and took a coach as far as my last remaining sovereign would take me. Reader, a storm it blowed hard and I would certainly have died that night had I not been taken in by the two Miss Rivers of Moor House, which was, not surprisingly, on a moor.

  Reader, how my heart flowed with gratitude to the two Miss Rivers and how pleased they were to discover that I was able to converse easily in French while drawing a perfect likeness of them both.

  ‘Now we know you are a lady fallen on hard times and not some penniless scrounger,’ they said in unison, ‘we are happy to let you stay with us for as long as you wish and to meet our brother St John, the local clergyman.’

  ‘I would not want to be beholden to you,’ I said. ‘I will earn my keep.’

  ‘In that case, you can be the headmistress of the local school for girls,’ said St John, not unthoughtfully.

  Reader, I loved that job and worked hard to educate the poor, and I must confess it was a complete surprise when I found out that not only had I inherited £20,000 from uncle John, but that St John and his sisters were my cousins. Who would have imagined such a thing?

  ‘Happily will I divide my fortune with you three,’ I told my cousins.

  ‘We don’t mind if you do,’ they said.

  Some months later St John took me to one side.

  ‘I wish you to be my wife, learn Hindustani and travel with me among the natives spreading the word of God.’

  ‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘Much as I too like God, I’m not sure I much care for your disapproving Calvinist manner and I’m certain you don’t love me because you regard me with such icy stares.’

  ‘You must marry me.’

  ‘I will not. Though I will travel to India as your cousin.’

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ he said, in a decidedly ungodly tone.

  Reader, just then a vision of Mr Rochester came upon me, calling me to his side so I packed my possessions and headed off back across the moor. My heart shook with terror when I espied Thornfield once more, for the house was but a burnt-out ruin.

  I quickened my pace and there he was, sitting under a tree, armless and eyeless.

  ‘Is that you, plain Janet?’ he enquired.

  ‘It’s Jane.’

  ‘It is you, Janet. I know not what to say. Mad Bertha did set the house alight and I was sorely injured while trying to rescue her.’

  ‘And what of mad Bertha?’

  ‘She slipped from the battlements. I swear I did not push her.’

  ‘Then thou art redeemed, for God has now punished you enough for all your porkies. Since thou art blind it does not really matter how plain I am. And happily will I be thy right hand.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘Enough of that.’

  Reader, I married him. And as the years passed, so some sight returned to his eyes and he did finally get to see our firstborn son. Though he, like me, could not for the life of him remember what he was called.

  Postscript by John Sutherland

  John Crace is right about ‘Janet Eyre’: Rochester calls her by this name on a number of occasions. The wobbly forename is usually explained thus: (1) it was a common term of endearment for women called ‘Jane’; (2) Rochester is a lover of all things French (particularly French women) and it is a casual anglicisation of ‘Jeanette’.