Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  “Is it Jane?” I asked stupidly. “What is it? This is her shape—this is her size—”

  She laughed at my disbelief, and I knew it was my Jane. “And this her voice,” she said. “She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”

  “Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre!” was all I could say.

  At first we just held each other close in silence, and then the words poured out of us. She insisted, over and over, that she was not a vision, not a dream, not an echo of the moors. But without my sight, how could I be sure of her? She laughed and kissed my eyes, which had been so sore for human touch. “Is it you—is it Jane?” I asked, still unbelieving. “You are come back to me, then?”

  “I am.”

  “And you do not lie dead in some ditch, under some stream?”

  She laughed. “No, sir; I am an independent woman now. My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.”

  I must have smiled at her, for this was Jane. This was my practical Jane. I could not have dreamed that. “But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me?” I teased her, yet the worry was real. She had money, and I had nothing else to give her.

  “I am my own mistress,” she responded. My heart rose at her words: she was promising to stay with me, to love me, to be my companion. But then she talked of neighbor, nurse, and housekeeper—what was this? This was not love, but pity. Not passion but, at best, devotion to a father past his prime. I sighed—I should have understood that perfect happiness would never be within my grasp. If she would not be my own wife, I should release her.

  But, sensing my gloom, her voice changed, and she began to tease me again as of old. I thought she would be revolted by my scars, but instead she claimed she was now in danger of loving me too much. I could not believe her words, but over and over again she laid herself out to me: she was mine, if I wanted her. If I wanted her—my God!

  We dined together that evening, still talking—the first time we had ever shared a meal—and it was as it always should have been.

  I could barely believe it: my Jane—despite what I had done to her, she was still—always mine.

  And I hers.

  * * *

  Reader, she married me. I cannot still believe it. The evening she returned, I held her in my arms, and I showed her the necklace I had worn since the day she left, and with her help I took it from my neck and returned it to hers. And I asked the one thing I had to ask her again. “Jane,” I whispered into her ear, “please. Call me Edward.”

  I am sure she smiled at me, and she laughed until she recognized the seriousness in my face. “Edward,” she whispered. And then again, “Edward.” And finally, a kiss on my lips and: “Edward.”

  I held her. It was all I could do. I could not speak. I could not silence my pounding heart. I could only hold her tight against me and think the words that had become truth: You are my family, and I am yours.

  Two days later we were married, and at last—at last!—she was my wife, and I promised her that our honeymoon would shine our whole life long; its beams would only fade over her grave or mine.

  Epilogue

  Ferndean Manor was suitable for a miserable wretch living out his lonely life, but it was not a fit place for a married couple, nor a family. I told Jane we should find a better place, but she insisted not, because I had become used to Ferndean, where I could find my own way independent of her, or Mary and John.

  “But it is not I for whom we need a house,” I said to her. “We need a home for our family. And a family home should never be for the oldest and least able, but for the young, for the generations to come—the home they will pine for when they are far off, and cherish when they have returned, a home to hold all the memories of a lifetime. We must build a house, Jane, that has sunshine streaming in the windows, and nooks and crannies where children can hide, and lawns where they can play. We must be sure to have rooms that are not always square or rectangular, but unusual in shape and aspect, and that lead to each other in surprising ways, and there must be attics that children can explore on rainy days, and…”

  She laughed. “And banisters they can slide down?”

  “Yes! Absolutely!”

  “Did you do that? At Thornfield-Hall? Did you slide down the banister?”

  “I never dared.”

  “Ah! You were not such a ruffian as you like to pretend!”

  “Did you? At the Lowood School? Surely not at the Reed house.”

  “I never dared, either.”

  “We will build the world’s best banister,” I responded, “and we will slide down it every day.”

  * * *

  It took five years, deciding exactly where such a house should be situated, and how large it should be and what it should look like: the entire planning and building of it. After two years of our marriage, I had regained a bit of sight in my one eye, and although I could not see the house plans well enough to decipher much, I could see it all in my mind, and Jane drew what we agreed upon. By the time the house was built, I knew it so well that I did not need to be guided through it, and it has become the house where our sons were born and the house where Jane wrote her life story and where she insisted I tell mine.

  And now there is sunshine coming in our windows, and ponies in the pasture, and the orchard blooms in the spring with fruit trees, and I wander in the garden, and there are still some woods left, and beyond them there are meadows where sheep graze and our sons can play at being soldiers or pirates or warrior chiefs, and there is Adèle, more English now than French, who comes home on her school holidays, and has become, truly, a daughter to us, and a blessed relief, sometimes, from our boisterous sons.

  And there is Jane, my dearest heart, who walks with me and reads to me and talks and laughs with me and teases, and sometimes slides down the banister when no one is about, and who calls me “Edward” every day of my life.

  Reading Group Guide

  Discussion Questions

  Edward Rochester is an iconic literary hero. Did your impression of him change in reading his side of the story as told in Mr. Rochester, especially in contrast to Jane Eyre or Wide Sargasso Sea?

  What was the most surprising or memorable thing you felt you learned about Rochester, his character, or his motivations in this retelling of the story?

  “I could not get Jamaica out of my head.” Even as a young boy, Rochester is fascinated by Jamaica. Discuss its depiction in the novel and what it represents.

  Who—or what—would you say is the greatest influence on Rochester’s life as he grows up? How do his friendships with Carrot and Touch shape him? How different do you think he might have been if he had never met Carrot or Touch, or if either of them had remained in his life longer?

  “But then I remind myself that if I had turned my back on my father’s plans, my journey would have been entirely different, and while I might have found a satisfactory sort of life much sooner, I would never have found Jane.” What does the novel say about past experiences shaping your future?

  Think about Rochester’s relationship to his father. How does that change over the course of the novel, and how does it shape the boy Rochester is and the man he becomes?

  “I felt as if she saw into my soul, saw all that I was, and when she smiled, I felt the kind of approbation I had always hoped for.” This is how Rochester describes his first meeting with Bertha. Compare and contrast this with his first meeting with Jane and his impressions of the women who play such a pivotal role in his life.

  “It was for Thornfield itself that my heart longed most.” How important is Thornfield as a character in the novel? What does it signify to Rochester?

  “There were depths there that intrigued me. In talking with her I was gripped by a warmth I had not known for a very long time.” What do you think most attracts Rochester to Jane?

  “Jane was my only hope for relief,
for regeneration.” Rochester falls very quickly for Jane. What do you think of his unorthodox method of pursuing her? Do you agree or disagree with his tactics?

  “And there is Jane, my dearest heart…who calls me ‘Edward’ every day of my life.” Discuss the importance of names in the novel.

  How do you think Rochester’s perception of love changes throughout the novel?

  Q & A with Sarah Shoemaker

  Edward Fairfax Rochester is one of the most beloved and controversial characters in literature, but somehow his story has never been told before now. Where did the idea for this novel come from?

  We were discussing Jane Eyre in my book discussion group, and the conversation circled around Mr. Rochester. What are we to make of him, we wondered. This man who is sometimes angry and sometimes tender, who keeps his mad wife secretly in an upstairs apartment—who is he, really? What did Charlotte Brontë think of him? Is he a hero or an antihero? Do we not admire Jane for her independence, her moral integrity, her perceptive instincts? So what does she see in him? In the midst of all that, I began to think that someone ought to write Rochester’s story, someone ought to read Jane Eyre closely and figure out who and what this man really is. Before I reached my home that day, I had already decided: I was going to write that book.

  Did you do special research to capture the voice, setting, and atmosphere of Brontë’s era?

  I read and reread Jane Eyre, of course, looking to understand Rochester, but also trying to get a sense of the period, the rhythm of the language, the expressions that we no longer use, the personalities involved. Then I read more widely from fiction that is of the same time period as Jane Eyre—Brontë’s Shirley, Charles Dickens, Mary Gaskell, Harriet Martineau, Mary Russell Mitford—looking for the same things until I had those sounds and rhythms and atmosphere clearly in my mind.

  The novel maps perfectly against the original Brontë, in terms of not only action and spoken word but mood and style. What was it like to try to inhabit, and bring to life, such a well-known character by such a classic author? Did it give you more freedom to let your imagination loose within those constraints, do you feel, or less?

  One of the things that surprised me most was how little freedom I felt I had. There is much more in Jane Eyre than the casual reader realizes, and one has to read so carefully, so as not to miss anything. It is like playing a role in a play or movie: one has to be that person. Of course that is true in any novel, but perhaps more so when the story and the character and the mood and all is already known to the reader, and the writer has to respect that and work with it.

  Jane and Mr. Rochester have one of the most famous, opaque, and complex love stories in English literature. Having spent so much time inside their heads to write this book, what do you think drew them to each other with such intense chemistry? What does he love in her? What does she love in him?

  This question is a complicated one! I’m not sure I can do it justice here. In the first place, we have to keep in our twenty-first-century minds the very important issue of class. Even Jane Austen doesn’t deal with people having romantic relationships beyond their class, at least not in her major characters, and that would have always been at the back, if not the front, of their minds. For example, Blanche Ingram talking about how her father always was going after the governesses—and that was not uncommon in those times.

  And yet on their first meeting (not including their evening encounter on the pathway) he asks her a very personal and surely inappropriate question: “Do you think I’m handsome?” Why? Perhaps he has already “read” her honesty and forthrightness. And she answers honestly: “No.” What an incredible moment—each of them stepping beyond propriety to be open with the other. Brontë makes little of this moment; I call a little more attention to it, but in my mind, this is the beginning of an unusual relationship, one in which they can engage as equals and experience the pleasure of mind play which neither has ever done before with a member of the opposite sex, to say nothing of someone of such a different standing in society. For both of them, this is a world-changing experience: to be “seen” and respected for who they really are by someone of the opposite sex. How could they not fall in love?

  The whole first half of the novel is your own invention, before Edward crosses paths, literally, with Jane halfway through the book. Where did you find inspiration for these characters and events?

  I started out with an understanding of where I needed the character of Rochester to go. Since in Jane Eyre Rochester mentions his father and brother but not his mother, I assumed his mother had died early; and since what he tells Jane of his father and brother seems to make them distant and unpleasant in his mind, I began with that—a lonely childhood. There’s only so much one can do with that all by itself, so I imagined him going to school relatively early. I read Nicholas Nickleby to understand what a school at that time might be like, and it was so horrible, so Dickensian, that I decided that the school in my book would be wonderful. So I imagined what young boys might like a school to be and wrote that. From then it was a matter of bringing young Edward up toward what I wanted him to become: a man who longed desperately for a place to belong, for home, for true companionship in the old meaning of the word—someone with whom one can share intimacies. Again, it’s like staging a play: one has to create the characters and the events that will help move the protagonist in the way the writer needs him to go.

  As many novels are, this was a multiyear project, from the original idea to the final book. What surprised you during that time? How did your feelings about Rochester, or Jane, or even Brontë change or evolve during that period?

  First and foremost, what surprised me was how hard it was. I thought it would be simple: just follow along what Charlotte Brontë wrote and show it from Rochester’s viewpoint. But I soon realized that would not work. The reader already knows that story; I had to create another story that would keep the reader’s interest. Readers of Jane Eyre already know part of Rochester’s story, for he tells her far more than one might at first reading guess. So with that structure in mind, I had to create a new story, with new characters, with things going on, even toward the end when we think we already know everything, that Jane—and therefore the reader—never knew. That was crucial and really important to create tension at that point. I would say that while I began with very positive feelings regarding Rochester, as I “watched” him grow and struggle, I developed an ever closer relationship with him. There are two very tender moments from the Brontë book that particularly struck: the time Jane announces that she is leaving to go to see Mrs. Reed, and you can just feel how bereft Rochester is and how desperate he is to insure that she will return. And the other is the scene where he is trying to get her to commit herself to him, and he is so desperate for her to do so, and she won’t, she just won’t.

  What will be the biggest surprise for readers of your book who are big Jane Eyre fans?

  I think, because of what is so generally thought of Mr. Rochester, that his treatment of Bertha—what the reader knows from Jane Eyre—developed over time, that he did not suddenly throw her into an attic and lock the door, that what we see in Jane Eyre is the result of a long and difficult process for the both of them.

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people who have, in one way or another, contributed to the writing and the publication of this book that I will no doubt mistakenly omit some names. Still, I would like to thank Jennifer Weltz, of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, for her steadfast support and encouragement. And, as well, Millicent Bennett of GCP, who shared my vision of what this book could be and was so instrumental in helping it bloom into what it is, and Millicent’s assistant Jessie Pierce, publicist Andy Dodds, and many others at Grand Central, including Jamie Raab, Deb Futter, Brian McLendon, Carolyn Kurek, cover designer Liz Connor, copy editor Eileen Chetti, and Tracy Dowd, Karen Torres, and the rest of the sales team.

  My deepest gratitude to Kent, my first reader always, whose early enthusiasm
kept me going; to Pamela Grath, bookseller extraordinaire, whose initial reaction buoyed my hopes; my two early readers, Sue and Betsy, and my writing group: Alison, Karen C., Mary, and Karen M., who gave valuable advice and encouragement; my many other writer friends, who, before even reading the book, cheered me on: Elizabeth, Dorene, Marilyn, Barbara, Trudy, and Susan. And finally, thanks to my favorite librarian, Deb Stannard, and her assistant, Mary, who have indulged my often unusual requests, and the terrific Michigan eLibrary, without which I, who live in a very small village, could not possibly have done the research required for this book; and thanks to all teachers and librarians and booksellers who make it possible for those of us who love reading to get our hands on books and read.

  And, of course, to Charlotte Brontë, who masterfully invented this terrific character who has kept readers wondering for so many years.

  About the Author

  Sarah Shoemaker is a former university librarian and lives with her husband in northern Michigan.

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