Free Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler Page B

found. She clenched her teeth against the misfortune of this wretched bondage to the daily grind and thought of her brother, who had remained so blithely free.
    It was only later that night that she read the words from the famous poet in the flickering candlelight. And what terrible words! They were burned into her mind forever. There was really no need to keep the letter for herself but rather for posterity to judge. “Literature,” he kindly informed her, “cannot and should not be the business of a woman’s life . . .”
    For a long time she could not sleep. She lay there in her white flannel nightgown, the light of the moon shining on her face. She was exhausted after a long, mindless day with her pupils, her long walk, her riotous emotions, and yet thoughts continued to race through her head. She turned back and forth, praying to God for some relief. She had long ago refused to take any remedy for the sleeplessness that so often afflicted her and still does. Watching her brother sink into stultified stupidity after imbibing some opiate, she was wary of such a remedy. So she lay there, praying to God for peace of mind. At first light she rose and took up her pen. With furor, the nib scratching at her page, she wrote the poet her most dutiful response, a response steeped in irony and rage. “In the evenings, I confess, though I try not to, I do think . . .,” she wrote.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Governess
    S he left her home, her dear Emily and Anne, her brother, her father, with such misgivings, afraid she had made a terrible mistake, and then, when she came upon the place of her new employment, in the spring sweetness of the day, all the extravagant hopes of youth revived. She was twenty-three. She leaned out of the carriage window, the sun on her face, and saw the broad, clear front of the house, all the windows thrown open, two maids gazing out in black dresses and white caps. Perhaps they were looking for her?
    She imagined the children might run across the lawn to welcome her with curtsies and perhaps even a bunch of wildflowers they had picked for her. Her employers might take her to their hearts. She knew them socially, after all. They had friends in common. They were industrialists who had risen in the social scale, nouveaux riches . They could hardly treat her as a servant. She was the educated daughter of a distinguished clergyman.
    The place stood in a privileged spot, sheltered from the north and exposed to the warm south, at the end of a long driveway, shaded by great trees. It seemed to have come straight out of one of her Angrian stories. From the terrace where she stood waiting to enter, she could see across the valley of the Lother as far as the river Ayre.
    Ushered through the grand drawing room, through a library, and along the three-arched passageway linking them, she did not become aware of the true situation immediately. Her employer, a tall, big-boned, handsome woman who did not need rouge to enhance her charms and who was obviously carrying yet another child high up beneath her blue taffeta dress, greeted her with a fussy affability. “How lovely to meet you,” she said, half-turning from the big bowl of spring flowers she was adjusting with a beringed hand. “I’m so glad you have arrived on such a fine day. Did you have a good journey? You must meet my little ones.” She seemed to have forgotten that they had already met and went on volubly without waiting for a response, calling for her two youngest children to meet their governess. She held the solid boy squirming on her knee and wiping his sticky mouth and hands on her gown. The little girl sat on the pink, silk-covered loveseat at her side. The mother spoke of their recent ailments, their delicacy, their susceptibility to colds, their cleverness, their aptitude, especially that of the boy, whom she called a “flower of the flock,” one who even at his young age knew the difference between right and wrong. She admitted that he might at