(1.) Antoinette
On days it rains I hear the roof cry out;
is there another woman living up
against the leaking silver sky? Safe from
his voice, her subduing hands, and safe from
bed’s depths, walls’ ends, this room is a country
but above it is surely another.
I would pierce the ceiling if I could,
with my own fingers. Big rainy sky, big
rain-soaked wild place. It would be bitter cold,
but I’d take warmth with me, climb through the roof
with flames curled over one arm, like a scarf.
Up in the rain I’d shelter the fire in
my skirt, spread some on the roof, send some
trailing behind me, like a star’s tail, when I fly.
(2.) Helen
Sun enters even this dead place, and in
a circle on the classroom floor, a holy
light burns. I take it in, imagine an
angel lady, tall as a church spire, clad
in a dress of this perfect sun, white-gold
fire. The sun circle vanquished by shadow—
I forget the lesson, am reprimanded.
In the evening, I brush my hair by moon
glow through curtains, little Jane watching, but
the other girls sleep in thin rows. Whisper
counsel, search for mine in the Bible in
my pillowcase. Dream the sun turns to rain;
will the earth flood or go up in flame?
A place, a girl who burns, will rise again.
(3.) Adèle
For countless days I wished myself away,
Rose petal skies, rose petal colored dress,
I sung to give them something to notice.
I closed my eyes while dancing, because then
I could see her flowered skirts, her dancing
shoes flashing white, mouth pursed but eyes alight
as she told me fait comme moi, Adèle! Adèle!
I said oui, Maman and mirrored her steps,
so now when I dance I can picture her.
But the moor is vast, windy, unrefined,
and the house too sullen to be pretty,
and sometimes I grow sullen and unpretty
too, and the shaggy, stone green moor stares
approving, says fait comme moi, Adèle! I did.
Reflection:
I chose to write three sonnets, all from the perspective of characters from Jane Eyre whose perspectives do not exist in the novel. Sonnets are a classic form—the Shakespearean sonnet, although just one type, is arguably the most well-known. The form usually consists of these rules: fourteen lines of ten syllables each, with a turn (called a “volta”) before the last two. Traditional sonnets are also written in iambic pentameter with an abab rhyme scheme up until the last two lines which rhyme with each other. I considered writing traditional sonnets, as I’ve tried the form before and found it fascinating (and incredibly challenging!). But when I began to write I felt that these three pieces required a slightly looser tone and I did not want to rhyme. Every line is, however, exactly ten syllables, and there is an explicit turn at the last two lines. Another aspect of sonnets is that they are usually addressed to someone. These three are not. They are first person accounts, glimpses of Jane Eyre’s narrative from others’ perspectives. However, in keeping with sonnets being dedicated to people, each one is called only the first name of the person whose story they tell.
I will begin with the first one, “Antoinette”. After reading Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea I could not bear to call this character “Bertha”, a name given her by Rochester , so called her Antoinette, her given name in Wide Sargasso Sea and only her middle name in Jane Eyre. My sonnet about Antoinette is, perhaps, much more inspired by Wide Sargasso Sea than it is by Jane Eyre, although both depictions of Antoinette/Bertha influenced me. My poem reimagines what it might be like for Antoinette confined in her room close to the time she burns Thornfield, and what it might look like for her to want to do such a thing. In Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea Antoinette finds comfort, power, and beauty in fire, and describes the lighting of a fire in her room in Thornfield like this: “The paper shrivels, the sticks crackle and spit, the coal shoulders and glowers. In the end flames shoot up and they are beautiful. I get out of bed and go close to watch them and to wonder why I have been brought here.” (Rhys, 161). The use of fire as symbolic of a woman’s power is something that has been read into Jane Eyre, especially in Bertha’s burning of Thornfield. Because if Antoinette/Bertha is also a symbol of repressed womanhood and what happens to women when they are confined in isolation after being victims of patriarchal violence and abuse, then her eventual escape and destruction of her prison reads as a feminist metaphor. In Gilbert and Gubar’s Madwoman in the Attic, for example, Bertha is described as an example of the “woman as monster” trope, someone who is also a side of Jane that cannot be expressed. Bertha (Antoinette) does what Jane cannot, and her burning of Thornfield is also a part of that.
My second poem is from Helen Burns’ perspective. Helen is a tragic character who fascinated me because she is so intelligent and emotional but so resigned to being ill-treated, a trait that is clearly linked to her identity as a Christian. Helen, I believe, is intended to function as a manifestation of Jane Eyre’s religious themes. She is a martyr, but she is also only a fourteen year old girl, and in my sonnet I strove to write a Helen who had the awareness of her own power and worth that the novel’s Helen only attains once, while speaking with Miss Temple: “The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within her. They woke, they kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek.” (Jane Eyre, 56). Helen’s powers waking within her are described using fire metaphors—they are “kindled”, they “glow”, they give her “brightness”, and I wanted to write about that Helen. My sonnet reflects Helen’s religiousness and the intense, fervent Christianity present in much of the novel, but at the center is Helen’s fire.
In my third and last poem, I take Adèle’s perspective, a character who is sidelined and spoke of patronizingly throughout the novel. Her foreignness is repeatedly mentioned and it is sometimes difficult to tell whether this is Brontë’s bias or the author’s decision to present a child character who is as socially “othered” and misunderstood as Jane herself was while growing up. Alexandra Valint’s essay “Accepting Adèle in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre”, deals with this question and she argues that Jane and Adèle are in fact echoes of each other, in their positions as orphans brought up by strangers, their appearances and interests and the way they are alienated and looked down on because of their differences. “Both Jane and Adèle are described and treated as foreign entities.” (Valint). In my poem, I took that feeling of being “othered” that Adèle experiences as parallel to Jane’s own similar feelings, and explored it. In my poem Adèle talks about her mother (and life in France) and now Thornfield trying to make her into a person she is not.
In all three poems, I tried to present versions of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë that exist as subtext in the original novel, if at all, through the voices of three characters, women whose stories are just as necessary as Jane’s.
Works Cited:
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. Penguin Edition, 2006. Originally published in 1847.
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. W. W. Norton. 1966.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic. Yale, 1979.
McDonald, Veronica. “Becoming Helen, The Journey to Compassion in Jane Eyre.” 20 October, 2023. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Becoming-Helen-The-Journey-to-Compassion-in-Jane-Eyre
Valint, Alexandra. “Accepting Adèle in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre”2016 Dickens Studies Annual https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/dickstudannu.47.2016.0201?seq=1
Sprockets and Springes 