dear jane

Dear Jane

I met you a little over two months ago and was instantly entranced by your story. I marvelled at the courage you had to endure such a troubling childhood; an orphan in an unwanted and unwelcome home. But you were strong. At school - the break you needed, craving and clinging to your books for strength - you showed the same spirit. You, Jane, were always a fighter.

After your education you became an educator yourself. First, it was at the same school with the same lessons, which you recounted, day after day, in the finest of details. But soon this took you forward, into the beams of a welcoming house. Little Adele became your student and friend and also, it seemed, the one who would open the door to your love.

Because you met him there, at Thornfield. And it was frightening and it was glorious all at the same time. You spent months tiptoeing around the truth of your love and he, he sat back, watching from afar. He tested you, he challenged you, he favoured and worried and fretted about you. Yet it was in fragments; wisps of fog that you couldn't quite cling to. And then one day, in the gardens, he confessed his love. And you, you challenged. Because you were not like the women of your age, not submissive nor retreating. I suppose that is what I admired about you; you were fearless in the face of opposition. That, too, is what he admired.

Most of your story after that became a blur to me, not because I was uninterested or bored or too bogged down with your account, but because I was fixated on you finding your love. I needed you to rekindle the romance that had been lost in Rochester's seedy revelations. I needed you, desperately, as proof that romance is real. The pastures that you had travelled in loneliness and isolation and the bravery you had shown were never more apparent as when you moved away to Moor House and carved a new, independent life for yourself. I had never felt your pain more acutely; I had never empathised with you more fervently.

As you closed your tale I felt a warmth and an assurance. You had had your heart broken and healed over and over again by the same man. You had shown me the rawness of pain and the beauty of union. There were parts of your story that I didn't like - perhaps your detail somehow hushed the suspense; perhaps I was somehow lost in the angles of your description - but it is still a story that will stay with me for a long time, broken up by the enzymes of my thoughts.

Sincerely,

Becky.