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Becoming Jane Eyre
A beautifully imagined tale of the Bronte sisters and the writing of Jane Eyre.
The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent.
So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its centre are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre.
The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent.
So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its centre are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre.
234 pages, Paperback
First published December 29, 2009
191 people are currently reading
3299 people want to read
About the author
Sheila Kohler
43 books162 followersSheila Kohler was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the younger of two girls. Upon matriculation at 17 from Saint Andrews, with a distinction in history (1958), she left the country for Europe. She lived for 15 years in Paris, where she married, did her undergraduate degree in literature at the Sorbonne, and a graduate degree in psychology at the Institut Catholique. After raising her three girls, she moved to the USA in 1981, and did an MFA in writing at Columbia.
In the summer of 1987, her first published story, “The Mountain,” came out in “The Quarterly” and received an O’Henry prize and was published in the O’Henry Prize Stories of 1988. It also became the first chapter in her first novel, "The Perfect Place," which was published by Knopf the next year.
In the summer of 1987, her first published story, “The Mountain,” came out in “The Quarterly” and received an O’Henry prize and was published in the O’Henry Prize Stories of 1988. It also became the first chapter in her first novel, "The Perfect Place," which was published by Knopf the next year.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 424 reviews
March 16, 2012
I read this book in an airport, expecting that it would be standard, light and frothy airport fare. Strangely, it took me right to early Victorian London, so that I looked up from the book and had to remember I wasn't there. This book is Charlotte Bronte in glimpses, in word snapshots. It is such a "quiet" book, quiet like those women who are mad but are hiding all of the anger behind a frozen smile. It is like sitting in a very quiet room, and hearing the rustle of people's skirts as they walk, or the sound of the wind outside, and looking at the faces of your family every now and then as you read or write. But in all of this silence, you can hear all around an intense whispering of words which are only alive on the unspoken page.
Refreshing to me was Kohler's ability to create an atmosphere that never hinted by any means to be other than Bronte's time. I remember watching Somewhere in Time, where the guy is able to visit the past by a sort of mind manipulation, but if on his journey to the past, he sees any reminder of the present, he will instantly be recalled to his own time. In the end, he finds a penny in his pocket from the present day, and it ruins everything.
It seems like many historical fiction writers can't help but throw a 2012 penny into their picture of the past, either overemphasizing famous names and news stories of the time, or trying too hard to write dialogue of the past but making silly mistakes by throwing in modern colloquialisms. How did Kohler avoid doing this? I don't know!
I felt that she painted the real Charlotte somehow. Today we remember Charlotte Bronte for her moral courage, for her emotional honesty, for her passionate intensity. But we forget some of the things about Charlotte Bronte's nature that probably perplexed those around her: her pride and inability to accept criticism clearheadedly, the manner in which her intense emotions probably frightened people off: the fact that until she was recognized for her work, she was obscure and treated so. I am glad that Kohler included these things, and made Charlotte's life and struggles real.
Refreshing to me was Kohler's ability to create an atmosphere that never hinted by any means to be other than Bronte's time. I remember watching Somewhere in Time, where the guy is able to visit the past by a sort of mind manipulation, but if on his journey to the past, he sees any reminder of the present, he will instantly be recalled to his own time. In the end, he finds a penny in his pocket from the present day, and it ruins everything.
It seems like many historical fiction writers can't help but throw a 2012 penny into their picture of the past, either overemphasizing famous names and news stories of the time, or trying too hard to write dialogue of the past but making silly mistakes by throwing in modern colloquialisms. How did Kohler avoid doing this? I don't know!
I felt that she painted the real Charlotte somehow. Today we remember Charlotte Bronte for her moral courage, for her emotional honesty, for her passionate intensity. But we forget some of the things about Charlotte Bronte's nature that probably perplexed those around her: her pride and inability to accept criticism clearheadedly, the manner in which her intense emotions probably frightened people off: the fact that until she was recognized for her work, she was obscure and treated so. I am glad that Kohler included these things, and made Charlotte's life and struggles real.
November 27, 2013
I didn't read Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" until I was an adult, but I still reacted with all the whiny complaints of a 14-year-old boy. Unfortunately, I was teaching it to 14-year-old boys at the time, so I had to feign a certain amount of enthusiasm. But a funny thing happened on the way to education: While John Knowles's "A Separate Peace" grew thinner and sillier to me every year, "Jane Eyre" blossomed into one of my favorites. With the plot's smoldering melodrama, the heroine's boundless suffering ("Unjust! Unjust!") and those outrageous villains, it's a captivating book, a chance to luxuriate in your own private fantasies of aggrieved victimhood.
Adaptations of Brontë's work haven't reached the fever pitch of Jane Austen knockoffs, but "Jane Eyre" got zombies in a 1943 Val Lewton horror movie, almost 70 years before the undead crawled into "Pride and Prejudice," and a new film version (sans zombies) is underway, starring Mia Wasikowska with Michael Fassbender as the brooding Mr. Rochester. A fair number of talented writers have transformed Brontë's most famous novel into exceptionally creative and memorable books of their own: Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" (1938) generates almost as much devotion among certain circles as "Jane Eyre" itself; Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1966) is one of the classics of 20th-century feminist fiction; Jasper Fforde's "The Eyre Affair" (2001) launched his fantastical career. (Heads up: Fforde starts a new series next week.) And now we have this exquisite fictionalized biography of Brontë called "Becoming Jane Eyre."
If you know "Jane Eyre" and love it, don't deny yourself the pleasure of this intense little companion book. South African-born Sheila Kohler, who now teaches at Princeton, sinks deep into the details of Brontë's life to re-create the atmosphere of her tragic, cloistered family. Parallels between Charlotte and her famous heroine are an irresistible subject of critical inquiry, and even if those parallels are sometimes drawn too baldly in "Becoming Jane Eyre," Kohler's novel remains a stirring exploration of the passions and resentments that inspired this 19th-century classic.
The story begins in a silence so complete that you can hear Charlotte's pencil scratching on paper. She's nursing her stern though needy father, who's recovering from eye surgery that has left him temporarily (they hope) blind. The horror of her mother's long illness and death still hangs over this family, but there's a more recent cause for sadness: Charlotte's novel, "The Professor," has just been rejected, and the poet Robert Southey has written her a condescending note: "Literature cannot and should not be the business of a woman's life." In desperation -- for money, for recognition, for a way out of "solitude, darkness, and despair!" -- Charlotte decides to try once more. "She dares to take up her pencil and write for the first time in her own voice," Kohler says. "She will write out of rage, out of a deep sense of her own worth and of the injustice of the world's reception of her words. She will write about something she knows well: her passion."
The story begins in 1846 and runs until Charlotte's death nine years later, a remarkable period that saw her emerge from obscurity as the daughter of a Yorkshire clergyman to become one of the most celebrated writers of the day. Kohler's method is highly impressionistic, concentrating expansively on some moments while brushing over whole years elsewhere. The brief chapters sometimes concentrate on other characters, allowing Charlotte's perennially dying father (who outlived them all) to give his own anxious testimony, along with her sisters, Anne and Emily, and even a servant, who finds the dreary Brontë family hardly worth the wage.
But this story is always Charlotte's, and it's always quietly hypnotic. We follow her memories of that deadly boarding school we know as Lowood. We see her studying and then teaching in Brussels under the tutelage of a capricious but mesmerizing married man who stole Charlotte's heart and then cast it aside (William Hurt, Timothy Dalton, Orson Welles?). And everywhere, we catch impassioned echoes of "Jane Eyre": "Do you think," Charlotte screams at her choleric teacher, "I don't feel what other people do, that I don't long for the same things as you!"
"Becoming Jane Eyre" is motivated largely by Charlotte's desperate thirst for revenge: "She will vanquish all those arrogant fools, all those hateful asses, who have passed her by without a glance. How they have humiliated her, again and again. . . . Let her employers get down on their fat knees and beg her pardon!" Generations of smart, capable, overlooked women (and men) have responded to that pent-up anger, but Kohler also wants to give Brontë a larger, more noble purpose that makes her a forerunner of the feminist movement: "She would like to reach other women, large numbers of them. She would like to entertain, to startle, to give voice to what they hold in secret in their hearts, to allow them to feel they are part of a larger community of sufferers. She would like to show them all that a woman feels: the boredom of a life confined to tedious domestic tasks."
Kohler shows another side of Charlotte's life, too, the complicated tensions of living in close quarters with talented writers: Emily, Anne and Charlotte had made a pact to publish their works under a single pseudonym, Currer Bell, but the asymmetrical success of their books puts enormous pressure on that agreement. And then, of course, there's the even larger problem of their precocious, shamelessly spoiled brother, who first absorbs all their father's hopes and then inspires all his despair. Kohler depicts him as Heathcliff and the first Mrs. Rochester spun together, a vampiric young man full of charm but driven by addictions that threaten to drag this remarkable family into the flames.
And yet despite everything that befell the Brontës, Charlotte eventually attained some of the wealth and domestic happiness she imagined at the conclusion of "Jane Eyre." If only, Dear Reader, real life would stay frozen at that triumphal moment of "The End." Kohler moves us swiftly and poignantly past that, into the haunting silence that swept over this windblown house when the last of those talented siblings was finally laid to rest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Adaptations of Brontë's work haven't reached the fever pitch of Jane Austen knockoffs, but "Jane Eyre" got zombies in a 1943 Val Lewton horror movie, almost 70 years before the undead crawled into "Pride and Prejudice," and a new film version (sans zombies) is underway, starring Mia Wasikowska with Michael Fassbender as the brooding Mr. Rochester. A fair number of talented writers have transformed Brontë's most famous novel into exceptionally creative and memorable books of their own: Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" (1938) generates almost as much devotion among certain circles as "Jane Eyre" itself; Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1966) is one of the classics of 20th-century feminist fiction; Jasper Fforde's "The Eyre Affair" (2001) launched his fantastical career. (Heads up: Fforde starts a new series next week.) And now we have this exquisite fictionalized biography of Brontë called "Becoming Jane Eyre."
If you know "Jane Eyre" and love it, don't deny yourself the pleasure of this intense little companion book. South African-born Sheila Kohler, who now teaches at Princeton, sinks deep into the details of Brontë's life to re-create the atmosphere of her tragic, cloistered family. Parallels between Charlotte and her famous heroine are an irresistible subject of critical inquiry, and even if those parallels are sometimes drawn too baldly in "Becoming Jane Eyre," Kohler's novel remains a stirring exploration of the passions and resentments that inspired this 19th-century classic.
The story begins in a silence so complete that you can hear Charlotte's pencil scratching on paper. She's nursing her stern though needy father, who's recovering from eye surgery that has left him temporarily (they hope) blind. The horror of her mother's long illness and death still hangs over this family, but there's a more recent cause for sadness: Charlotte's novel, "The Professor," has just been rejected, and the poet Robert Southey has written her a condescending note: "Literature cannot and should not be the business of a woman's life." In desperation -- for money, for recognition, for a way out of "solitude, darkness, and despair!" -- Charlotte decides to try once more. "She dares to take up her pencil and write for the first time in her own voice," Kohler says. "She will write out of rage, out of a deep sense of her own worth and of the injustice of the world's reception of her words. She will write about something she knows well: her passion."
The story begins in 1846 and runs until Charlotte's death nine years later, a remarkable period that saw her emerge from obscurity as the daughter of a Yorkshire clergyman to become one of the most celebrated writers of the day. Kohler's method is highly impressionistic, concentrating expansively on some moments while brushing over whole years elsewhere. The brief chapters sometimes concentrate on other characters, allowing Charlotte's perennially dying father (who outlived them all) to give his own anxious testimony, along with her sisters, Anne and Emily, and even a servant, who finds the dreary Brontë family hardly worth the wage.
But this story is always Charlotte's, and it's always quietly hypnotic. We follow her memories of that deadly boarding school we know as Lowood. We see her studying and then teaching in Brussels under the tutelage of a capricious but mesmerizing married man who stole Charlotte's heart and then cast it aside (William Hurt, Timothy Dalton, Orson Welles?). And everywhere, we catch impassioned echoes of "Jane Eyre": "Do you think," Charlotte screams at her choleric teacher, "I don't feel what other people do, that I don't long for the same things as you!"
"Becoming Jane Eyre" is motivated largely by Charlotte's desperate thirst for revenge: "She will vanquish all those arrogant fools, all those hateful asses, who have passed her by without a glance. How they have humiliated her, again and again. . . . Let her employers get down on their fat knees and beg her pardon!" Generations of smart, capable, overlooked women (and men) have responded to that pent-up anger, but Kohler also wants to give Brontë a larger, more noble purpose that makes her a forerunner of the feminist movement: "She would like to reach other women, large numbers of them. She would like to entertain, to startle, to give voice to what they hold in secret in their hearts, to allow them to feel they are part of a larger community of sufferers. She would like to show them all that a woman feels: the boredom of a life confined to tedious domestic tasks."
Kohler shows another side of Charlotte's life, too, the complicated tensions of living in close quarters with talented writers: Emily, Anne and Charlotte had made a pact to publish their works under a single pseudonym, Currer Bell, but the asymmetrical success of their books puts enormous pressure on that agreement. And then, of course, there's the even larger problem of their precocious, shamelessly spoiled brother, who first absorbs all their father's hopes and then inspires all his despair. Kohler depicts him as Heathcliff and the first Mrs. Rochester spun together, a vampiric young man full of charm but driven by addictions that threaten to drag this remarkable family into the flames.
And yet despite everything that befell the Brontës, Charlotte eventually attained some of the wealth and domestic happiness she imagined at the conclusion of "Jane Eyre." If only, Dear Reader, real life would stay frozen at that triumphal moment of "The End." Kohler moves us swiftly and poignantly past that, into the haunting silence that swept over this windblown house when the last of those talented siblings was finally laid to rest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Read
September 24, 2015Anything that has to do with the Brontes pretty much ensures I will pick it up and read it. And this was not disappointing. It was a very intimate, yet strangely distant account of the Bronte family. Mostly, Charlotte (of course) but also quite a bit about Anne and Emily.
And while it is fiction, you can imagine how true some of the issues addressed are. Like how Charlotte must have felt inscure and jealous when her two sisters books (Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights) were accepted for publishing while her own first attempt (The Professor) was rejected. And then again, how jealous and slighted Anne and Emily felt when Charlotte's Jane Eyre met with great success and, in turn, set great critisizm onto their own works.
For any Bronte fans, this is a great read. You get more insight into the stories behind well... the stories (how Mr. Rochester is blind like the Bronte father, how Charlotte fell in love with a reserved professor and how their drunken brother became inspiration for both The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights... etc). You don't necessarily feel very close to any of the characters even with how intimate the accounts are, but you feel you know them and their motives and, in course, their writing much better.
And while it is fiction, you can imagine how true some of the issues addressed are. Like how Charlotte must have felt inscure and jealous when her two sisters books (Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights) were accepted for publishing while her own first attempt (The Professor) was rejected. And then again, how jealous and slighted Anne and Emily felt when Charlotte's Jane Eyre met with great success and, in turn, set great critisizm onto their own works.
For any Bronte fans, this is a great read. You get more insight into the stories behind well... the stories (how Mr. Rochester is blind like the Bronte father, how Charlotte fell in love with a reserved professor and how their drunken brother became inspiration for both The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights... etc). You don't necessarily feel very close to any of the characters even with how intimate the accounts are, but you feel you know them and their motives and, in course, their writing much better.
June 23, 2020
DNF on page 9. I realize it seems unfair to rate a book without reading it. However, this author suffers from an intolerable case of the question marks, as we can see on page 8.
On a different note... dear publishers, please could we go back to trimming the pages? I realize that deckle edges are a thing with old books, and this is a book set in the 19th century, but there's a reason people invented better production methods. Deckle edges are so frustrating for readers who like to flip back and forth.
He reaches out for her. What does he know of her, or she of him, after all these years? What secrets would he tell her if he could speak? Would she want to hear them? What would he say about his marriage, his parents, his God? Had he chosen her mother for love or for her superior position in society, the fifty pounds a year? Or was it her religion? Did he want her help with his work in the church? Did he think she could advance his career? Was his religion simply a means of advancing socially?Give me a break! This isn't a paragraph in a novel, it's a questionnaire. It tells us nothing and is exhausting (not to mention silly) to read. I gave up when I hit the next barrage of question marks on the following page, and a quick flip through the book confirmed that there were many others ahead.
On a different note... dear publishers, please could we go back to trimming the pages? I realize that deckle edges are a thing with old books, and this is a book set in the 19th century, but there's a reason people invented better production methods. Deckle edges are so frustrating for readers who like to flip back and forth.
February 20, 2012
So disappointing. One of the reasons I love Jane Eyre is because it is so virtuous- no erotic scenes between her and Mr. Rochester whatsoever. I think Charlotte Bronte would be ashamed of this book, angry even.
Though Sheila Kohler does seem to follow (at least want to follow) Bronte in great descriptive detail, a lot of this seems way too contrived for me.
Seems like Kohler's idea was to spice up an old classic with eroticism to make it appealing to a wider audience. What a disgrace!
*As a result of this, I did not finish the book. Read about 1/3.*
Though Sheila Kohler does seem to follow (at least want to follow) Bronte in great descriptive detail, a lot of this seems way too contrived for me.
Seems like Kohler's idea was to spice up an old classic with eroticism to make it appealing to a wider audience. What a disgrace!
*As a result of this, I did not finish the book. Read about 1/3.*
July 3, 2014
My notes on this book have been gathering dust for about 3 months now, and looking over them, it really just boils down to "wow, this was a terrible book." Seemingly anachronistic details, bizarre masturbation scenes out of nowhere, proto-Betty Friedan dialogue, unbelievable amounts of melodrama, confusing chronological jumps, characters who magically show up, important characters who die "off screen" with little fanfare, and character development that makes no sense. Kohler beats you over the head with the "parallels" to Jane Eyre, so much so that it gets very annoying very fast. Yes, we've all read the novel--why on earth is Kohler essentially retelling it here? (Why would you be reading this book if you *haven't* read Jane Eyre?) Telling--not showing--is how Kohler operates, and the book suffers as a result.
November 25, 2011
I picked this up in audiobook format on a whim. Ordinarily, I don’t enjoy fictionalized accounts of the lives of famous people, and this slight concoction proved to be no exception. The bulk of the narrative consisted of imagined thoughts and conversations that for the most part fell heavily on the side of petty resentments within the Brontë family, and superficial condescension on the part of those characters, marginal at best, who brushed fleetingly along the edge of the fold. Long, tedious passages were given over to the supposed unfavorable attitudes towards various members of the Brontë family by otherwise insignificant characters, and yet the deaths in short order of Branwell, Emily, and Anne rated barely a cursory line or two. Likewise, the narrative treatment of the marriage, pregnancy, and death of Charlotte herself was mystifyingly brief and shallow. This indicates to me not only a lack of skill but also an outright laziness on the part of the author, and does an injustice to the Brontë legacy. Adding to my disappointment, I found the audiobook narration to be abominable, giving Charlotte the limited and annoying vocal range of a six-year-old, and turning Emily into a more cultured and well-spoken English version of Calamity Jane. Lovers of Charlotte Brontë’s timeless classic and those with a stronger interest in her family history may be willing to offer a more generous assessment to this feather-light, yet contrarily depressing effort. For me, it was mostly just a waste of time.
July 3, 2010
I grabbed this one from the library because I am very curious about Charlotte Bronte and her sisters. This book takes the reader into the time period when Charlotte was taking care of her father while he was recovering from his eye surgery. Each of the Bronte children get a turn to shine in this little gem and I came to realize that the sisters hard a very hard life, especially when it came to their spoiled, drug addicted brother. The first 50 pages or so were a bit slow for me and I almost shut the book for good. But curiosity about Charlotte won out and I'm glad that I finished it. It wasn't the best book about Charlotte I've read, that would be The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, but it was a solid read that did fill in some gaps for this reader.
December 5, 2020
I liked it better than I thought I would. I love Jane Eyre so much that anything that looks like a fictionalised biography or a retelling, I look upon with caution.
However, this one caught me right from the start : it begins with Patrick Brontë's cataract operation in Manchester, where he was accompanied by Charlotte. Imagine what it must have been at the time (and that is why, apart from women's rights, I'm so happy to live in the 21st century, even if it's not the best of times) : the operation to remove cataract was performed without anesthesia. The patient was on the table, held in place by two people, and he saw (well, mostly saw, and also knew) the scalpel approaching his eyes to remove the thin membrane that covered them - don't blink ! *shivers* After that, he had to stay in a bed, no light, no sound, no shock for days. Imagine lying on a bed with nothing, absolutely nothing to do but think ? That's what happened in the Yellow wall-paper and it didn't turn out well.
It was a touching fiction, based on facts for a part, on imagination on the other, and it's easily and quickly read (260 pages in my edition). The story is not told entirely from Charlotte's point of view, we also hear the other sisters, Emily and Anne, Patrick the father, even the nurse, but it's mostly about Charlotte. What is interesting is the writing process, how things that she lived, experiences, heard about, were involved in the creation of Jane Eyre. I could picture the setting, the characters vividly, hear their different voices, even accents.
A very good surprise, that makes me want to read more by this author.
However, this one caught me right from the start : it begins with Patrick Brontë's cataract operation in Manchester, where he was accompanied by Charlotte. Imagine what it must have been at the time (and that is why, apart from women's rights, I'm so happy to live in the 21st century, even if it's not the best of times) : the operation to remove cataract was performed without anesthesia. The patient was on the table, held in place by two people, and he saw (well, mostly saw, and also knew) the scalpel approaching his eyes to remove the thin membrane that covered them - don't blink ! *shivers* After that, he had to stay in a bed, no light, no sound, no shock for days. Imagine lying on a bed with nothing, absolutely nothing to do but think ? That's what happened in the Yellow wall-paper and it didn't turn out well.
It was a touching fiction, based on facts for a part, on imagination on the other, and it's easily and quickly read (260 pages in my edition). The story is not told entirely from Charlotte's point of view, we also hear the other sisters, Emily and Anne, Patrick the father, even the nurse, but it's mostly about Charlotte. What is interesting is the writing process, how things that she lived, experiences, heard about, were involved in the creation of Jane Eyre. I could picture the setting, the characters vividly, hear their different voices, even accents.
A very good surprise, that makes me want to read more by this author.
April 4, 2021
I loved this so much more than I thought I would. We got a fictional glimpse into the Bronte sister's lives. The writing of their books, the untimely deaths of two of them, the struggle against poverty, and the social and familial issues that they faced. It was a gripping tale of heartache and determination. I wanted more, but the main character, unfortunately, was not immortal and there could not be more than there was.
July 12, 2010
More of a character sketch than a story, really. Almost devoid of plot, in fact. Kohler's interpretation of Charlotte Bronte's life as she imagines and writes her classic, Jane Eyre, feels contemplative and genuine. The pacing is somewhat slow, but little jewels here and there ring with whispered truth rather than dramatic impact. I enjoyed the glimpses at Bronte's life and that of her sisters - their struggles with employment (particularly as governesses), the heartbreaking story of caring for their addict brother, frequent disappointments in love and publishing - and how they translated their lives to their craft. In the novel (as in their individual writings), Emily actually grabbed me much more forcefully than her protagonist sister. Overall, this book is worthwhile, but will only receive a 5-star rating from those who are obsessed with either literature/writing in general or Jane Eyre and the Bronte sisters in particular.
FAVORITE QUOTES:
He drinks the warmth of his daughter's breath as she leans over him, brushes lightly against his chest, straightens his sheets and blanket. He would like to say: "Lie down beside me. Warm me with your youth. Warm my dry, old flesh and bones."
"But writing cannot be regulated. It is like the cry of the wind or--some sort of electricity." (the Master)
He shines in the family firmament, whereas she glimmers palely, almost invisible, a moon shadow beside him. The moon to his sun, she shines only with his reflected light. (Charlotte of her brother)
Perhaps the best loved always suffers most.
"Read this, It's good news," she manages to say, feeling herself grow old. (Charlotte upon opening the letter that her sisters have been accepted and she rejected)
FAVORITE SECTION (on naming "Jane Eyre"):
It comes to her out of thin air. She is not sure if she has heard such a name. Was there someone she knew with that name? Does it come from the family arms she once saw in a church, or the river she knows well, the beautiful valley of the Ayre? Or is it a name that comes from air, perhaps, or fire? Fire and ire will be in the book: rage at the world as it is. Unfair! Unfair! Ire and eyer: she is the one who now sees in her father's place. She has become the voyeur, the observer. Plain Jane, Emily Jane, her beloved second sister's name, Jane, so close to Joan, brave Joan of Arc, Jane so close to Janet, Jeanette, little Jane. A name that conjures up duty and dullness, childhood and obedience, but also spirit and liberty, a sprite's name, a fairy's name, half spirit, half flesh, light in darkness, truth and hypocrisy, the name of one who sees: Jane Eyre.
FAVORITE QUOTES:
He drinks the warmth of his daughter's breath as she leans over him, brushes lightly against his chest, straightens his sheets and blanket. He would like to say: "Lie down beside me. Warm me with your youth. Warm my dry, old flesh and bones."
"But writing cannot be regulated. It is like the cry of the wind or--some sort of electricity." (the Master)
He shines in the family firmament, whereas she glimmers palely, almost invisible, a moon shadow beside him. The moon to his sun, she shines only with his reflected light. (Charlotte of her brother)
Perhaps the best loved always suffers most.
"Read this, It's good news," she manages to say, feeling herself grow old. (Charlotte upon opening the letter that her sisters have been accepted and she rejected)
FAVORITE SECTION (on naming "Jane Eyre"):
It comes to her out of thin air. She is not sure if she has heard such a name. Was there someone she knew with that name? Does it come from the family arms she once saw in a church, or the river she knows well, the beautiful valley of the Ayre? Or is it a name that comes from air, perhaps, or fire? Fire and ire will be in the book: rage at the world as it is. Unfair! Unfair! Ire and eyer: she is the one who now sees in her father's place. She has become the voyeur, the observer. Plain Jane, Emily Jane, her beloved second sister's name, Jane, so close to Joan, brave Joan of Arc, Jane so close to Janet, Jeanette, little Jane. A name that conjures up duty and dullness, childhood and obedience, but also spirit and liberty, a sprite's name, a fairy's name, half spirit, half flesh, light in darkness, truth and hypocrisy, the name of one who sees: Jane Eyre.
March 17, 2016
The novel was written by author Sheila Kohler, entitled Becoming Jane Eyre. The story begins in South Africa with the Bronte family. First, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Bramwell, work together to help their father get back on his feet. Charlotte spent much of her time with her father lying in bed, during the long, lonely hours of his convalescence. Unfortunately, Charlotte's mind is focused on being in Brussels, totally doomed for her love for her teacher. She knows that sit will stay with her throughout her life. Her Father recovered from his eye surgery in Manchester, England, getting better every day. His daughters immediately accepted local work ,"brief-hired-help", in the community until their father is back on his feet. Years later, Reverend Patrick Brontë discovers that he is the only survivor in his family. I loved the well written characters, which kept me busy.
Sad, but true. Deaths in family; wife Maria Bramwell (1783-1821); first child, Maria (1813 or 1814-1825); second child, Elizabeth (1815-1825); Charlotte (1816-1855); Patrick Bramwell (1817-1848); Emily (1818-1848); and Anne (1820-1849).
Sad, but true. Deaths in family; wife Maria Bramwell (1783-1821); first child, Maria (1813 or 1814-1825); second child, Elizabeth (1815-1825); Charlotte (1816-1855); Patrick Bramwell (1817-1848); Emily (1818-1848); and Anne (1820-1849).
February 11, 2010
I enjoy novels about the Bronte's life, and this one has a great cover and lots of beautiful and intense emotion throughout. I thought from the title this book would be mainly about Charlotte Bronte, but all except the brother are narrators here, why she didn't include him I don't know. Too drunk and off his rocker I guess? The ending was rushed, with little mention of Charlotte's marriage. I couldn't believe she didn't include that. That's the best part of her story. Her happy ending, just like her Jane.
March 29, 2010
I love Jane Eyre and detest Wuthering Heights, so I really liked the way Kohler weaves Charlotte Bronte's own life into her creation of Jane's. Found the last part too abrupt--Anne, Emily and Bramwell all die offstage in a sentence, as if Kohler got tired of writing this book. Still, entertaining and creative.
August 17, 2017
By adhering to biographical accounts of Charlotte Bronte’s life, Sheila Kohler imagines not only Charlotte Bronte’s emotional response to these true events but also the response of those in her immediate circle and from their individual perspective, so a credible, multi-layer picture emerges. There was only one scene that jarred and that was when Emily and Jane’s manuscripts were accepted by Newby’s, the publishers (‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Agnes Grey’ respectively) whilst Charlotte’s, ‘The Professor’, was rejected. The sisters are shown bickering over the news and Charlotte left sitting in silent disapproval expecting her siblings to turn down the offer. Whilst I think it’s true that Charlotte would have been overwhelmingly disappointed to have been rejected in those circumstances, I imagine she would very quickly have put her feelings to one side and steered his sisters in the direction of accepting when they might otherwise have demurred. Having supported each other not only in their writings but in the trials of their adult lives, I think this would be more likely. That’s just my opinion though and not necessarily the right one. It didn’t spoil the book for me in any way, in fact it was a good sign because it shows it really made me think about it. I am very interested in the Brontes and I liked the way the author highlighted how their important life events emerged in their writings. The narratives move backwards and forwards in time, and I wonder if that might occasionally be confusing for anyone not au fait with events at Haworth Parsonage – but I’m sure most people know most of it anyway. The fact they do, is demonstrative of the sisters’ importance to literature generally.
All in all, this book is a very enjoyable and informative read and it’s made me want to read the novels again.
All in all, this book is a very enjoyable and informative read and it’s made me want to read the novels again.
April 16, 2021
2.5
I really enjoyed the tone of this novel and felt that the author perfectly emulated the Brontes' writing style. I would have liked a stronger narrative structure, and maybe fewer narrators.
I really enjoyed the tone of this novel and felt that the author perfectly emulated the Brontes' writing style. I would have liked a stronger narrative structure, and maybe fewer narrators.
March 19, 2023
5⭐️ Made me want to read every Charlotte Brontë novel
August 24, 2022
You know those author biopics where they feel the need to show exact parallels between the real world and what the author will eventually write? Like Charles Dickens seeing a little boy on crutches and going "Aha! This will work perfectly for my novel!" This is that in book form--everything in Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey appears in their real life in excruciating detail. But I guess there wasn't enough there to make a whole (even short) book, so it's filled out with perspective changes to their father, a nurse, their old maid that don't really add much to the book. The weird layer of incestuous insinuation between basically everyone feels like further filler.
It feels like a lot of very strange choices were made here, but you do get a good overview of the Brontes' life. Kohler clearly did plenty of research.
It feels like a lot of very strange choices were made here, but you do get a good overview of the Brontes' life. Kohler clearly did plenty of research.
December 10, 2009
A Slow Start But A Strong Finish
The adjectives I had written down as I was reading this were not very flattering, in fact they were not flattering at all. This novel, about the Brontes, seemed to have little new or interesting information to add to what little I already knew about this famous family. At first I found it somewhat dull, it seemed little more than a rehash of a Bronte biography, but something happened between page 146 and 195 and by the last page I found that I really liked it.
I liked the way Sheila Kohler pieced together key elements from the Bronte sisters' lives and the way they manifested themselves into their writings. I've read 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' and had very different opinions of the two books, I loved 'Jane Eyre' and really disliked Wuthering Heights. But I think I might have had a different perception of Wuthering Heights if I had read this book first.
I recently read 'Daphne' by Justine Picardie. Which was predominately about Daphne Du Maurier but also has a strong flavor of Bronte as it's set during the period she was writing her biography of Branwell Bronte. After finishing 'Daphne' I began reading 'The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte' by Daphne Du Maurier so some of the family's history was known to me. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who's not at all familiar with the Brontes.
I'm not a huge Bronte fan but I've had 'Villet' by Charlotte Bronte on my to-be-read pile for a while. After finishing this I'm looking forward to reading it sooner rather than later. I think this would be good to read immediately after Jane Eyre and I think it would make a good book club selection. Certainly Bronte fans will enjoy this.
The adjectives I had written down as I was reading this were not very flattering, in fact they were not flattering at all. This novel, about the Brontes, seemed to have little new or interesting information to add to what little I already knew about this famous family. At first I found it somewhat dull, it seemed little more than a rehash of a Bronte biography, but something happened between page 146 and 195 and by the last page I found that I really liked it.
I liked the way Sheila Kohler pieced together key elements from the Bronte sisters' lives and the way they manifested themselves into their writings. I've read 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' and had very different opinions of the two books, I loved 'Jane Eyre' and really disliked Wuthering Heights. But I think I might have had a different perception of Wuthering Heights if I had read this book first.
I recently read 'Daphne' by Justine Picardie. Which was predominately about Daphne Du Maurier but also has a strong flavor of Bronte as it's set during the period she was writing her biography of Branwell Bronte. After finishing 'Daphne' I began reading 'The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte' by Daphne Du Maurier so some of the family's history was known to me. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who's not at all familiar with the Brontes.
I'm not a huge Bronte fan but I've had 'Villet' by Charlotte Bronte on my to-be-read pile for a while. After finishing this I'm looking forward to reading it sooner rather than later. I think this would be good to read immediately after Jane Eyre and I think it would make a good book club selection. Certainly Bronte fans will enjoy this.
May 23, 2010
The title, look and theme of this book is very appealing to me. However, after the first few chapters I could tell this book was not what I thought it was.
Becoming Jane Eyre is written in the third person. At first I thought it was just something to get used to as most books are not written in this style. However, it became increasingly annoying.
After reading The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, by Syrie James, I believe myself to be well informed as to who the Bronte's were. I realize that Becoming Jane Eyre is a fiction, however, Kohler added some facts into the book that really happened in the Bronte's lives.
I did not like the added sexual content between Charlotte's father and mother. It was uncomfortable for me and I do not believe her father to have been a chauvinist.
In addition, there is not a lot of time spent in reading about Charlotte's siblings. However, when they are mentioned, I feel they are really destroyed as the poeple I came to know in The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte. I might have conjured up my own belief as to who these people were, but I like to think that having an author take diary and letter entries and putting them on paper has created a close, if not accurate depiction, of who they were as living people.
I did not like this book. I felt myself disagreeing with its contents in almost every chapter. It is sad to say but, for me, this book was a disappointment. :(
Becoming Jane Eyre is written in the third person. At first I thought it was just something to get used to as most books are not written in this style. However, it became increasingly annoying.
After reading The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, by Syrie James, I believe myself to be well informed as to who the Bronte's were. I realize that Becoming Jane Eyre is a fiction, however, Kohler added some facts into the book that really happened in the Bronte's lives.
I did not like the added sexual content between Charlotte's father and mother. It was uncomfortable for me and I do not believe her father to have been a chauvinist.
In addition, there is not a lot of time spent in reading about Charlotte's siblings. However, when they are mentioned, I feel they are really destroyed as the poeple I came to know in The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte. I might have conjured up my own belief as to who these people were, but I like to think that having an author take diary and letter entries and putting them on paper has created a close, if not accurate depiction, of who they were as living people.
I did not like this book. I felt myself disagreeing with its contents in almost every chapter. It is sad to say but, for me, this book was a disappointment. :(
January 18, 2013
Jane Eyre is my favourite novel of all time so, whilst I am not a expert in the Brontes, I have a penchant for any books, films about them or their novels/poetry. I've also visited the Parsonage at Haworth where you get a real feel for the isolation they must have felt, cooped up in that dark house, left motherless at an early age.
I admire any writer who takes on a project like this, a merge of fact and fiction, as Brontephiles can be quite sensitive to any conjectures re their heroines. Sheila Kohler is obviously a fan and her "faction" is based on solid research. Some might question the suggestion that Charlotte was envious of her sister's success but I, personally, thought it was an interesting viewpoint. As usual Branwell is the villain of the piece with the bed burning and laudanum addiction included.
Overall this is an interesting read although I felt the author skimmed over the deaths of Charlotte's siblings and her courtship with Arthur Bell Nicholls. It's still a good introduction to the Brontes and how their upbringing and environment influenced themes in their novels. For further reading I would highly recommend Lynne Reid Banks' novels about the Brontes, Dark Quartet and Path to the Silent Country.
I admire any writer who takes on a project like this, a merge of fact and fiction, as Brontephiles can be quite sensitive to any conjectures re their heroines. Sheila Kohler is obviously a fan and her "faction" is based on solid research. Some might question the suggestion that Charlotte was envious of her sister's success but I, personally, thought it was an interesting viewpoint. As usual Branwell is the villain of the piece with the bed burning and laudanum addiction included.
Overall this is an interesting read although I felt the author skimmed over the deaths of Charlotte's siblings and her courtship with Arthur Bell Nicholls. It's still a good introduction to the Brontes and how their upbringing and environment influenced themes in their novels. For further reading I would highly recommend Lynne Reid Banks' novels about the Brontes, Dark Quartet and Path to the Silent Country.
June 15, 2016
Ce court roman de Sheila Kohler retrace le portrait remarquable d'une famille composée de trois talentueuses jeunes femmes, condamnées à une existence sans éclat (filles de pasteur, vivant à la campagne, vouées au célibat), et qui vont se consacrer religieusement à l'écriture, avec la conscience aigüe de maintenir leurs projets dans le secret (d'où leurs pseudonymes, Currer, Ellis et Acton Bell, pour brouiller les pistes de leur sexe). Sheila Kohler a su s'imprégner de cette ambiance pour nous livrer un roman original et authentique, qui nous convie dans une ronde des souvenirs sincères et émouvants, où l'on prend conscience des ambitions et des espoirs déçus de ces jeunes femmes, de leur ténacité et de leur prodigiosité à avoir su sublimer le tragique de leurs vies en œuvres d'un romantisme fougueux. Un vrai coup de maître !
3.5++
3.5++
February 8, 2010
Kohler digs deeply into the details of life at Haworth Parsonage to recreate Charlotte's sheltered existence there, playfully mimicking the Brontës' own romantic writing style. The critics noted that some of the parallels drawn between Charlotte's life and that of Jane seem contrived, and some of her hand-wringing sounds uncannily like 21st-century angst, but these were quickly dismissed as minor complaints. Only Newsday found the novel tedious. Other critics considered Becoming Jane Eyre a perceptive meditation on the act of literary creation. Fans of Jane Eyre won't want to miss this companion piece, but those new to the classic will want to start there. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
October 1, 2012
Becoming Jane Eyre takes the tired tact of bringing authors down to our level by proposing that the events in their novels were directly inspired by real life and makes it worse by turning Charlotte Brontë in a creature apparently motivated by pure spite and bitterness. It just gets ridiculous. Avoid.
February 15, 2015
Having read a lot of books about the Brontes I wasn't sure if I woud like this. But It really gripped me right from the start. I felt that the author got right into Charlottes head and wove the facts and the fiction together extremely well.
December 9, 2017
I enjoyed many things about this, particularly the way the author has imagined Charlotte Bronte thinking about her own work. The omniscient narrator's way of going into everyone's head offered a lot of insight, but seemed to me to also put a certain distance between the reader and the book.
July 25, 2017
I've been a fan of Jane Eyre for years, I even did a college paper on it that required some research. Yet, I had no idea how much of the story is thought to be inspired by Charlotte Bronte's own life.
This book is a fictional account of the last nine years of Charlotte's life - starting from the time she began writing Jane Eyre while caring for her father who had just had eye surgery. Yet, it's based on the author's own research of the Brontes' life and there is probably a lot of truth to it.
Charlotte had two older sisters who died as a result of horrible conditions at the boarding school they were attending. The oldest, Maria, was the inspiration for the character of Jane's friend, Helen. I understand that character much better now that I know that. I'm guessing that Maria may not have been as saintly as Charlotte portrayed her, but she was a younger sister looking up to her older sister who was being treated so badly.
When her two older sisters died, Charlotte became the oldest, with younger sisters Emily and Anne and younger brother Branwell. Charlotte's mother died when she was very young, and Charlotte's father, the parson, seems to favor this only son moreso than all his girls combined.
Charlotte had also worked as both a governess and a teacher. It talks about how she "failed" at both these professions. But it was not that she couldn't do the jobs, it was more that her employers treated her very badly. She just wanted to be recognized for her intelligence and treated like a real person. Having had many jobs where this didn't happen for me either, I can really relate to that.
I knew that the Bronte sisters published their books under male sounding pen names. But this book goes into more detail about the whole publishing process that was interesting to read. I have always found it hard to believe that a publisher would publish a book without ever meeting the author in person. It wasn't just one publisher either, because as it turns out, Emily and Anne had offers from one publisher who turned Jane Eyre down! Then Charlotte found another who said yes to publishing Jane Eyre. It shows how Charlotte went from being someone that no one noticed, to being the center of attention when Jane Eyre became the most talked about book of it's time.
While I like Charlotte and Anne from this account, I have to say that I don't understand a lot of Emily's behavior. That makes a certain amount of sense, though, because I never really got Wuthering Heights. It seems that I am not alone in that either, because at the time of publication, a lot of people had problems with Emily's book. I have not read any of Anne's work, but now I am planning to do just that.
This book takes us through the deaths of Branwell, Emily and finally Anne. They died within a short period of time and I felt very sad for Charlotte to be the only sibling left. But she did have some happiness because of Jane Eyre's success. I'm really happy to know that the book I love so much was loved right from the start. Also, while I have always related to Jane, I now feel much closer to the woman who created her - and that's a very good feeling.
If you like Jane Eyre, this book is definitely worth reading!
This book is a fictional account of the last nine years of Charlotte's life - starting from the time she began writing Jane Eyre while caring for her father who had just had eye surgery. Yet, it's based on the author's own research of the Brontes' life and there is probably a lot of truth to it.
Charlotte had two older sisters who died as a result of horrible conditions at the boarding school they were attending. The oldest, Maria, was the inspiration for the character of Jane's friend, Helen. I understand that character much better now that I know that. I'm guessing that Maria may not have been as saintly as Charlotte portrayed her, but she was a younger sister looking up to her older sister who was being treated so badly.
When her two older sisters died, Charlotte became the oldest, with younger sisters Emily and Anne and younger brother Branwell. Charlotte's mother died when she was very young, and Charlotte's father, the parson, seems to favor this only son moreso than all his girls combined.
Charlotte had also worked as both a governess and a teacher. It talks about how she "failed" at both these professions. But it was not that she couldn't do the jobs, it was more that her employers treated her very badly. She just wanted to be recognized for her intelligence and treated like a real person. Having had many jobs where this didn't happen for me either, I can really relate to that.
I knew that the Bronte sisters published their books under male sounding pen names. But this book goes into more detail about the whole publishing process that was interesting to read. I have always found it hard to believe that a publisher would publish a book without ever meeting the author in person. It wasn't just one publisher either, because as it turns out, Emily and Anne had offers from one publisher who turned Jane Eyre down! Then Charlotte found another who said yes to publishing Jane Eyre. It shows how Charlotte went from being someone that no one noticed, to being the center of attention when Jane Eyre became the most talked about book of it's time.
While I like Charlotte and Anne from this account, I have to say that I don't understand a lot of Emily's behavior. That makes a certain amount of sense, though, because I never really got Wuthering Heights. It seems that I am not alone in that either, because at the time of publication, a lot of people had problems with Emily's book. I have not read any of Anne's work, but now I am planning to do just that.
This book takes us through the deaths of Branwell, Emily and finally Anne. They died within a short period of time and I felt very sad for Charlotte to be the only sibling left. But she did have some happiness because of Jane Eyre's success. I'm really happy to know that the book I love so much was loved right from the start. Also, while I have always related to Jane, I now feel much closer to the woman who created her - and that's a very good feeling.
If you like Jane Eyre, this book is definitely worth reading!
June 13, 2019
This book that I picked up and read in two days is a book about the circumstances in which the classic Gothic novel was written. Whether it is accurate remains to be my question? It is a good book with the biography of Charlotte and and how she added a lo of her life and loves into the novel. These sisters where not without lost loves, and kinship with others. I always imagined them writing without school and work with illness and death surrounding them. Which is also true of their lives, but this book explains their life outside of the home and how their experiences played into their novels. I enjoyed this book. I do suggest if you love The Bronte sisters do read this book.
March 17, 2019
Jane Eyre is one of my all time favourites from the classics and this inspired retelling of the life of Charlotte Bronte, as she writes her novel is written with much respect. The story of the Bronte family, in particular Charlotte and her two younger sisters is an oft told, truly tragic tale. As is said, life is stranger than fiction and at times far more poignant. This has an entirely plausible storyline as to the events leading up to and after the publication of Jane Eyre and although a little slow to start it's a book any fan of Charlotte Bronte will enjoy.
August 30, 2018
I enjoyed this book, even though it was fictional. At times it was a little choppy for me and I had to go back and re-read a section to figure out which character was speaking. The overall theme that I got out of this book is ---never give up on your dreams. Be persistent. Follow your dreams no matter how big they are. I have always loved the book Jane Eyre because of how strong a character she was, but the author was also a strong woman who had a big dream to write a book back when it was unheard of for women to write. Be a trailblazer. Now, I am interested in reading more about the life of Charoltte Bronte.
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