Jane Steele(126)

When corpses arrive at Highgate House, they speak to Charles, and he reports to Sam Quillfeather—sometimes they died naturally, but sometimes not, and these occasions are much preferable, for we share adventures, and I cannot imagine a happier circumstance than leading a life spiced with murder and intrigue alongside the man I love.

I hope that the epitaph of the human race when the world ends will be: Here perished a species which lived to tell stories.

We tell stories to strangers to ingratiate ourselves, stories to lovers to better adhere us skin to skin, stories in our heads to banish the demons. When we tell the truth, often we are callous; when we tell lies, often we are kind. Through it all, we tell stories, and we own an uncanny knack for the task. In Jane Eyre, the wise author writes, “Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive.” I have lived this—should we neglect the task of expressing our passions, our species should perish upon the vine, desiccated and desolate.

Mr. Rochester after being married to Miss Eyre announces that their honeymoon “will shine our life long; its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.” As I am not a prognosticator, and have been witness to myriad calamities, I can make no such claim regarding my own marriage. Confident I remain, however, and I find myself hopeful as well—if the world is wide enough for me to find someone, who knows what miracles lurk behind each and every closed door? Charles Thornfield and I are far from perfect; but we are perfect for each other, and perhaps in the end, our chains bind us more closely than anyone who has never been a prisoner can imagine.





Historical Afterword


While Jane Eyre needs no introduction, I should mention that Charlotte Bront?’s preface to the infamous second edition thrilled me from the instant I first set eyes on the quote, “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.” While the author continues to lob great Molotov cocktails of scriptural invective at her critics for perhaps a trifle longer than necessary (if Bront? lived today, it wouldn’t be impossible to picture her replying to troll tweets and one-star Amazon reviews), the spirit of the thing is marvelous, and to anyone who has read the novel without the preface, know that it was a major inspiration for this satirical riff off the classical Jane.

The position of women in the nineteenth century was notoriously fraught with economic peril and rife with class divisions, and nowhere is this more evident in Jane Eyre than when the haughty Blanche Ingram rails against governesses as if they are repulsive insects children have every right to squash ruthlessly. Marriage to a rich man was a respectable way to make a fortune—but to be educated and servile at once, raising the children of others simply due to reduced circumstances, was considered a ghastly fate. Richard Nemesvari, who edited the careful scholarly edition of Jane Eyre I myself used, suggests regarding Blanche’s tirade announcing “half of them [governesses] detestable and the rest ridiculous” that:

On one level this is purely a rude attempt to put Jane in her place, but it is also an attempt by Blanche to establish her own place . . . It is absolutely essential for Blanche to despise all governesses, because only in this way can she ensure (in her own mind and others’) that there is no connection or potential relationship between them.

Naturally, this made the notion of writing a serial killer governess who was also in all likelihood a wronged heiress cracking good fun, and while Jane Steele is a far more egalitarian soul than Blanche Ingram, she also has no strong objection to pretty frocks, good whiskey, large estates, expensive horses, or marriage to a brooding Byronic hero.

It would be ludicrous to pretend that I could have grasped Sikhism after only six months’ research, but a few books in particular were of immense help. First, The Sikh Religion by Max Arthur MacAuliffe (1842–1913) was written by an Englishman whose love of the Punjabi religion was roundly ridiculed by his associates within the Indian Civil Service, who really didn’t think converting was quite the done thing, by gad. Responsible for producing the first UK translation of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, MacAuliffe continued to pen English-language volumes about Sikh history with the help of Pratap Singh Giani, a brilliant linguist and calligraphist who among other prestigious accomplishments worked as a scripture-reader in Amritsar, the holy city. Second, The First and Second Sikh Wars was commissioned by the British Army in 1911, and military historian Reginald George Burton executed his mission with tremendous care and detail—for which I’m grateful, as it’s nigh impossible to picture a battle when you’ve never been in one.

Thirdly, The Sikhs, written by political activist, magazine publisher, and scholarly author Patwant Singh, proved crucial. While Charles Thornfield and Sardar Singh are romanticized versions of nineteenth-century warriors, the bloody battles and corrupt politics were real, and long continued to plague the region. Patwant Singh attempted to intercede for peace during a tragic modern-day confrontation (the 1984 crisis at the Golden Temple, in which three hundred fifty extreme Sikh separatists and seventy Indian soldiers died), and he worked tirelessly to present a faithful and well-rounded picture of a much-misrepresented culture. An entire chapter of The Sikhs is titled “Grievous Betrayals, 1839–1849,” and describes how gross mismanagement—or more likely, outright treachery—by powerful Sikhs led to the slaughter of the Khalsa, and the eradication of what had once been an opulent empire. Based in personal sacrifice and responsibility, monotheism, pacifism, meditation, but also military prowess, the people who were once massacred for rejecting the inhumanities of the caste system grew into a legendary army, and Patwant Singh did us an incredible service by placing these disparities in vivid context. His books have my highest recommendation, as they are full of what he refers to as the “invasions and inquisitions, triumphs and tragedies, piety and sense of divine purpose, devotion and depravities, loyalties and betrayals, courage and convictions” of his religion.