"Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontė's most famous heroine, lives the life of a fairy tale. She begins at Gateshead Hall, the home of her aunt and her three 'ugly' cousins, who are, perhaps, 'stepsisters' in disguise. She moves from the smouldering fever of the hearth-like Red Room and the degrading conditions of the charity school, to the haunted yet royal magnificence of Thornfield Hall. She is singled out from amongst all the guests and favoured even above the aristocratically beautiful but black-of-heart shadow-sister, Blanche Ingram. Edward Rochester decides that she is the one who will share his vast wealth and influence. He trusses her up like a doll - decks her in his jewels. But Jane is no fool! She knows when to run - when the midnight spell is broken and the attic madwoman bursts, uncontained. Jane flees in her poverty; her riches turn to rags. She finds family at the end of the world and inherits her own twenty thousand pounds a year. Jane Eyre is now an independent woman, whose lack of physical beauty is supplemented by a generous heart towards her newly acquired cousins/stepsisters. And yet she, Jane Eyre, this rags-to-riches Cinderella, this ugly duckling who emerges as a swan, returns in the end to the greenery of Ferndean, to sit at the feet of her master, the blind and quite lame, twenty years her senior, Mr. Edward Rochester. The Prince. And so they get married and live Happily Ever After. Full stop. The End. Case closed.
"Happily Ever After indeed! Where is the girl who set upon her cousin like a wildcat when he threatened to desecrate her favourite book? Where is the governess who gazed from the rooftop at the world and yearned, in her heart, for something more - something quite unnamable and yet unmistakable in its presence? Where is the woman who left her comfortable existence behind, refusing to be shaped in the image of Rochester's (first) wife - swathed in his fabrics, studded with his jewels? What of 'independence'? 'Freedom'? Feminism? Tell me ... what has happened to Brontė's passionate rebellious heroine? Has she settled for second best? Has she buckled under the heel of conformist genteel Victorian society, the revolution quelled within her breast? Drawing on the mantle of wifedom, motherhood, nurturer - has she compromised ... herself?"
"Allie, what do you think I should wear on Saturday? Chinese red or Gothic black?"
"I thought you'd decided on the black, Ash." Allie speaks in whispers, writing furiously.
"I know ... but ... the red seems to make more of a dramatic statement. Everyone else will come in black; it's the universal flattering colour."
"It's a costume ball, not a cocktail party; people will be wearing more than black. And anyway you didn't want to stand out in case Chris thought you were chasing him. You wanted to look like you 'weren't really interested'."
"Though you are," Belle interjects from Allie's other side, removing pen from paper long enough speak. Ash tosses her head and curls her index finger around a skein of black hair.
"Chris is a nice guy but ... really, he's just too nice. Always such a perfect gentleman. Sometimes I think he just puts it on. An image."
"You nearly spilt orange juice all over the floor when he said 'Good morning' to you today."
"Belle! I lost my balance. He just happened to be there when it happened."
Belle does not reply - she's too busy writing.
"I think he does have a thing for you," says Allie quietly. "He never bothers to say 'Good morning' to anyone else. Pity you've decided you don't like him."
"Oh I do. Really, I do. He is nice."
"Nice is nice. You like him, he likes you; what more could you wish for?" Belle puts down her pen and stares across at Ash.
"You just don't understand, Belle. You have Jag. You don't know what it's like to be lonely."
Belle bites her lip and lowers her eyes. She picks up her pen and continues writing. "Oh yes I do," Allie hears her say under her breath. "Oh yes I do."
Ash sighs theatrically and stretches her legs in her chair, sandalled toes pointed outward, ballerina-style.
"I never liked Jane Eyre," she says. "Rochester is so ugly. How could Jane ever love him? I never liked a fairy tale unless the prince was good-looking and the princess, the fairest in the land."
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