Becoming Jane Eyre
By: Sheila Kohler
Penguin 2009
Artfully written and beautifully imagined, Becoming Jane Eyre is a mastering novel and a look inside the life of author Charlotte Bronte.
While she is at her father’s bedside, Bronte shares the story of her life and the writing of her masterpiece Jane Eyre and interweaves both narratives. Charlotte recounts her years as a student in Belgium, then a teacher and her affair with the married school master, then her years as a lonely governess for a wealthy family.
This novel really exhibits what it was like for female authors in the 19th century as Charlotte and her sisters, Emily and Anne, struggle to get their novels published in a male dominated society.
If you have read Jane Eyre or any of the Bronte sister’s novels, you will see how much the sisters drew from their own life and experiences that informed much of their writing. In fact, you can really see how similar Jane Eyre is to Charlotte. Throughout we see the many inspirations for the construction of some of literatures finest and most profound novels by the Bronte sisters including; Wuthering Heights by Emily, The Tennant of Wildfell Hall by Anne and Shirley one of Charlotte’s other masterpieces, the two latter titles being some of my favorite novels.
It really seems as if the three sisters had a lonely solitary life and I can somewhat identify with that. That is one of the things that drew me to Jane Eyre, which remains to this day to be my favorite novel. The sisters were really familiar with the plight of being a woman and even after almost two centuries, for those stories to still resonate is very special.
If you have read Jane Eyre, you will like this book. If you haven’t maybe this book with inspire you to pick it up.
Story ****
Characters ***
Readability ****
Overall Rating ****
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