Of Jane Eyre, Jane Austen, and Soulmates, or how the two Janes made me an old maid
In a weekly prompt, Adrian CDTPPW asks: 2] Do you believe in soul mates? What is a soul mate for you?
Yes, I believe in soul mates — and I know that’s why Jane Eyre and Jane Austen turned me into an old maid!
Because once upon a time, there was a plain Jane on the verge of thirteen who devoured plenty of Gothic Romance novels in the 1970s. I would go to the libraries and check out as many Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney titles as I could: although these were mostly to satisfy my continuing preoccupation with dusty old mansions, legends of ghosts, and generally creepy atmospheres rather than to satisfy any interest in love or lust.
Ironically, the relationships featured in these Gothic romances rarely moved me. Even as a girl barely entering her teens, the romances seemed all too unrealistic, going from feisty opposition on the heroine’s part to melting capitulation the next. My immediate instinct was “C’mon man — that’s not how it works!”
Then my bestie, equally obsessed with Gothic romances, was assigned to read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which she enjoyed and recommended–just as she had recommended other novels by Susan Howatch. She never had a school assignment that she enjoyed so much. So, of course, I had to read it.
