Miranda K. Pennington - A girl walks into a book: what the Brontës taught me about life, love, and womens work

T his is a love story. Charlotte Bront and her sisters loved to write, and I fell in love with their words on the page, and I have been looking for that kind of love in and out of books ever since. And maybe you too have fallen in love with a Jane Eyre or a Paul Emanuel or, Heaven help you, a Heathcliff, and so you will know exactly what I mean.

Let me be clear, I am not a fairy-tale-magical-wedding-day happy-ever-after sort of person. My favorite fairy tales are the weird ones, where the girl who trod on a loaf gets sucked underground for her hubris, or one of the seven brothers straightens his hat and freezes the world, or dogs with dish-sized eyes wait for the soldier to strike the tinderbox, or the princess weaves coats of flax for her swan brothers. At the end of these stories, the heroines just lucky not to be dancing herself to death in a pair of bewitched shoes. That spiky strangeness is what I like most about them. When it came to my own ever-after, perhaps my expectations were unconventional, but I had still wanted a storybook ending, one way or another. I had been ecstatic to find someone with a winning smile who laughed at my jokes and wanted me around. I thought we were building a life together. But after one too many disappointed expectations and undelivered promises I finally became suspicious that it wasnt going to happen. Whether I was unworthy, the person I had picked was too flawed, or the story Id based my dreams on was a liesomething was broken.

As I got ready to leave the apartment that had finally started to feel like ours, my battered and beloved copy of Jane Eyre was the last book I packed, in the last bag I lined up by the door. I was leaving, taking only what I had brought with me and could call my own. It was a dark, bitter moment with one flicker of solace: Charlotte Bront would have approved.

When I first came to the Bronts, I was a child, nave and unwary. The old-fashioned prose and thick spine of Jane Eyre were promising; lots of the books written for kids my age (ten or so) were like potato chips, gone in a flash and leaving nothing behind but a greasy residue. I waded into the opening pages, read about a young girl huddled in a window-seat reading Bewicks History of British Birds, and was intrigued. Id spent my share of hours curled up reading while adults talked, and I found the notion of a window-sill hidden by curtains especially romantic. My library was under the fluorescent lights of a basement playroom where I escaped my toddler brother, who was too little to climb downstairs. Rather than the finely furnished halls of Gateshead that Jane Eyre longed to escape, I had a battered sleepaway couch, a plastic foosball table, a hot pink wooden toy box with a chalkboard, and an array of particleboard bookcases that groaned under the weight of Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, The Brothers Grimm, and Beverly Cleary. Despite these drastic differences in our circumstances, I related to Janetheres no accounting for the affinity one lonely kid has for another.

After that first attempt, I actually did toss Jane Eyre to the floor and heard the pages skitter as they hit the linoleum.

But the book was so satisfyingly weighty. Even as I hurled it off the bed, it seemed like a book that should matter. I kept picking it back up. I stared down Mr. Brocklehurst. I endured the boarding school. I crossed my fingers when Jane dared to advertise for a new position. Eventually, I found that I liked it, despite its darkness, despite Janes trials, which I took personally. To despise Jane was to despise me. By the time I finished it, I had come to love Jane Eyre. I was a chubby tomboy with a mushroom cut, who always talked too fast. I liked reading fantasy epics and singing along to show tunes in the car. But