Story Set in a Gothic Manor House

Story Set in a Gothic Manor House

Based on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour

Today I heard a new voice in the house. It must be the new governess. I looked out of my attic window later that afternoon and I saw the new employee. She was quite small and not really that pretty. He had not picked her for her looks. She looked quite a composed person.  

She’s probably had a terrible life and now she has to live in this mansion and teach a petulant child who seems to be a little show-off. I found out from Grace Pool, (my nurse) that her name was Jane Eyre.  

Poor Jane Eyre! She will only ever be a governess, living in a back room, and not being able to join in the social life of the house. She is trapped just the way I am trapped, and even that young girl Adèle, is trapped. Grace Poole was trapped too. Life had not been kind to Grace and she resorted to alcohol when she was depressed. And Blanche Ingram, she is trapped too as she needed to find a rich husband with a fine mansion. Did she not see that her visits to Thornfield Hall were just a distraction for him, a little diversion that would add some vitality to this gloomy dwelling?

Did I say that in fact I am the real mistress of this house or did I tell you that my parents forced me to marry Mr Rochester and he took me on after being offered a huge dowry? Rochester needed money and my parents wanted to get rid of me because I was as they termed me, ‘a madwoman’. We were all serving a sentence, serving the master in this gothic mansion. Nobody was happy. Nobody could escape. Except the master, Mr Rochester, who would travel abroad occasionally and during these jaunts he would have had affairs. And Adèle was the result of one of these dalliances. She obtained this information from Grace after she had a few drinks one evening a couple of years ago. ‘I heard’ Grace whispered, although no one could possibly overhear us on the third floor of the house, ‘that her mother was an opera dancer called Céline Varens’.    

When Rochester brought me here he locked me in this attic and hired Grace Poole to look after me. I remember driving up to Thornfield Hall three years ago and my heart sank. It looked so grim and forbidding. I had a strange foreboding that it would be my prison. And I was not wrong. I tried to get my hands on some writing material in order to communicate with my brother in Jamaica and beg him to rescue me. But I was not permitted to have a pen or any paper. 

If I had paper I would write about this cruel master who keeps us here and refuses to empower us or give us our freedom. He is like a ringmaster in the circus who controls us and keeps us in line. He stands in the centre of the ring and choreographs each of our acts. Jane Eyre is a governess paid a humble wage, Grace Poole is a nurse, Adèle brings cheerfulness and of course, I am his star act, only to be brought out at the grand finale, I am the ‘madwoman in the attic’.

The longer I live here the more I realise we are all under his dominance and there were no winners in this situation. No one was happy but at least Mr Rochester had control over people’s lives and he seemed to relish his power and take pleasure in playing his power games. Maybe Adèle would escape but I doubted it. She was taken from her native country, and she had no say in the matter. I was forced to leave my native Jamaica, and I missed the sunshine and the food. Now here I am, trapped in a loveless marriage, in a gloomy Gothic house and treated like a lunatic. Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Am I the only one who knows what’s going on?’ And then I ask myself, ‘Am I the only one who can set us free?’ I could not count on Grace Poole. She could have been my confidante like Medea’s nurse in the Euripides’ play, Medea. Medea’s nurse empathised with Medea and tried to help her handle her sense of loss and betrayal after Jason had abandoned her. But no, she only wanted a quiet life, a meagre wage and a roof over her head. Adèle just wanted pretty clothes and not to be sent back to the boarding school she detested. And Jane Eyre, she had probably escaped some awful set of circumstances and since she arrived she seemed to be quite reconciled to her fate.

And Blanche Ingram, had bought into the system. She just wanted a mansion and a life of luxury.

I could not see a way to resolve the deadlock until one day I looked out of the window and I could not believe my eyes. Mr Rochester was walking in the grounds with Jane Eyre and they seemed to be having a deep conversation. I had noticed that he seemed to be in good spirits over the past weeks. And then another strange thing happened. One night (when Grace was asleep) I was able to obtain her key and let myself out. I opened the door of Jane’s room and I was surprised to see a wedding veil and a dress hanging up outside her wardrobe. I was horrified. I realised that I would have to save Jane from a bigamous marriage. The man was depraved! How could he ever think that he could get away with it. It was one thing conducting his affairs abroad but he was really crossing a line if he thought he could bring his daughter’s governess back to this house as a bride and presume to play happy families. This was insupportable and I made up my mind to prevent this happening at all costs even if I had to burn the house down. Mr Rochester had raised the ante but I would be a match for him.  

I wondered how Jane had become his little confidante as she seemed like quite a lifeless character. Was he trying to redeem himself after his years of flirtations and dalliances abroad. Did he think Jane would be a mother figure for Adèle? All these thoughts plagued me and I grew more desperate as their wedding day approached. I made a few attempts at sabotaging their plans but they all backfired. The house was full of anticipation…even a bigamous marriage can generate a buzz of excitement…and one fine morning the two of them swanned out of the house and headed to the church. I was in a dark mood. I literally foamed at the mouth. I had not seen this coming. I thought I could wreck their plans. Had  my own plans not been wrecked?  But despite my best efforts he had got the better of me. Would I never win? Would there be no last minute reprieve, no deux ex machina to right the wrongs done to me? The sort of deux ex machinas that appeared in Greek dramas, like the time in Euripides’s Medea when Medea is rescued and brought to safety in a chariot sent by her grandfather.

Yes, the Greeks understood revenge. Medea’s husband Jason deserted her to marry Glauce, the daughter of the King of Creon. But Medea would not submit to her fate. Her war cry was ‘Hate is a bottomless cup’ and she vowed to ‘pour and pour’. And that would become my mantra, until I had destroyed Mr Rochester.