upstairs, annoyed by Mrs. Fairfax’s constant rules of propriety. I was so weary of the same clothes, the same books, the same lessons, the same walks, the same conversations, day after day after day. I sat down at the vanity and hastily pulled my hair back in a bun. My dress was chafing my neck. I was dying to throw on a T-shirt and jeans, a pair of Converse.
Irritably, I yanked at the collar of my dress. With one particularly fierce tug, my mother’s necklace came flying off, throwing the dragonfly pendant free. A cold wind overtook me then, almost as if the windows had all been thrown open at once. Panicked, I crouched down on all fours and scoured every inch of that floor looking for the pendant, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.
When I stood up, I felt light-headed. My hand went instinctively to my chest, the way it always did when I was nervous or sad. But my neck was bare. I had lost my dragonfly necklace, the last relic of my mother’s.
I sat down at the vanity and felt like crying. I knew so little about my mother, about the woman who’d given birth to me. But I knew that I missed her presence, her vitality, even all these years later. After she died, my father had become a shell of a man until he met Barbara in grief counseling. With her in the house, he gradually came back to life, but he was different, like one of those people who survives a coma but comes back with a completely new personality. A few weeks before he proposed to Barbara, he gathered up my mom’s belongings—her clothing, her sketches and books, the photos of the two of them from various vacations—and put them in boxes in the attic. He said it was out of respect for Barbara; he wanted her to feel at home in our house. But I never bought that excuse. I think secretly he was relieved not to have to deal with the memories anymore, to have a reason to hide them away.
After that, he rarely spoke of her, rarely reminisced with me about all the fun times we’d had together as a family, but instead closed himself off—from her and from me. Sometimes I think he resented me for reminding him too much of her. Now, as always, I longed for a way to reach him. Somehow, I was always trying to reach my father. But I realized, just as I had no cell phone or computer to reach anyone from my old life, I had no magic wand that would bring me closer to my dad. And now I had lost the one link tying me to my mother.
Heartbroken, I glanced in the mirror and was shocked by what I saw. It was not Emma, high school sophomore, staring back at me. It was Jane. I can’t describe the feeling that washed over me, but in that moment, with my necklace gone, I had nothing left to keep me grounded, nothing to maintain my shaky hold over reality. And so I surrendered myself to the fantasy.
I went back downstairs, hair appropriately tamed, and did exactly what was expected of me for the rest of the day. And the day after that. And all the days to follow. There was no question of rebelling, no thoughts of finding my way back home. Thornfield was my home.
And while the days were still a bit monotonous, each felt a little more satisfying than the last. I grew to love the mornings tutoring Adèle, the afternoons strolling through the garden on my own, the evenings reading by the fireplace with Mrs. Fairfax. I got used to the quiet, the solitude, the time spent in my head.
As the days grew colder and the nights grew longer, my former life at Lockwood simply faded away. When I got up in the morning, I was no longer surprised to find myself in a guest room at Thornfield instead of a dorm room. When I saw Mrs. Fairfax, I did not stop and think, This is Madame Favier, my French teacher. Lockwood ceased to exist for me, the way school retreats so quickly from one’s mind during the summer vacation. Teachers and schoolmates simply faded from consciousness, replaced with the characters of Jane Eyre, more real to me now than reality itself.
Once I had given in to this new life,
Irritably, I yanked at the collar of my dress. With one particularly fierce tug, my mother’s necklace came flying off, throwing the dragonfly pendant free. A cold wind overtook me then, almost as if the windows had all been thrown open at once. Panicked, I crouched down on all fours and scoured every inch of that floor looking for the pendant, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.
When I stood up, I felt light-headed. My hand went instinctively to my chest, the way it always did when I was nervous or sad. But my neck was bare. I had lost my dragonfly necklace, the last relic of my mother’s.
I sat down at the vanity and felt like crying. I knew so little about my mother, about the woman who’d given birth to me. But I knew that I missed her presence, her vitality, even all these years later. After she died, my father had become a shell of a man until he met Barbara in grief counseling. With her in the house, he gradually came back to life, but he was different, like one of those people who survives a coma but comes back with a completely new personality. A few weeks before he proposed to Barbara, he gathered up my mom’s belongings—her clothing, her sketches and books, the photos of the two of them from various vacations—and put them in boxes in the attic. He said it was out of respect for Barbara; he wanted her to feel at home in our house. But I never bought that excuse. I think secretly he was relieved not to have to deal with the memories anymore, to have a reason to hide them away.
After that, he rarely spoke of her, rarely reminisced with me about all the fun times we’d had together as a family, but instead closed himself off—from her and from me. Sometimes I think he resented me for reminding him too much of her. Now, as always, I longed for a way to reach him. Somehow, I was always trying to reach my father. But I realized, just as I had no cell phone or computer to reach anyone from my old life, I had no magic wand that would bring me closer to my dad. And now I had lost the one link tying me to my mother.
Heartbroken, I glanced in the mirror and was shocked by what I saw. It was not Emma, high school sophomore, staring back at me. It was Jane. I can’t describe the feeling that washed over me, but in that moment, with my necklace gone, I had nothing left to keep me grounded, nothing to maintain my shaky hold over reality. And so I surrendered myself to the fantasy.
I went back downstairs, hair appropriately tamed, and did exactly what was expected of me for the rest of the day. And the day after that. And all the days to follow. There was no question of rebelling, no thoughts of finding my way back home. Thornfield was my home.
And while the days were still a bit monotonous, each felt a little more satisfying than the last. I grew to love the mornings tutoring Adèle, the afternoons strolling through the garden on my own, the evenings reading by the fireplace with Mrs. Fairfax. I got used to the quiet, the solitude, the time spent in my head.
As the days grew colder and the nights grew longer, my former life at Lockwood simply faded away. When I got up in the morning, I was no longer surprised to find myself in a guest room at Thornfield instead of a dorm room. When I saw Mrs. Fairfax, I did not stop and think, This is Madame Favier, my French teacher. Lockwood ceased to exist for me, the way school retreats so quickly from one’s mind during the summer vacation. Teachers and schoolmates simply faded from consciousness, replaced with the characters of Jane Eyre, more real to me now than reality itself.
Once I had given in to this new life,
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