A Fierce Heroine in Jane Steele


If the headstrong and self-determined character Jane Eyre was ahead of her time in the late 18th/early 19th century world she inhabited, it’s hard to imagine that Ms. Eyre would have been anything but blown away by the forthrightness and independence of Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele.

Jane Steele is not a reimagining of a classic, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary was for Pride and Prejudice, or a genre mashup like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Instead, Faye sets Steele in a similar time period and gives Jane Steele a lot more tools in her toolbox than Jane Eyre had, including combat skills for offing the men who try to do her wrong.

We first see Jane Steele stuck under the thumb of her Aunt Patience, who sends her to a boarding school. There Jane commits a second murder of the headmaster who gave her the choice of watching her friend starve or being sent to an insane asylum. Her first murder, if you can call it that since the death occurred while Jane sought to protect herself, was of her cousin who tries to rape her. Faye does a nice job of portraying Jane’s feelings about these murders with ample regret but also awareness that the men, and the society around them, left her little choice.

Eventually Jane returns to her now-deceased Aunt’s estate, taken over by a mysterious Charles Thornfield. Posing as a governess to Thornfield’s ward, Jane becomes an equal partner to Thornfield as they uncover and ultimately foil a plot to bring Thornfield and his household to ruin. Thornfield is willing to provide, and Jane is quite capable in the weapons training Thornfield offers, which only makes Jane a greater force.

Jane Steele would likely have made Jane Eyre blush and feel less courageous than she was in her own book, but that’s Faye’s point. Jane Eyre was ahead of time but also limited in how far ahead she could actually be in a novel published in 1847. Jane Steele is less limited in a 2016 novel about the same world because her author’s world is evolved. It is an interesting exercise made more enjoyable because of Faye’s writing, which at once feels loyal to Charlotte Brontë’s but also modern.

 

The weakness of Jane Steele is that it needs Jane Eyre to be a worthwhile read at all. Without the classic as a comparison point, it is unclear whether Jane Steel would merit her own book.

 

Thank you to Victoria Lamothe for suggesting Jane Steele.


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