Book Review: The Secret History of Jane Eyre is not quite as secret or dramatic as the cover blurb would have the reader believe. And don't be fooled, this is not a biography. Here Georgetown University English professor John Pfordresher attempts to find an intersection between events in Charlotte Bronte's life and in the text of her great novel, Jane Eyre (the book's extended title is "How Charlotte Bronte Wrote Her Masterpiece"). Having just completed a re-read of the novel less than two weeks ago, this title had to catch my eye. But the Secret History is not all that mysterious. No piece of Bronte's short life is too insubstantial to try to fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is Jane Eyre. There is a wealth of speculation in this book, there is "must have felt," so much "may" and "perhaps." At times these correlations seem simply coincidence, sometimes they seem to be a bit of a stretch, and at points life and novel fit neatly together. But trying to establish a novel as autobiography is always on uncertain ground. Similarities do not mean truth about the author, as surface correspondence may be all there is. Authors have to get their material somewhere: a writer may base a conversation in the Mars Bravo 4 space colony on one she overheard at Starbucks. As the author acknowledges, parts of Bronte's life were worse than the life she gave Jane Eyre. There are too many assertions with too little evidence. At the same time, Pfordresher deserves credit for his creativity, for thinking outside the box, for a careful reading, and sifting together the facts of Bronte's life and the text of her novel. For example, he's largely successful in his analysis of Bertha Rochester's place in the novel, even if far too eager to lay racial accusations. One point the author seemed to have missed is that Charlotte's brother Branwell is an obvious model for John Reed's (Jane's cousin) dissipation, just as is Hindley Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. Pfordresher is also is a little too obsessed with the sex drives of people in the 19th Century, and seems too sure of his appraisal based on scant evidence. The novel's original title page read "Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell." The Secret History of Jane Eyre does its best to make the novel an autobiography of Charlotte Bronte, but there is not quite enough substance here. This book is for readers who are not only passionate about Jane Eyre (having read JE at least twice), but also need to know as much as possible about Charlotte Bronte (having read at least one of the actual biographies), wherever that Venn diagram overlaps. Being one of those in the overlap, I had to read this, but I'm not sure that you have to read it. [3★]
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