Warwick Blanchett: Mrs Rochester - the Surprising Sequel To Jane Eyre

HarperCollins

$24.95

Review: Joanne Wilkes*

Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre has never lost its hold on the reading public in Britain. It is one of the books most often borrowed from libraries.

Since it came out in 1847 it has had spin-offs of all kinds. Pre-eminent among these is probably Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by the Dominica-born Jean Rhys, a novel which focuses on the experience of Rochester's mad first wife in Jamaica.

Now a New Zealand-based writer, Warwick Blanchett, enters the fray with a sequel to the original text. Mrs Rochester is an entertaining version of Jane Eyre Rochester's later life, told by the woman herself.

Jane's marriage to Rochester was blissful, the heroine reassures us. But perfect bliss is boring fictional material, so Blanchett kills off Mr Rochester, after having him reduce Jane and their children to poverty through unwise investments.

Three years later, the widow has secured her children's education, but has reached an impasse. During a much earlier impasse, Bronte's Jane had declared that women "need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do." Bronte duly presented her with the glamorous Mr Rochester - and Blanchett's thoughts for his poor, widowed governess likewise turn to blokes. But in his case, they're blokes in New Zealand.

Jane Rochester sets out for a new life on "Oblivion Island," off "Canaan Island," joining her cousin Diana Fitzjames (nee Rivers). The descriptions of the locales make it clear that they're based on New Zealand, and the resourceful Jane even goes in for some sheep-shearing.

Jane's first bloke is the dashing Lieutenant Frederick Trevelyan: when he catches her in a swoon, she feels "the ramparts of [her] feminine resistance being rapidly eroded by a tide of heedless folly." She's really rather naive about this one, failing to recognise him as a dead ringer for George Wickham from Pride and Prejudice. Then there's Archdeacon Parfitt, just as arrogant as St John Rivers, but as openly sensual as the other was repressed. Escaping from him, Jane finds herself "clutched briefly against another muscular, masculine frame." It would spoil the story to reveal the identity of this bloke, but the "muscular, masculine frame" seems to be an occupational hazard for our heroine.

Blanchett's Jane is more passive than Bronte's, and also less stroppy. She is challenged by her experience, rather than given to challenging it: there is no antagonist like Mrs Reed, Brocklehurst, or indeed Rochester in his would-be-bigamist role, to allow Jane to impress us by her forthrightness and integrity.

The novel does have a serious dimension, in a sub-plot about love transgressing racial boundaries, as well as in its pervasive critique of English missionaries' attitudes to the indigenous people and their religious beliefs. But mostly, it's Jane coping with blokes. And in this respect, "Canaan Island" is close to the Promised Land.

* Joanne Wilkes lectures in English at the University of Auckland.