Mr. Rochester- Sarah Shoemaker
My Review - 4 Stars
"But then I remind myself that if I had turned my back on my father's plans my journey would have been entirely different, and while I might have found a satisfactory sort of life much sooner, I would never have found Jane." p. 156
Fans of Jane Eyre, take note.
Though it's been many years since my last reading, I have long loved Jane Eyre. It was likely one of the first Gothic novels I ever read and I chased it with Bronte's sister's Wuthering Heights, whose central relationship still puzzles me to this day. Do not give me Cathy and Heathcliff, dear readers. Give me one Edward Rochester and his Jane.
Mr. Rochester attempts to answer the questions which have plagued Eyrites since publication. Who exactly is Rochester? How did he make the decisions he did? Just why does he have an insane wife locked up in the attic???
Mr. Rochester takes us to his childhood and then works its way up to when he and Jane meet. Rochester grew up in Thornfield Hall and feels more kinship to his home than to his distant father and brother. He is a sweet child and it's hard to know what his father would have molded him into had Rochester been allowed to stay at Thornfield. Instead, he is sent away to live with a tutor the day after his 8th birthday. It is the first of a few jarring transitions at the hand of his puppet master father.
It almost seems as if the moment Rochester becomes comfortable where he is and makes friends, his father sends summons to move him along. I really enjoyed seeing Rochester's relationships with Carrot and Touch, the other boys who live with the tutor, and also getting a glimpse of where Rochester's interests first developed. From there he moves on to learn how to run a mill and then finally he heads to Jamaica to look after his father's business.
This was what I was waiting for. I wanted the payoff for how Bertha became the anchor weighing our hero down and I got it. We see Rochester and Bertha meet and once they're married, we see the machinations behind it and the filters come off. It made me angry on his behalf and angry he wouldn't divorce her and just plain angry about the state of mental illness and lack of rights for women in those times. (Though lately it's felt like we're on the precipice of returning to exactly that horror again.)
Rochester copes as best as he can but he doesn't come across as the best guy. Frankly, despite the havoc Bertha wreaked on his life, his privilege was showing. I started to think maybe I didn't want him to end up with Jane after all. (I did not expect to have that reaction!)
Finally, about three-quarters of the way through, Rochester and Jane meet. The plot from Jane Eyre is woven in seamlessly, the dialogue less so. It was jarring to hear Bronte's wording after being lost in Shoemaker's rendering mostly the whole way through.
However, this was where the book really came alive for me and I was thrilled to see Jane and Rochester become closer and know precisely what Rochester, man of mystery, was thinking as it happened. My heart broke for him as he was lost in his agony after the fire. And my heart broke for her and then rejoiced upon her return. Did Rochester deserve Jane's love? Probably not but then again, how many of us deserve life's gifts?
I really enjoyed Shoemaker's interpretation of Rochester's world. It was at times a more favorable depiction, particularly the way slavery is presented while he's in Jamaica, though it's possible I don't remember its source material having an abolitionist bent. After knowing Jane's point of view for so long, I'm glad we got to see Rochester's side of things and try to understand some of his choices.
Reader, I'm so glad he married her and she married him.
Synopsis
A gorgeous, deft literary retelling of Charlotte Bronte's beloved Jane Eyre--through the eyes of the dashing, mysterious Mr. Rochester himself.
"Reader, she married me."
For one hundred seventy years, Edward Fairfax Rochester has stood as one of literature's most romantic, most complex, and most mysterious heroes. Sometimes haughty, sometimes tender-professing his love for Jane Eyre in one breath and denying it in the next-Mr. Rochester has for generations mesmerized, beguiled, and, yes, baffled fans of Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece. But his own story has never been told.
Now, out of Sarah Shoemaker's rich and vibrant imagination, springs Edward: a vulnerable, brilliant, complicated man whom we first meet as a motherless, lonely little boy roaming the corridors and stable yards of Thornfield Hall. On the morning of Edward's eighth birthday, his father issues a decree: He is to be sent away to get an education, exiled from Thornfield and all he ever loved. As the determined young Edward begins his journey across England, making friends and enemies along the way, a series of eccentric mentors teach him more than he might have wished about the ways of the men-and women-who will someday be his peers.
But much as he longs to be accepted-and to return to the home where he was born-his father has made clear that Thornfield is reserved for his older brother, Rowland, and that Edward's inheritance lies instead on the warm, languid shores of faraway Jamaica. That island, however, holds secrets of its own, and not long after his arrival, Edward finds himself entangled in morally dubious business dealings and a passionate, whirlwind love affair with the town's ravishing heiress, Antoinetta Bertha Mason.
Eventually, after a devastating betrayal, Edward must return to England with his increasingly unstable wife to take over as master of Thornfield. And it is there, on a twilight ride, that he meets the stubborn, plain, young governess who will teach him how to love again.
It is impossible not to watch enthralled as this tender-hearted child grows into the tormented hero Brontë immortalized-and as Jane surprises them both by stealing his heart. MR. ROCHESTER is a great, sweeping, classic coming-of-age story, and a stirring tale of adventure, romance, and deceit. Faithful in every particular to Brontë's original yet full of unexpected twists and riveting behind-the-scenes drama, this novel will completely, deliciously, and forever change how we read and remember Jane Eyre.
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Disclosure: I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Affiliate links included in this post.
