Remedial action that fails: Jane Eyre Laid Bare

Author: Eve Sinclair
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Pages:322 pages
Price: Rs350

Here’s something that packs a wallop for those of you left distraught by the lack of anything remotely erotic in the Fifty Shades Of Grey. Jane Eyre Laid Bare adds an erotic turn to the classic tale right from the cover, and the promise is kept many times over. Almost everyone in the book, almost all the time, is engaged in twists of the pleasurable, carnal variety.

Just a page into the novel, we see Jane Eyre, at the tender age of 18, en route to Thornfield Hall where she will be governess to one young Adele Varens. How does she deal with the tedium of a journey in solitude? By positioning herself over the wooden handle of the carriage for a quick orgasm — her “secret remedy to alleviate the disquiet of the mind”.

Smile at the turn of phrase or applaud Jane’s ingenuity, but don’t hope for a joy ride. The overdose of mindless sex in the book could numb your brain. This book is one among many that merit writer Ambrose Bierce’s remark — “The covers of this book are too far apart.”

In Jane Eyre Laid Bare, author Eve Sinclair takes off from the undertones and whiffs of sexual tension with which Charlotte Bronte had carefully nuanced the original Jane Eyre. On the walls of Thornfield Hall hang tapestries of men and women, gods and mermaids copulating. There are explicit paintings, statues and effigies of “strange flowers, strange birds and the strangest human beings in contorted positions”.

In her initial quiet months at the Hall, before Rochester makes his appearance, Jane’s “sole relief” is to walk along the corridors and arouse herself by gazing at these works of art as preparation for her secret remedy. Bronte’s Jane, extremely passionate and also devout, struggled to walk the middle path between righteous morality and passion.

For Sinclair’s Jane, carnal pleasures easily win the battle. She junks her conscience casually and feels that “it is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity. They must have action and they will make it if they cannot find it.” And there’s plenty of action to be found at Thornfield Hall.

Rochester is portrayed as a man inclined to indulge in vices even in the original novel, although Bronte hadn’t elaborated upon them. Sinclair’s Rochester is more like a Caligula, the scandalous Roman emperor. Rochester and his friends — Lord Ingram and his two sisters, Blanche and Mary, Henry and Fredrick Lynn, Lady Fulbright, Miss Dupret, Captain Dent, Louisa and Amy Eshton and their brother — spend evenings playing sexual games.

Furtively, Jane watches them from behind curtains and longs for a chance to put what she sees into practice. Her tendency to play peeping tom rewards her with more sources of arousal than what may be seen in Rochester’s art collection —there’s incest, lesbian lovemaking, a maid and butler adding a predictable dimension to the chore of making the bed, threesomes, foursomes and more.

Bronte’s Rochester calls his wife Bertha “Indian Messalina”, and finds her to have “obnoxious tastes” and sickening “perverse” behaviours. Sinclair’s Rochester lays no claim to such a moral high ground in relation to Bertha, but the allusions from the original work play out repeatedly to tiring extremes.

Well before the book ends with Jane’s telling, “reader, I left him”, you wish Sinclair hadn’t taken up the challenge of giving an erotic twist to the classic tale so diligently. There is only a smattering of story in her version, and that is the aspect that proves to be
its undoing.

If you are the kind who gets a kick out of Victorian heroines indulging in kinky sex, this book is for you. But, be warned, don’t hope for anything more than the sex, because if you’re looking for a story, even Fifty Shades Of Grey may be a better pick.