Julie Sheng

Julie’s piece is an appropriation of Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’ from the perspective of Blanche Ingram. This imaginative piece and reflection were composed for her Year 11 Extension English I assessment task.

Nameless

Names matter. At the age of twenty-three years, my dear mother successfully ensnared a man of both sizeable income and decent estate, a laudable feat which endowed her progeny with the respectable name of Ingram. Ingram. It rings out deep and majestic – the regal nasal note debuts with poise, then dips seamlessly into a rich, velveteen growl, before culminating in a prim pursing of lips. Ingr-am. One could never have guessed that I was virtually penniless from the elegant English chime of my family name.

Names matter. When my brother was born, he was bequeathed with a noble title worthy of the heir to the Ingram fortune. Theodore. Teddy or Tedo made for affectionate diminutives, but it would always be Lord Theodore Ingram whose birth one frost-bitten winter’s morning left me dependent on the whims of fickle admirers, Lord Theodore Ingram whose existence abruptly cast me adrift as a reluctant player in the game of marriage. But I am not resentful of him, for it is not my place to be resentful. After all, such is the natural order of things.

Names matter. Pained attention had been lavished on the selection of my baptismal one, the sacred name which my suitors would come to murmur with yearning, the cursed name which my rivals would come to snarl with rancour. My father envisioned his daughter’s forename with an exotic French lilt. And so, I was christened Blanche – a nymph of chaste white, a specter of ethereal serenity.

I endeavored to fulfill the demands of that name. But I disappointed. I know that I am beautiful. I relish the lustful whispers that trickle after my footsteps, the flushing of cheeks when I glide near. But my beauty is not a tame one. I bloom dark and Roman. My complexion is closer to dusk than it is to dawn. My eyes are not a calm, azure blue, but simmer a thick and roiling black, weltering with unknown passions. I am a desirable woman. I am an enchanting woman. But a fair woman, I am not.

And to finish the procession of demerits against my name, I have now passed twenty-five fruitless summers in this world. By my mother’s standards, I am overripe by two years, a festering plum which burdens the branch that it saddles. Each day that flickers by is a taunting reminder of the fact that I am being edged closer and closer to the sordid doom of spinsterhood, a rancid fate reeking of squalor and privation.

It was in a concerted effort to rescue me from this harrowing destiny that my mother charged me with a new duty.

When she first broached it, I found it an unsavoury one. The assignment was nearly twice my age, and with a bastard child in tow. Moreover, from what dim memories I had of him from a soiree seven years ago, he was possessed of neither looks nor wit. What he did have catalogued under his inventory of appealing qualities was an impressive homestead in the late-Gothic style, and a handsome treasury to match.

I was offended at the possibility of such a groom. I was Blanche Ingram, daughter of a lord, a fine lady of (as one past commission had put it) “breathtaking allure and impeccable bearing.”

But those endearing testaments to my charms were from two years ago, and the man who had uttered them had eloped with his housemaid in the end. So, after tortured contemplation, I morosely swallowed the task at hand.

Names matter. I ran his name over and over on my tongue all the way to his manor. It felt heavy, stilted, unnatural, knelling of acrid winters and mottled gargoyles. Rochester.

Ro-ches-ter. Mrs Rochester. A label foreign to my ears, but one which I must grow accustomed to, if I am to emerge victorious as a contestant for his hand.

For it was a tournament, I realised, as soon as I caught sight of her.

She was but a wan creature, an anaemic sheet of skin stretched over a brittle framework of bone. A plain specimen of femininity, she would have been an otherwise insipid blot lurking in the periphery of my vision if not for the devotion that flared in her eyes whenever Rochester passed before her, the hatred brimming behind her furtive glares at me. She tried to conceal it, her love for this man, and perhaps to all the others, she was indeed discreet. But to yours truly, one well-versed in the spasms and twitches of love, it was strikingly clear that she was afflicted with a grave ache of the heart.

In that moment, my own body throbbed with an acute convulsion of envy. It was not envy on the score of Rochester. No, that would have been a blistering stab, a slice of spite cutting into my throat. I did not care for my quarry. He did not care for his huntress. So it was a different breed of envy that coursed through me then, a dull, swollen envy. It was an envy for her irrelevance, her utter insignificance. Her freedom.

I did not know her name, but it did not matter.

Names had no meaning to her. There was no mother to glance scathingly at her when she returned from yet another ball with her finger still bare, no brother to jeer condescendingly at her when she was jilted by yet another courter. She had clambered out from the recesses of a hard life, a grim life, but she was fully, wholly alive – alive in a way that triumphed over my slender, translucent survival. She was solitary, yet she held strong against the ceaseless assault of the world, with no shackles choking her wrists, no mask clinging to her face.

In that moment, I suddenly longed to be like her - to be alone, to be forgotten. To be nameless. Not Young Mistress Ingram. Not Miss Ingram. Not even Blanche. Just a woman, a woman in white, a woman wild.

REFLECTION:

In my appropriation of ‘Jane Eyre’, I explored the perspective of Blanche Ingram and, through her inner conflict with Victorian patriarchal conventions, conveyed the idea that the feminism embodied by Jane in the original novel is a luxury inaccessible to most other women of her time. Although Blanche was characterized as materialistic and superficial by Bronte, I believed she deserved empathy, since she was forced by societal pressures to submit to an arranged marriage. When writing, I employed first-person narration from her viewpoint to enable the reader to connect deeply with her.

Throughout my piece, I used the repeated motif of “names” to indicate that Blanche feels compelled to conform to patriarchal social expectations out of duty to her family. Traditionally, “names” are associated with an individual’s reputation, and I built upon this notion to render Blanche’s “name” as symbolic of her family’s honour, which largely depends on her successful marriage. Blanche’s desire to be “nameless” reflects how she yearns to escape the burden to uphold her family’s respectability. Her envy for Jane’s “freedom” from familial constraints highlights how female empowerment is not as achievable to women like Blanche, who are enmeshed by such obligations, as it is to women like Jane, who are fortunate enough to be financially and socially independent. Hence, Blanche is representative of early feminism’s failure to uplift all women, regardless of circumstance.

Thus, by presenting her struggle to reconcile her yearning for self-fulfillment with the demands of her family reputation, I have tried to depict Blanche sympathetically to reflect the unattainability of female autonomy for women in delicate social positions and the injustices they suffer under the patriarchy. •