Dorset Gap: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him
A short story by Tracy Chevalier from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.In ‘Dorset Gap’, two students walk in the countryside after a night of partying and miscommunicate over Jane Eyre.Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë’s game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.
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Dorset Gap
Tracy Chevalier
Published by The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Foreword © Tracy Chevalier 2016
Dorset Gap © Tracy Chevalier 2016
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Jacket photograph © Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the authors’ imaginations.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008150594
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173456
Version: 2016-03-16
Contents
Why is Charlotte Brontë’s “Reader, I married him” one of the most famous lines in literature? Why do we remember it and quote it so much?
Jane Eyre is “poor, obscure, plain, and little”, with no family and no prospects; the embodiment of the underdog who ultimately triumphs. And “Reader, I married him” is Jane’s defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, “Reader, he married me” – as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, “Reader, we married.” Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester. Her self-determination is not only very appealing; it also serves to undercut the potential over-sweetness of a classic happy ending where the heroine gets her man. The mouse roars, and we pump our fist with her.
Twenty-one writers, then, have taken up this line and written what it has urged them to write. I liken it to a stone thrown into a pond, with its resulting ripples. Always, always in these stories there is love – whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers – in its many heart-breaking, life-affirming forms.
All of these stories have their own memorable lines, their own truths, their own happy or wry or devastating endings, but each is one of the ripples that finds its centre in Jane and Charlotte’s decisive clarion call: Reader, I married him.
Tracy Chevalier
THEY WOULD MAKE A very odd match, like daisies and gladioli, lace and leather. Ed knew that; he wasn’t stupid. Well, he was stupid in many ways, but not in that way.
He wasn’t sure why he was with her today. The night before they had been to a rave in a field in Dorset, and the next morning both had ended up in a group of people who, despite hangovers and skin grainy with dried sweat from all-night dancing, had been intent on a walk to clear their heads. That plan lasted until they stopped at a pub in a tiny village and lost momentum in front of their pints. Jenn had gazed at them all, ranged around the table in various stages of stupor, then picked up the map and left. Ed watched her from the pub window, walking away along the empty country road, her wellington boots making her look like a farmer’s wife. Beguiled by the bit of calf between the bottom of her dress and the top of her wellies that flashed with each stride, he pulled on his jumper and went after her.
He didn’t know her well. She was the housemate of a friend, studying Eng. Lit. to his Geography, so that academically their paths at university never crossed. He had seen her on the verges of parties, clutching a plastic cup of cheap warm wine that she probably took all evening to drink, sitting in a corner of the canteen with a book propped in front of her, crossing campus with a small smile, her eyes fixed on the middle distance. She was not friendless, not at all, but she was not a joiner either. Which was why Ed had been amazed to see her squashed into a corner of the car they were taking to the rave.
Now, the morning after, he caught up with her on the road that headed into the depths of the countryside. Jenn barely glanced at him, simply nodded and kept up her even pace. Her round glasses and shapeless dress and frizzed hair signalled an indifference to her appearance that made her even more attractive. It annoyed Ed, this impulse to follow someone who didn’t care, but it didn’t stop him either, didn’t make him turn back to the simple civility of a pint and a packet of crisps.
