The Brontës by W H H F Renouf

Thanks to History Extra

Title: The Brontës

Author: W H H F Renouf

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next #1)

Thursday Next grows up in a world where Jane Eyre doesn’t hear Mr Rochester call to her, and so goes off to India with her dreary cousin St John Rivers.

This rather dull ending to Jane Eyre had been accepted for years although many readers have wondered if a different ending might have been better. When Thursday takes up residence in Jane Eyre to rid the world of evil criminal Acheron Hades, she makes friends with Edward Rochester and he helps her eliminate Hades; there’s a fire, several fires, started by Hades. Bertha Rochester escapes on to the roof followed by Edward and Thursday, and Hades. The fire takes hold in the house and Hades throws Bertha over the parapet to her death. Thursday shoots Hades. Edward and Thursday seek their escape but Mr Rochester loses his sight after he is hit by a falling beam carrying Thursday out of the burning building.

Thursday likes Edward Rochester and thinks he deserves better than to lose everything: she lurks outside the room where Jane is sitting in the Rivers’ house and calls “Jane, Jane, Jane”. Jane immediately thinks of her beloved Mr Rochester and rushes to Thornfield where she discovers the house burned down and her beloved Edward injured and blind. It doesn’t stop her loving him. It doesn’t stop her marrying him. Reader, she married him. And Thursday holds both of them in her thoughts, always.

Probably much of W H H F Renouf’s book is devoted to the changes in Jane Eyre, which caused considerable surprise to The Brontë Federation, and was greeted with delight by many but not all. Obviously there are other Brontë books Renouf must have considered, however, the chronicles of Thursday Next concentrate on Jane Eyre, so we do not hear anything about the books written by Charlotte’s sisters.

Thanks to The National Gallery