A Bloody, Gender-Swapped Jane Eyre
In which our heroine reads all of Mimi Matthews' novels, and chooses to write about the Vampire one.
I read John Eyre by Mimi Matthews after tearing through nearly all of her romance novels in the past week or so. It might seem odd to start off what I hope will be an ongoing romance newsletter with a recommendation that is almost more gothic horror than romance—but then again, the relationship between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester has inspired countless romance pairings, and Jane Eyre is one of my personal favorite novels.
In John Eyre, Matthews’ protagonist is a schoolmaster who has recently obtained the position of tutor to two traumatized young boys living in the eerie Thornfield Hall. His employer is Mrs. Rochester – formerly Bertha Mason – who was married and (purportedly) widowed while traveling abroad. Bertha’s whirlwind romance and marriage to Mr. Rochester is told through a series of letters written to her childhood friend, Blanche Ingram (one of the few characters from the original novel who is not gender-swapped). These letters are interspersed with John Eyre’s narrative as he arrives at his new post, meets his mysterious employer, and begins to suspect that Thornfield Hall contains hidden tragedies.
The gothic elements of the novel are at their strongest in the epistolary section of the novel, which draws from the vampire lore of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Matthews also deftly responds to the troubling colonial elements of the original novel by implicating the novel’s villain (Spoiler alert: It’s Mr. Rochester) with the slave trade in the West Indies—one of several disturbing revelations that Mrs. Rochester does not learn until after her marriage.
The romantic elements primarily take place in John Eyre’s narrative, in which the plain, scholastic, and somewhat laudanum-addled John is helplessly attracted to the mysterious and magnetic Mrs. Rochester. John has nurturing instincts, and he quickly becomes attached to his pupils despite their reticence, while Mrs. Rochester does her best to avoid her wards and doesn’t display much interest in them. John is also keenly aware of his humble position in society, while Mrs. Rochester is an heiress who has done her best to buck tradition. But despite their contrasts—and perhaps because of them—the two draw closer and closer to one another in a tightening gyre of attraction as the novel progresses in a delectable slow burn.
Matthews does away with the portion of Brontë’s original plot involving Jane Eyre’s family—in this version there are no terrible cousins or evil aunt to provide John Eyre with a traumatic childhood, nor is there an excursion in which he happens upon distant relatives as Jane does after she runs away from Thornfield. However, the scenes that are crucial to the romantic narrative remain in place, including a first meeting with Mrs. Rochester on horseback and John Eyre walking in the mists near Thornfield, as well as an encounter after a nighttime fire in the household that is heated in more ways than one.
Weaving together the gothic and the romantic, retaining the structure of the original novel while adding her own original twists, Matthews creates a new story that I would recommend to Brontë fanatics and newcomers alike.
Read This If You Liked:
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
More Jane Eyre Retellings to Check Out:
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Re Jane: A Novel by Patricia Park
What to read next from Mimi Matthews:
I would recommend starting with the Parish Orphans of Devon series, which includes:
And I’m very much looking forward to reading her newest book, The Siren of Sussex, which involves some characters who we first meet in A Modest Independence.