Marilyn Brant: According to Jane

Oh, ugh. This hardly sounded like high conflict, but I forced myself to keep reading: Clever and vivacious Elizabeth Bennet is both drawn to the aloof Mr. Darcy and repulsed by his arrogance, acrid tongue and condescending behavior toward everyone in the neighborhood .

I imagined using the word “acrid” in a sentence. Like: Sam Blaine deserved to be locked up in a dank dungeon until his groping fingers and his acrid tongue disintegrated. Nice, huh?

The passage continued: Darcy and Elizabeth’s lively and unlikely courtship is played out on a genteel stage, with parlor flirtations, assembly-ball intrigues …And blah, blah, blah.

I decided to go ahead, against all clichéd warnings, and judge a book by its cover. It was written too long ago to be any good, despite boasting a vivacious heroine who had a name similar to mine. And, anyway, between dealing with the rest of my schoolwork and just making it through the day, my attention span was limited.

Our teacher droned on about the setting and the political climate of Regency England and how dear old Jane spent her days confined to doing dull things like strolling in the park and writing letters, because that was what fine women did back then.

I listened, more or less. But then Mrs. Leverson began telling us about the principal characters in Austen’s novel, and the weirdest thing happened.

“Along with Darcy and Elizabeth, George Wickham is an important character to study,” she said. “He’s a militia officer and his regiment is stationed near the Bennets’ family home. As you read your first assignment tonight, pay special attention to the way Austen introduces him and describes his actions.”

I was seized by a curiosity I didn’t understand about a character I’d never heard of before.

As Mrs. Leverson moved on to secondary players in the story, I flipped through the novel, reading random paragraphs until I saw the first mention of the Wickham guy on page sixty-three. I skimmed the section, getting the flavor of this man who, since he didn’t wind up with the heroine at the book’s conclusion, couldn’t really be as admirable as he seemed, when I heard a lady’s voice in my ear.

Beware, Ellie, the voice said before following this up with a decided tsk or two. Sam Blaine is your Mr. Wickham.

Fear seized my throat and all-out panic gripped my stomach. Okay. Who said that?

I blinked, then glanced wildly in every direction. Even Sam was keeping his distance, for once.

“What?” I said aloud to the unidentified voice. A few students nearby turned their heads to shoot me an odd look.

Sam, sounding sulky, muttered, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t do anything.”

I squinted at him, suspicious.

You would do well to heed my advice, friend, said the voice, and I could’ve sworn I heard an ironic little laugh right along with an unmistakably British accent. I am well acquainted with men of his ilk, and they are disinclined to be honourable. You had best keep your distance.

Not that I doubted her words or anything — she’d nailed Sam’s character in a sentence — but this whole hearing voices thing seriously freaked me out. I considered the possibilities:

• Maybe I’d been whacked in the head one too many times with a volleyball that week. Gym class had been brutal.

• Maybe my depraved sister had slipped some acid into my lunch. My turkey sandwich had tasted a little off.

• Maybe I’d been studying too hard. After all, keeping up a 4.0 GPA was draining. Or, maybe —

You are neither ill nor suffering from head injuries, Ellie , the lady’s voice said, her tone still amused.

I couldn’t believe I was going to respond to this, but, hey, it seemed my life wasn’t weird enough already. Even if replying put me into the Potentially Insane category, I needed to know who this woman was and what she was doing in my head.

So I asked, in silence this time, Who are you?

I heard the twittery laughter again, but not one of my classmates had uttered a sound.

Why, I am Miss Austen, of course , the voice replied. But you may call me Jane .

As you can well imagine, Jane’s manifestation in my life created some complications for me at school.

Since I was reasonably sure I’d be sent off to a psych ward if I didn’t figure out what was going on, I ignored Mrs. Leverson’s structured reading assignments and inhaled the whole novel in two days, snatching moments to polish off a chapter or two between classes, at lunch or late into the night. I was a girl obsessed.

Jane’s voice in my head, instead of lessening, grew stronger with every page turned. While she insisted it was too early to explain why or how she’d chosen to inhabit my mind instead of, say, Sam’s, Tanya’s or Mrs. Leverson’s, she sure was right about that Mr. Wickham character. What a prick he turned out to be.

And — fine, call me crazy — I went along with it all. I asked her endless questions, of course, about her sudden appearance in my previously silent mental world. I responded skeptically, sure, to her reticent but ever-proper replies that there was “a good reason” for her being with me (one I was frustratingly unable to pry out of her ghostly lips). But I was an egocentric teenager. I expected to be Special. I expected the Universe to have a Grand Plan for me. And I supposed this Jane thing was part of it.

Or, maybe, I was just really lonely.

Regardless, I got used to Jane being there, real fast. I rejoiced in the secretiveness of our conversations and started to enjoy the company. To count upon it.

As for Jane, she chatted, not constantly, but pointedly. She had her figurative index finger aimed in full accusation at human folly. According to her, there was plenty to criticize about her nineteenth-century era and homeland, and she didn’t exactly spare me her sarcastic opinions of my time period.

Take gym class, for instance.

Young ladies engaged in sport with the gentlemen? Jane said that first day, her tone incredulous. How barbaric .

I stretched in my assigned spot, wishing I were anywhere else. “Barbaric” is the word. It’s downright gladiator-like. Gym is an endurance test to see how much humiliation you can tolerate before you die.

I see , she replied, but I didn’t think she had any idea. Gym was my daily nightmare. Having Jane with me, though, made those forty-two minutes of hell pass far more quickly.

On her second day, she turned her dry wit to the world of academia. And, more specifically, to my place in it.

Our history teacher asked, “Who can name the three-word motto the people of France chanted during the French Revolution?”

I’d read the chapter and could answer this, but I didn’t want to be the one to raise my hand. Sam, who was sitting across the aisle from me and knew the answers to everything, ignored the teacher completely and played with the Velcro on his Trapper Keeper. Our teacher, however, shot us pleading looks, and, to me, it felt cruel to refuse to offer him some kind of lifeline. So, I made brief eye contact. Big mistake.

After another twenty seconds of silence, the teacher sighed and said, “Okay, Miss Barnett. Why don’t you tell us? We all know you know the answer.”

The class snickered as I murmured my now obligatory “liberté, égalité, fraternité” and some smart-jock buddy of Sam’s whispered, “She can remember that , but she can’t remember to ‘bump, set, spike’ in volleyball?”

Sam laughed loudly at that one, as did most of the class, and I vowed then and there never to bail out our history teacher again. But Jane, at least, came to my defense.