(View entire post here)

Shortly after the publication of my first novel, The Perfect Place, my husband and I were invited to dinner by friends. I can still see us sitting somewhat awkwardly side by side while our hostess, a book critic, quizzed us about the new book.  The book, you need to know, is narrated by a cold, detached woman who moves through her isolated life observing rather than feeling. It becomes increasingly clear that she is not entirely innocent of a violent crime that has been committed.

Looking at us a little askance, our hostess asked, "But do tell me, I'm dying to know,  how much of the book is true?" My husband and I both answered the question immediately and at once: he said, "Every word of it!" and I said, "Not one word!"

In a way we were both right.  Though my character seemed very far from me--indeed I thought of the cold, narcissistic woman as my opposite, no doubt she reflected facets of my hidden thoughts and feelings, which I was able to express thus disguised unto myself.

(View entire post here)

When our teacher asked us, a class of adolescent girls, how many of us would like to marry Heathcliff, all the hands in the class shot up. I imagine if she'd asked us about Mr Rochester we would have done the same thing.  This, I imagine, did not augur well for our futures, our lives as women and wives or our careers. Certainly, my own first marriage was to a stormy, handsome Russian who strode around on long legs and pulled at his hair, while confessing of his love for other women to whom he had reluctantly succumbed, with much breast beating and agonizing, saying always that he really loved me. "I just have to go and say good-bye to X this weekend," he would say and rush off in his Porsche, scattering pebbles.   Yet I remained at his side through many years of this, and I ask myself what was the source of my patience (he took to calling me Saint Sheila!) or perhaps more honestly my desire for what we might call, today, these "blood-sucking men" .

For this desire, which is probably part of today's Twilight phenomenon, mild and accommodating though these vampires may be, seems to be an intrinsic part of our make up.  What is the origin of our desire for these Byronic heroes, these "bad boys," these men that we know can only disturb our dreams at night and cause us nothing but grief in our days?

(View entire post here)

As my daughter and I walked side by side, tilting our umbrellas into the rain and wind, crossing the bleak but beautiful moors that still surround Haworth, I noticed that the signs to the familiar footpaths where the Bronte children had trodden, were also in Japanese. Indeed, walking beside us under a lowering grey sky, were Japanese tourists as well as others who had come, pilgrims like us in this literary haj from many parts of the world.

The question I asked myself was what did this obsession with the Brontes stem from: Why had these people come so far?  Was it to find out more about the tragic lives of these three sisters, to marvel at Charlotte's wedding hat or her tiny pair of gloves,  or was it to stare at original texts in an effort to understand their work? Or was it  even possible to distinguish one from the other?  Why is Jane Eyre still read with such passion all over the world, as is Charlotte's sister's book Wuthering Heights. Even Agnes Grey has a steady following.

(View entire post here)

Sheila Kohler is our guest blogger during the week of January 4th. If you have any questions for Sheila Kohler, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about Becoming Jane Eyre

A beautifully imagined tale of the Bronte sisters and the writing of Jane Eyre

The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent.

So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its center are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre.