Books by and for independent women

Jane by April Lindner

Teenagers have been conditioned to believe that classic literature is boring. Somehow, slightly outmoded English has created a barrier between 19th century writers and today’s readers.

Today’s young adult market is also not immune to trends; ‘normal’ girls all seem to be wealthy and glamorous or have some kind of encounter with the supernatural or fantastical. When the classics make it to young readers today, it’s usually by way of some sort of update.

April Lindner’s Jane is, as could be surmised, a retelling of Jane Eyre, jazzed up for the modern age. In America, particularly in the twenty-first century, we like to pretend that there are no class distinctions, so it could not be enough for Jane’s inferiority to be determined merely by her being an employee. It’s no longer enough for our Rochester to just be wealthy, he has to be a celebrity, and a rockstar no less.

Lindner is faithful to the original Jane Eyre; her Jane Moore is a clever, hard-working girl forced by circumstance to make her own way in the world. She is willing to give up on love for the sake of her pride and her personal growth. She does have to depend on the kindness of strangers at her darkest hour, but she is willing to prove her worth.

And what is perhaps more relevant now than it was in Bronte’s classic: Lindner’s Jane would prefer to be alone rather than be in a loveless relationship.

It is to Lindner’s credit that she literally thinks of the children. Jane is hired as a nanny, and while in this position she always accounts for her young charge. Young Madeleine is a fully-formed character; we know about her fussiness, her favourite toys, that everything around her seems to be pink and how many bedtime stories it takes to get her to sleep.

She is always accounted for, which adds to Jane’s character as it reinforces her mousy, responsible nature as well as her role as a nurturer. Quite plainly, there have been enough celebrity scandals over the years of famous men cheating on their wives with the nanny for this to be plausible.

There are deviations along the way: Jane makes friends but does not discover long-lost relations, and thus has to make her own family. She also does not become independently wealthy, so though she maintains a desire to keep her financial independence from her rockstar lover, her job at a non-profit makes it purely hypothetical.

Still, in a market that is overrun with materialism and luxury items, and with characters that have the financial means, it’s refreshing that the first names dropped are Sarah Lawrence and Mark Rothko.

In Lindner’s afterword, she explicitly states that she hopes that her book will inspire the young women she’s writing for to pick up the original. Hopefully some readers will realize Jane Eyre is just as easy to identify with as Jane Moore.

Jane is published next week by Poppy. You can pre-order it from Amazon for £9.09.

Guest post by Amanda Farah