Before the Fact by Francis Iles

I love Alfred Hitchcock‘s movies. They draw a person in with the unexpected. They twist, and turn in surprising people. They don’t explain what doesn’t need to be explained. They are also based on books. I have on my book shelf Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. It’s fascinating. It’s depressing, and uplifting, and griping, and macabre all at once. I’ve read it twice already.  When I came upon a shelf of books for only two dollars, I naturally took one home. Of course, it was Before the Fact upon which the movie Suspicion is based. It says right there on the cover in yellow block letters “Inspired Hitchcock’s masterpiece Suspicion“.

There was no question in my mind that this would be a good read. I could not put it down. What was Johnnie going to do next? Did Johnnie ever actually love Lina? How in all the world could anyone ever be so deluded? Have you ever read a book that was so good you couldn’t put it down, even though you wished the characters were real people just so that you could have the pleasure of punching them in the teeth?

Lina faces a problem in the 1920’s, precisely when is not clear, that many people today still face: She has a lot of money. In point of fact, she has so much money she will never have to work a day in her life. Neither will any children she might bear. This is a problem for her because she can never tell if someone is being nice to her for her sake, or for her money’s sake. Her sister Joyce is beautiful, personable, and charismatic. Joyce is not afflicted by Lina’s problem, or rather, it isn’t a problem for Joyce. Being a beautiful, young, people person makes it easier for Joyce to make friends, and find a husband. Lina was beginning to think she’d never marry.

Then she met Johnnie. Johnnie manages to say all the right things to Lina, and all the wrong things to the point where Lina is so angry with him she’s fallen in love and married him before she can turn around.

Fairly often, movies and books will have us believe that people decide to get married after having known each other for only a matter of days. I have always had a problem with this. I was raised to believe that marriage is serious business. Chosing one person to be one’s friend, confidante, lover, and helpmate to the end of one’s days is not to be taken lightly. In fact, a large number of people who do get married, probably do it for the wrong reasons, and before they are ready for that kind of commitment.

Lina and Johnnie are no exception. What’s worse, is that Johnnie betrays Lina in every way possible and it only makes her love him more. He lies to her, steals from her, sleeps with her friends, and still she doesn’t stop loving him. He even commits murder to pay back his gambling debts. Does she confront him? No. Does she leave him? No. Lina is an enabler.

Lina is an enabler. She could easily find ways to either help Johnnie with his gambling problem, or not be a part of Johnnie’s life.  She choses to lie to the bank, to the antique dealer, to her sister, to her friends, and to herself. Johnnie has a serious problem. He lies, cheats, steals, and murders to get out of debt and Lina is more afraid that he’ll go to jail than she is that he will hurt someone else. We would love to see Johnnie get what he deserves. We would love to see Lina grow a spine and stand up for herself. We would love to see Lina cut Johnnie off, leave him, find a man who genuinely loves her, but that isn’t going to happen. Johnnie makes Lina feel beautiful, and that is something Lina has never felt before. She’s not unattractive, but she isn’t pretty like Joyce. Lina lives in social isolation, if she didn’t she’d have met men who found her attractive, and she might not be so vulnerable to Johnnie’s predation.

As much as we would like to see Lina wise up, and realize that she is an attractive woman, and a valuable person without Johnnie, that hardly ever happens in real life. As much as it means to her that Johnnie makes her feel beautiful, he gives her something far more important, that no-one else will ever give her: purpose.

Lina has low self-esteem. Even that could be forgiven, under the right circumstances. Judy Blume‘s entire career is based on writing teens with real problems. Plenty of self-esteem problems there. Daphne du Maurier’s young Mrs De Winter never reveals her given name. The reader only knows the narrator of a first person narrative as “Mrs De Winter”, even though there is a full-page discussion of her given name. Twilight‘s Bella, doesn’t see herself as pretty, intelligent, or particularly special in any way. It is easy for us to sympathize with Judy Blume’s characters, they are written to be just like we were as teens. We can sympathize with Mrs De Winter, because who hasn’t felt jealous of a lover’s ex, or felt out-of-place at a partner’s social gathering? We can sympathize with Bella, even. We have all been through high school, we have all had romances end, or found out something unpleasant about a boyfriend or girlfriend.  At a certain point, Johnnie goes too far. Lina lets him.

I believe that marriage is a partnership. I believe that a wife has a duty to support her husband in any way she can (and visa versa, always!) If he is unemployed she should help him find a job. If he has debts, she should help him pay them back. I believe that forgiveness is possible, and that when a husband is in trouble he must be able to turn to his wife for support. I believe that there is a limit.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

For some people that limit is discovering that her husband is having an affair with her best friend. For others it might be discovering that her husband murdered her father. Lina manages to forgive both these and then becomes an accomplice to before the fact, to the murder of her husband’s best friend, and still she says nothing.  Lina even goes so far as to write a suicide note, when she suspects that her husband is going to kill her. Let’s go over that again: Rather than leave the man who murdered her father, Lina writes a suicide note to prevent her husband going to jail for the cold-blooded murder of her and her unborn child. That’s right. After ten years of trying, Lina finally becomes pregnant and she lets Johnnie kill her anyway.

Jane Slayre by Charlotte Bronte, adapted by Sherri Browning Erwin

You see them from time to time, at the bookstores. Classic novels, in the public domain, with an added, macabre, twist. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Android Karenina, and others. Since I can`t stand Jane Austen, and  I haven’t had any luck with Leo Tolstoy, I picked up Jane Slayre.

I love  Jane Eyre.  It has a lot to offer. We can all identify with Jane. We meet her at age ten, an emotionally neglected and abused child suffering from the physical bullying of her older cousin. How she managed to survive to age ten, I don’t understand, but that is when the book begins. None of us has had a perfect childhood, even if we didn’t have Jane’s. Everyone of us had a Cousin John Reed. Someone in our lives who would torment us, no mater what we did, or who ought to have been watching. No adult intervened to save us from the Cousin John Reed in our lives. We feel the injustice that Jane endures being treated like John Reed’s assaults are somehow her fault, as though Jane has done something to deserve his treatment of her. Whether it was a class bully who chased us and tormented us, or a sibling who seemingly could do no wrong while we could do no right, we all understand Jane’s torment. Looking back as adults, perhaps things were not as bleak for us as they were for Jane, but we still all understand how she feels.

Later we meet Helen Burns. Helen Burns always struck me as being slightly older than Jane. Maybe it’s because Helen reads books that don’t have pictures, or that Helen seems so wise, or that Helen has been at school longer, but she strikes me as being about twelve, even though Bronte never tells us how old Helen is. Helen is a good Christian. We’ve all met those people who go to church every Sunday, and lead prayer meetings, wear purity rings, and still find time to poke fun at the colour blind professor. They call themselves “good Christians”, but would Jesus approve of their hypocritical behaviour? I’ve always doubted it. Helen Burns genuinely  is a good Christian. She reads voraciously, and what she reads, she learns from. She believes that those who lead good Christian lives “go home to God”, and so she doesn’t fear death. She encourages Jane to let go of her anger at her family. While Mrs Reed puts on airs, and Mr Brocklehurst forces modesty, and self-denial on his students but not his own daughters, Helen practises what she preaches to Jane. It is Helen that we admire, and it is Helen that Jane looks up to.  Later, Jane will follow Helen’s example, and lead a good Christian life. First Jane has to grow up.

Jane Slayre has all the same characters, and all the same themes. Mrs Reed still paints the portrait of a hypocrite, only now she is a vampire. The treasurer of Jane’s school still forces modesty on his students, that he would not practise himself, and it is Helen who teaches Jane about forgiveness. Jane still holds true to the values she learns from Helen, and the other practising Christians she enounters.Vampires and other denizens of fantasy now inhabit Victorian England, but they don’t take anything away from the original Gothic Romance.

I found the concept of adding something to classic literary works,a little tacky. People have enjoyed the works of Jane Austen for over a hundred years, even if I don’t. It seemed like an excercise in unabashed capitalism. People who don’t like boring old classics, but do like zombies might actually read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

I read the classics because I enjoy them. I enjoy feeling cultured. I enjoy history coming alive in my mind’s eye. I could read books about the Victorian Era written by historians, and contemporary authors who weren’t there. I sometimes do. I can’t wait to get my hands on the Woman in Black, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, but they weren’t there. Who knows what historical inaccuracies are in those pages? I certainly wouldn’t! I love the way people talk to each other in the classics. I love that Sherlock Holmes isn’t afraid to laugh or cry in front of his companions, even if the writers of the movies are. I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy Jane Slayre, I did. Both times I’ve read it. It was fun. I feel like Sherri Browning Erwin tried hard to enmesh her prose with Charlotte Bronte’s. I get the impression that it was a challenge to add to the classic, without taking anything away, like Jane Slayre was a labour of love, and a tribute. I feel like a heel for ever  having said that it shouldn’t have been done. I still think that while nothing has been taken away from Jane Eyre, what has been added is not necessarily an improvement.

Jane was always a strong woman, and her own person. What she does takes great strength. How many women can forgive their abusers? How many women can leave the person they love most in the world, for no other reason than to stay true to themselves? If we are brutally honest with ourselves, not many. I’m not sure I could do what Ms Bronte’s Jane did. Turning Jane into a plucky vampire hunter diminishes that strength. We are accustomed to the image of the woman of the 19th Century as a fragile creature susceptible to the vapours, hysteria, and consumption, but Jane never was one of those women. She was a survivor. She survived childhood abuse, deadly flu, starvation, and neglect, and became a woman who stood up for herself against the man she loved best in the world, in a time when men and women were raised to believe she should do the opposite.  For us to do what Jane did is easier. In the 20th and 21st Century, we are raised to believe in ourselves, that we have the right to speak our minds, and hold true to our beliefs even when those around us don’t. It would still be hard. Just harder for a woman living in Jane’s world. Having Jane train to hunt vampires, use knives and swords, and learn gymnastics changes who Ms Bronte wrote Jane to be. Ms Bronte’s Jane held fast to her morals because she was being true to herself, while Ms Erwin’s Jane holds fast to her morals because she knows that she has an immortal soul that she must protect against sin. Ms Bronte’s Jane has faith, and there is no need for faith where there is proof.