Like many of you reading this, I adore Charlotte Brontë’s original novel, Jane Eyre.   And, like many of you, I often imagined myself in the novel itself.   But my character isn’t like that of Jane Eyre; I am not quiet, reserved, introverted or demure!   On the contrary, I think that I would have been much more like Mr Rochester’s first wife; extroverted, outwardly passionate and ‘difficult to manage’.

As a psychologist, I have a particular interest in the dynamics of relationships, and as I recognized parts of myself in the descriptions of Bertha Antoinetta Mason and related my personality to hers, two questions haunted me as I imagined myself in her shoes: What if she wasn’t mad?   And what if she didn’t die?

Writing Jane Eyre’s Rival: The Real Mrs Rochester, allowed me to explore those two fundamental questions from the perspective of twenty-first century psychology, and allowed me to untangle all of those unanswered questions that I have been carrying around in my head for more years than I can remember.

Writing the novel also allowed me to do something else.   This letter to my daughter will explain why I wrote this book more eloquently than I can here.

A Letter to Caitlin: From a Mother to a Daughter