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The French Dancer’s Bastard by Emma Tennant (2002)

Book review: The French Dancer’s Bastard a.k.a. Thornfield Hall a.k.a. Adèle by Emma Tennant (The Maia Press, 2006 [2002])

Adèle Varens is only eight when she comes to Thornfield Hall to live with the forbidding Mr. Rochester who may or may not be her father. She longs to return to the glitter of Paris and to the mother who has been lost to her. Her loneliness would be complete were it not for the young governess who arrives to care for her, although Adèle at first regards her with suspicion and dislike.

But there is another shadow hanging over their lives: the dark secret locked away in a high garret. Adèle’s curiosity will imperil them all, shatter their happiness and finally send her fleeing, frightened and alone, back to Paris.

Emma Tennant is the author of more than twenty books including memoirs, novels, comic fantasies and revisionary versions of classic texts. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.

SPOILERS AHOY!

First published as Adèle in 2002, this is version 2 of the story, Thornfield Hall is the third. Or possibly it’s just an American title. It’s the same novel either way you look at it. Had it been a particularly good book, it might not have mattered that it has three different titles, but as it happens, it has some problems that cannot be duly overcome.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve read another Emma Tennant book: Pemberley, which is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. I quite enjoyed that book at the time, as it happened. This one … not so much. I’ve heard that people take a fairly harsh view on her books, and now I know why. Good grief.

Before I even go into what it’s about, I’d say the book is very confused and incoherent. Most of the chapters are from Adèles point of view, like you would expect – it’s supposed to be about her, after all. But then some chapters are from Rochester’s perspective instead, or even Grace Poole’s. What is the point of this?!

The back of the book (quoted above) makes it sound like it’s a coherent story, but it isn’t. It keeps jumping in time. First, Adèle is in Paris. Then she’s at Thornfield. Then she gets chummy with Bertha. Then Jane arrives. Then a few years skip past. And so on, and so on. Things which are major in the original novel just get brushed over, and that’s where we start to encounter the problems this book has. In fact, they start with the introduction, believe it or not. Has Emma Tennant actually read Jane Eyre? At all? She could’ve at least had the courtesy to check with the original to make sure she got some basic facts right!

For easy reference I actually started noting down the inaccuracies in a notepad, the ones that I came across up to and including chapter eight or so, when I couldn’t be bothered anymore, because the same faults kept being repeated over and over.

The book begins in France, where Adèle lives with her mother, and they have lots of friends who are very artsy, and there’s this ugly, awful man who comes to see Adèle’s mother and then there’s an argument between them, a conservatory is smashed – there’s even a parrot, but it doesn’t get burned alive in this one, luckily. (That’s a mental image from Wide Sargasso Sea that stays with you for far too long.) Adèle goes to Thornfield, doesn’t like it very much and wishes she was back in Paris or at the Mediterranean villa with her mother and, maybe, her Papa as well, but just maybe. She happens upon, and befriends, a French-speaking woman called Antoinette who lives up in the attic.

Meanwhile, Rochester is courting Blanche Ingram, then jump cut to Jane Eyre arriving as a governess and Adèle isn’t too impressed by her, but doesn’t dislike her very much either. Then Rochester proposes to Jane, which is bad, because how can he not marry her dear mother instead? To whom she has been writing, but without getting a reply?

Then there is a weird bit where Grace Poole moves Bertha to a hay loft in a barn and Bertha is discovered by Leah and her beau, who have gone there to … well, you know. Then jump again to Jane being gone and Thornfield burning down and then, after Jane and Rochester have been married for some time, a body is discovered in a field: Bertha Mason Rochester, wearing a locket which identifies her. She must have died not long after she escaped the hay loft, so she’s properly dead, but who was the person they buried in her stead? (I think it was mainly brushed over, because I don’t remember who it was – Céline? Someone completely insignificant?) Before this, Bertha had shown her mad self to Adèle, who no longer wished to associate with her.

Adèle runs off to Paris to reunite with her mother’s friends from her childhood, and she doesn’t find Céline anywhere. Instead, she finds out that she has a twin brother. As it happened, the vicomte who duelled with Rochester also of course had his ways with Céline (or she with him), and the result was a pair of twins. Rochester took charge of the girl, the vicomte the boy, as no one could tell who the actual father was, but it was bound to be one of them.

In the end Rochester (who has followed Adèle to Paris) takes her home and they all live happily ever after, because maybe Céline is dead and long gone and that Jane person isn’t so bad after all.

At that point, I was surprised to discover Adèle wasn’t the person who set Thornfield alight all those years ago. This book is too similar to the godawful Mrs Rochester in places, and they’re both good reads if they weren’t trying to use the characters from Jane Eyre, because that’s what’s letting this one down. It’s confused, doesn’t really have much of a plot except for Adèle mostly whining about not being in Paris. I enjoyed the French parts to a certain degree. They had a nice French texture to them, but it didn’t feel particularly suited from a Jane Eyre perspective.

Adèle is a haughty brat it’s difficult to like, and so much goes against the book that I just couldn’t like it. The nods to Wide Sargasso Sea were a … creative touch, but on the other hand it feels as if Emma Tennant has been reading Wide Sargasso Sea with more fervour than she has the original book by Charlotte Brontë, and that’s a massive fail as far as I’m concerned. If you’re writing a spin-off, get your facts right. And Tennant doesn’t.

I might not sound as passionately hateful about this as I did with Hilary Bailey’s Mrs Rochester, but this also classes as a crime of fiction. And on that bombshell, here’s that list of errors I mentioned earlier:

“Her mother, circus trapeze artist and comedy actress Céline Varens” (this is from the introduction, which was my first “WTH?” moment) – erm, Tennant, think you’ll find the original says she was an opera dancer. You know, like Meg Giry.

Okay, the rest are in no particular order, as I only started after a few chapters and then went back over the first ones to pick stuff out.

“John and Mary, who make ready Ferndean Manor down in the damp woods for the servants of Mademoiselle Blanche and her mother.” – Makes it sound like Ferndean is at the bottom of the garden of Thornfield or something. Ferndean is 30 miles away. If you’re having guests over and Thornfield isn’t big enough, you don’t put them 30 miles away. In a dingy old mansion that used to be your father’s hunting lodge. (See what I did there? I read the original!) We’ll get back to distances a bit later.

“I detest the creature Papa has ordered from a seminary to come here as my gouvernante.” – No, Adèle was very fond of Jane. Adèle here also hates Rochester (her “Papa”), which she certainly doesn’t in the book – where he might be a bit harsh at times, but still spoils her with cadeux, which she loves. Not to mention that Rochester left it to Mrs Fairfax to sort out finding and hiring a governess.

Rochester bought Céline a three-story house with a conservatory in Paris, where she stayed with Adèle. Sooooo, not a hotel? You know, like it says in the original? Also, Adèle feels way too eloquent for an eight-year-old. It just doesn’t feel right for a child, and I don’t get the feeling I’m being told a story by a little girl, and that’s what it professes to be at the start.

“I am a murderer. Under French law at least. In defence of my honour, I have killed.” – Rochester, who wounded the vicomte in some “insignificant place”. Not very insignificant if it’s a kill shot, is it? Adèle is also under the same impression, by the way: “the vicomte is dead and Monsieur Rochester can no longer return to France.” Then there’s someone whom I don’t remember (might be Grace Poole), who says: “her luring the man she truly loves into killing the vicomte”, so it’s not as if it’s not repeated over and over! (Céline truly loving Rochester? Yeah right.) As it happens, it turns out later in the book that actually, the vicomte wasn’t killed at all, but according to the original, Rochester already knew this from the beginning, and he would’ve had no problem going back to France if he so chooses.

“Low and dark as the Thornfield forest in which Antoinette always refused to walk” / “the woman he calls his ‘Antoinette'” – I get it, she’s read Wide Sargasso Sea too. But umm, it ain’t canon, it’s fanon. Jane Eyre is canon. Stick with the original. The woman’s name is Bertha.

“Why else, otherwise would I wed Blanche Ingram, as everyone knows I mean to do?” – Oh. My. Gods. She’s seriously having Mr. Rochester believe he should marry Blanche? Girl, what you on?

“and to my cousin Mrs. Fairfax” – is that cousin as in the old everyone who’s even vaguely related is a “cousin”, or is it just an error? Considering it’s coming from Rochester, I’m opting for error. Mrs Fairfax says in the original that her husband is a second cousin or something to the late Mrs Rochester, or that it’s an even more distant relation, and that she “never assumes on the connection” or something like that.

Rochester is home, Blanche Ingram comes to visit (even though I get the impression the first time they meet after quite some time in the original is when he goes off after the fire), and Adèle is there. Whereas it should be that they don’t meet until Rochester brings the house party back with him. Plus Mrs Fairfax is half-plotting to see those two get married. Wrong!

Adèle meets Bertha, whom she befriends. Just … wrong. Not to mention the bit where both Bertha and Adèle are spying on Rochester in the bath. Eight-year-old girls checking out adult men’s privates? Creepy! Eww!

Adèle wants Céline to come to Thornfield and marry Mr Rochester, so that they can be a proper family … and writes to her. Say, Adèle, weren’t you under the impression your mother had gone to the Holy Virgin, i.e. died?

“the room Grace Poole calls the boodwah of Madame Fairfax” – What’s with the botched French? Both Adèle and Rochester speak it well enough to know how to bloody spell “boudoir”. Speaking of Grace Poole, she’s not allowed to cook upstairs. Really?

Adèle hides in the bamboo (bamboo? In 1830s England? Doesn’t sound right, but I’m no expert) and witnesses part of Rochester’s proposal to Jane. Eh …

“On another journey with Monsieur Rochester, to Whitcross or Millcote” / “John goes into Whitcross on errand” – I think she confuses Whitcross and Hay. Whitcross is only a place about two to three days away on a coach, as it’s near Morton. It’s as far as Jane’s 20 shilling can take her. It’s not exactly next door! Millcote is about five miles away or so, so yes, it’s a place where you’d go to run errands, perhaps, but Whitcross? Tennant, you are deluded.

“from the sugar estates his father had” followed by “it’s all tobacco now” – Where does it say Mr Rochester Senior actually had estates in Jamaica?

“woman from the Port of Spain” – learn your words, Mensch. Bertha’s from Spanish Town, or at least that’s what Brontë calls it.

“orchard where you used to like to go walking when you first came to Thornfield” – because at that point, Bertha wasn’t already barking mad and had to be locked up? And also, it says they give her very cold baths and are generally very cruel to her at Thornfield. That doesn’t sound right either. Grace Poole was a hired professional and Rochester kept Bertha out of a sense of duty and, to a certain extent, care. The cold bath treatment torture thing might have been what they did in Victorian asylums, but that’s exactly why he didn’t put her in one in the first place! He’s not a heartless bastard.

Richard Mason “comes here to get money from the master” – really? What gave that impression? And gosh, Grace Poole is drinking Tokay with him, and they’re scheming to blackmail Rochester.

Did they really have boilers, steam irons and skylights in the 1830s?

“Spice islands she paid the master to take her away from” – No, Rochester was in Jamaica and was miserable there, felt a breeze and was reminded of home and decided to head back to England, and the whole going to Thornfield almost as soon as the honeymoon was over? He was in the Caribbean a few years, wasn’t he?

“He wants Miss Blanche’s land of course” – he doesn’t want her at all, it’s just a trick to try and get Jane to fall in love with him. Duh. And before that, he’s not even pursuing her! They had met socially, but he never seemed to take an actual fancy to her.

“Made me think of their colour as green and not the dull ‘hazel’ she has told me they are” – That’s just an outright lie. Chapter 24: “/…/ the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?” (I had green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they were new-dyed, I suppose.)

It’s the Red Room for you too, Emma Tennant. Or, no, actually (it would mean company for Hilary Bailey) – it’s the attic of Thornfield, where Grace Poole can give you cold baths for the rest of your duration. This book should not have been written.

1 out of 5, and that’s me being quite generous.

Traxy

An easily distracted and over-excited introvert who never learns to go to bed at a reasonable time. Enjoys traveling (when there's not a plague on), and taking photos of European architecture. Cares for cats, good coffee and Boardwalk Empire. A child of her time, she did media studies in school and still can't decide what she wants to be when she grows up.

10 thoughts on “The French Dancer’s Bastard by Emma Tennant (2002)

  1. Oh god yes, I read this. Twice, actually, because I found it again after moving house and forgot I wrote it. Then suddenly I am presented with Mr Rochester’s tilly-tadger in the bath, not to mention it making another appearance at the Mediterranean villa, and I remembered rather hastily that I had read it before.

    I am so glad you pointed out all the mistakes. Ferndean is 30 miles away from Thornfield! I’ve just been re-reading Jane Eyre and damn me, I was at the bit about Blanche and co. staying and I couldn’t find any mention about their servants being packed off to Ferndean – instead they’re all being squeezed into Thornfield. I knew that on my last re-reading of Jane Eyre I was confused about Ferndean being 30 miles away, and now I know where the muddle came from. Thank you, Mrs Woman What Doesn’t Check The Original!

    They are such glaring and annoying mistakes and even a basic reading of Jane Eyre would inform anyone trying to write a fanfic (cough) sorry, novel based on Jane Eyre.

    The multiplicity of titles of this terrible tale all aid in further confusion too.

    Not to mention more confusion, for the geekily-minded – the cover of the Adele version seems to show Highclere Castle. I have been to Highclere and it’s fabulous, and it’s in… Hampshire. I don’t know why that annoys me, other than it being about 200 miles away from Thornfield’s putative location (somewhere in t’North). It was however used as the house in The Secret Garden, as well as appearing in Jeeves & Wooster and Eyes Wide Shut. So now you know. Random fact. (though it probably would make quite a good Thornfield, come to think of it, although it was built in 1839 by the chap who did the Houses of Parliament, so it’s actually too new. I keep thinking they filmed a Jane Eyre there, but I think that’s only on my mind because I visited there just before reading the novel, so my mind probably latched itself onto Highclere as a model for Thornfield as I read it).

    And that’s enough waffle from me….

  2. To make your day even more awesome, I bring you good tidings of great joy – Emma Tennant has aimed her flaccid abilities at Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff’s Tale. Oh dear. I bought it in the Bronte Parsonage Museum shop, though – how mad is that?! It’s been a while since I read it so I can’t remember how terrible it was. I think there might be tilly-tadgers, but I couldn’t swear to it. Also, it looks like Morrissey on the cover.

  3. (that said, it’s a woodcut from an old illustrated ed of Wuthering Heights, and it’s an impressive image, but still – it looks like Morrissey).

  4. The tilly-tadger moments … oh yeah, now that was just disturbing. Hairy legs and all. I mean, I’m sure the man would have hairy legs and certainly equipped with a splendid tilly-tadger, but I don’t need to be reminded of it. Especially not by a child! That’s just creepy.

    The thing with the three titles, I’m not sure it said in the review, but the reason it annoyed me is because I got two of them, thinking they were two separate books. I started reading the first one (FDB) when it arrived, and the second one (TH) was shipped from America, so it arrived much later. Reading the back, I thought it sounded familiar, and browsing through, I discovered it was the exact same book. Okay, so 1p for the book + £2.75 postage isn’t really anything to moan about, it’s still annoying. If the book was any good, at least I could say “here ya go, read this, you’ll love it! You can keep it, I have two” – but now it’s more “read it and weep, and if you want to burn it afterwards, be my guest, I have a spare” and that’s not quite the same.

    Yup, Fearndean is nowhere near Thornfield. End of chapter 36: “ ‘At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate spot.’ ” Same with Whitcross, from the beginning of the same chapter: “It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn /…/ ‘How far is Thornfield Hall from here?’ I asked of the ostler. ‘Just two miles, ma’am, across the fields.’ ” Sounding like a place you’d pop to on errands? Hay is two miles off (chapter 12) and would be the obvious choice for errand-running and I think it’s said somewhere that Millcote is 5 miles off, but I can’t find it on a simple search. Also, “The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.” (Beginning of Chapter 37, I’m such a nerd.) – So aside from being 30 miles off, it’s not exactly in a state to receive guests.

    Cheers for the info on Highclere Castle. Beautiful building! Looks nothing like Thornfield in my opinion, but a wonderful house nonetheless. It’s been ages since I last watched The Secret Garden (possibly because we watched the 1993 adaptation half a dozen times in school for some reason), but didn’t that have moors in it as well? I’ve actually been interested in seeing that film again more recently, but haven’t gone out looking for it yet. Eyes Wide Shut … was a tremendously dull film. That’s two hours I’m never going to get back. :]

    Finally: Haha, Morrissey as Heathcliff! What an image! I’m enjoying your waffle, as you put it, so thank you for making my birthday awesome! 😀

  5. Happy birthday! 😉

    Oh yes, true, the child talking about the wonder winky is just… creepy. OH CRAP I hate it when that happens. I bought a book called “Nelly’s Version” because it came up when I was indulging in my bad WH sequels/prequels/hidden stories on Amazon. The only similarity is that the woman in it assumes the name Nelly Dean as a pseudonym. It had absolutely nothing to do with WH at all, and was actually a really poor novel!

    Yeah – this is the thing with Ferndean – it’s damn and ‘orrible, not far off the description we have of Lowood, which induced typhus and killed children, yet Jane and Rochester decide to live there, when previously he wouldn’t countenance sending Bertha there because it was in unhealthy surroundings. Did Charlotte forget she’d written that?! Why would Rochester allow the woman he loves to live there when he wouldn’t put crazy ol’ Bertha there? Did they do some home improvements which don’t make it into the text? (despite Jane’s home improvements in Marsh End getting quite a lot of mention, down to putting new canvas on the landing). Never really understood.

    I can see from a symbolic point of view why they would live there, and that as a plot device, Bertha has to be in the same house as Jane, but it does falter a bit. And some people have taken it to mean that Rochester doesn’t care that much about Jane, or that it’s to do with extreme penance.

    I think I’ll go with Rochester and Jane getting the builders in and popping down to Homebase.

    It depends which version you saw of The Secret Garden – it looks like it was the 1987 version which was filmed there. I seem to remember a tv version of it in the 80s when I was small, but it had wobbly sets! So I don’t think it was that one. I do wonder if watching and reading The Secret Garden is what makes children coming to Jane Eyre think “Hang on, this seems familiar!” because The Secret Garden owes a lot of the Brontes. There’s even a hardy northern servant claiming that the mysterious sobbing is “nobbut t’ wind wuthering round t’ house” (or words to that effect…)

  6. Thank you! 🙂

    I think Rochester went to Ferndean because, well, Thornfield burned down and it was another house he had in his possession, and also, it’s very secluded. Suited his mood. After Jane shows up, I don’t think there’s actually anything to say that they remained at Ferndean, and if they did, that they didn’t get the builders in (Homebase – haha! Now that’s a sight I’d like to see!). So … yeah not sure. I wouldn’t put it down to any cruelty or anything to remain at Ferndean. If they were to live Happily Ever After there, I’m sure they would’ve done the place up a bit. 🙂

  7. He could even have rebuilt Thornfield, of course. He wasn’t short of a bob or two!

    I went on an historic money calculator. Jane inherits £20,000, in… let’s say the late 1830s (the converter has 1830 and 1840, so I’m going with 1840). This comes out as £882,000. Blimey. She’s nearly a millionaire! She keeps £5k for herself, which still works out as a not to shabby £220,500. They could quite easily have built themselves a new house.

    Talking of the historic money calculator – when Charlotte got £500 for Jane Eyre, that’s £29,265. It didn’t seem like a lot, but when you put it like that. Bearing in mind she earnt £500 for each of her three books, she earnt about £90,000 in total in her lifetime. Not bad! But not that great when you consider how much she would’ve got for the film and tv rights….

  8. Bugger, I was wrong, Charlotte got £100 initially for Jane Eyre. But still, that’s £5,853. Bear in mind, working as a governess in the early 1840s she was earning £30 a year (£1,323). Or £50, not that it’s much more: £2,205. Then again, she didn’t have to pay for rent or food, but still, that’s not a lot for working every hour that you’re not asleep, so that £100 must’ve seemed like a miracle!

  9. Oooh, historic money calculator. Shiny!

    Being a poor clergyman’s daughter, getting £100 for something was probably like striking a jackpot, just because it was like having three years worth of a governess’s salary in one go.

    Nearly a millionaire and giving away a quarter of her forune – Best Cousin Ever? 😉

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