Janet (1891)

Janet Summerhayes has being brought up very generously by a spinster relative who gives her a very fine education, but leaves her an unprovided young lady on the event of her death at the beginning of the novel. Janet is a practical sort of being, and is not much afraid of her change in circumstances and social status. Her first position as governess with the Harwood family rather inspires her with a feeling of excitenment and welcome novelty. The family consists of a kind, elderly widow and her three children, her first born and effectual housekeeper, Augusta (Gussie), her only son, Adolphus (Dolff) and her younger daughter, Janet's charge, Julia (Ju). Only the two girls live with their mother, and they seem to lead a calm, quiet life, receiving few visits, with the exception of a young gentleman, Charley Meredith, who turns up often and seems to be courting Gussie, though nothing has been openly said.

Janet soon becomes intrigued with both mysteries in the house, Gussie's relationship with Charley, made dubious by the latter's clandestine attempts to flirt with Janet, and the real use of the deserted left wing of the house, which she thinks is the source of some screams she would label human, even when they are dismissed by everyone else in the house as the mere effect of the wind passing through the empty rooms. She is further reinforced in her belief when she observes an old servant entering the area every night with a tray full of dainties, but decides to keep quiet about it in view of her employer's discomfort on the subject, so that she can keep her unusually comfortable governessing position in the family.

However, Janet soon finds she is not the only one interested in this family puzzle. So is Charley Meredith, who involves her in his own investigation as well as in some duplicituous romantic interchanges. Much depends on his clarification of the family's past. The head of the family and her employer's husband died many years ago after leading many into speculation and bankruptcy, and leaving his family deep in debt. Such debts could not be paid by his widow who then moved with her young children into their only possession, the property Janet has been employed at, and there started an unassuming, though thouroughly comfortable, way of life many years back. Charley's father was one of the men ruined by Mr Harwood and would then be benefited were to be discovered secret family funds.

One day, on their first clandestine meeting to contrast information, they are followed by the jealous son of the house, Dolff, who has been staying with the family for some time, and declares himself in love with Janet. When he overhears some of their conversation when they are parting just at the family's door, he goes into a passion and leaps over Charley and beats him so badly he escapes believing his victim dead. While the family finds out and attends to the victim, Janet manages to run to the house and thus erase her presence in the scene of the crime. Charley Meredith is not dead, and is taken into the house to spend a very long convalescence. He does not remember the incident very clearly, but when he does, he delights in taunting Janet and Dolff with turning them in, though he has no real intention of doing so. His playing around with them and the police results in the revelation of the family's secret. Mr Harwood father did not die abroad, but was brought back home by his servant after a mental breakdown. In order to keep her husband away from mental asylums and to preserve the little money he had left, Mrs Harwood arranged the deserted wing to make a comfortable and secure abode for her husband, and kept him a secret from his own children (his elder excluded).

On discovering the state of affairs, Charley accepts keeping quiet about the money, as he will be compensated indirectly when he marries Gussie, though the latter is in complete ignorance of the arrangement between her mother and betrothed. Janet can no longer stand her dependent position, and decides to accept a marriage proposal she had received before leaving for the Harwoods'. When her lover, a middle age village doctor now turned a successful surgeon in Liverpool, comes to get her from the house, further light is thrown upon the family's past, as it happens that he is an old acquaintance and one of the people ruined by Mr Harwood. The good doctor, however, decides to keep quiet about the secret as well when he sees the harmless maniac the head of the family has become. The novel ends by telling the reader about Janet's future as the fashionable wife of the very successful doctor who became so famous and was knighted. This is indeed, as can be seen from the governess and the incarcerated maniac elements, a revision of the Jane Eyre plot, only Jane is no longer the plain, sincere and passionate girl in Charlotte Brontë's novel, but a cold, practical, calculating heroine much in the line of Oliphant's Lucilla Marjoribanks or Hester.

Back to Works

Website under constant development - comments, suggestions and contributions welcome!
Webmistress: Ana María García-Domínguez -