“It was like the day I discovered my adoption papers while searching for a pack of playing cards. I have never since played cards, and I have never since read Jane Eyre.” (75)
Jeanette has a fairytale-like image of what her life should look like. At very select moments in her life, that picturesque idea was shattered by a harsh reality. Jeanette had always believed her mother to be her biological mother. She understood her family to be a “normal” family, with a child growing in the guidance of the two people responsible for her birth. She had never even imagined the possibility of her family coming together in a different way. The discovery of her adoption paper was earth shattering, and there was no conceivable way for her to frame it in an acceptable manner. The most dominant framework she has is religion. Unfortunately, none of the classic biblical stories start with adoption. This new version of her story was uncharted waters.
Now, here she is in a library, and she decides to relive a fond memory of her childhood, one where she felt so connected to her mother. But, as it turns out, this wasn’t real either. Jeanette loses her sense of reality, and identity. She feels as though every aspect of her life could be called in to question, anything could turn out to be a deception. She cannot handle this feeling. So, she shuts the book and she never revisits it. She carries on and speaks as if her mother were the woman who gave birth to her. She pretends she never learned the truth, because lying to herself is much more comfortable. She does all that she can to avoid this stabbing feeling of a harsh truth. Yet, it keeps appearing as if it’s unavoidable. It is what she felt when she learned she was adopted, when she learned Jane Eyre did not end as she had thought, and also, a little later in life, when she realizes she can’t settle down and start a family of her own in the way she had always expected. She can’t have the fairy-tale life she had assumed she would. The real challenge lies in accepting that.