WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crosland show. Charlotte Bronte is Jane Eyre was published over 150 years ago. Since it rolled off the press no one has been able to keep their hands off it. It's been made into a musical reincarnated as a radio play prequels and sequels have been penned. It's an unwritten rule that every few years someone dusts off the classic to give it new meaning. Most recently that person is writer Margot Livesey. When leaves a was a girl without a mom she discovered Jane Eyre and in it she found a dear friend in her new book lives the recast Jane Eyre in the 20th century set mostly in Scotland in the 50s and 60s. The story follows Gemma Hardy a girl burdened with bad luck a girl who comes of age just before the tide of feminism breaks. Up next the Jane of Margo lives in existence. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying President Obama unveils

details this hour at the White House on housing initiatives. NPR's Mara Liasson says reporters are eager to ask him about a long list of issues President Obama's last full fledged news conference was during the Apex Summit in Hawaii in November. Today's press conference happens to coincide with the big voting day for Republicans but the White House says that's just a coincidence. The president will probably get questions today about the violent crackdown by the Syrian government. Rising tension in the Middle East and between Israel and the U.S. over Iran's nuclear weapons program. And he might be asked about domestic issues including an economic recovery that might just be finally gaining steam. Mara Liasson NPR News the White House. Well the U.S. is proposing a new Security Council resolution on Syria that presses first troops then opposition fighters to end the fighting. The draft is expected to be discussed behind closed doors today by the council's five permanent members. This says more shelling is reported in Syria and members of the Red Cross struggle to reach the

most hard hit areas. Super Tuesday balloting is underway in 10 states where more than 400 delegates are at stake in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. The most closely watched race is in Ohio which could play a key role in deciding who runs in November. But some early morning voters in that state apparently opted to vote only on ballot issues rather than the candidates saying they're still not sold on any one contender. Recent polls have shown Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum running neck and neck. Blake Farmer of member station reports that in Tennessee Romney is closing what was a double digit lead by Santorum. Santorum has played well among churchgoers who say they like his unwavering stances on issues like abortion. But Leopold Glaser of Clarksville Tennessee who voted early says she likes Mitt Romney who she views is more moderate. It's important to me I don't like somebody. Narrow the point Romney has not spent as much time in Tennessee as Santorum

or Newt Gingrich even if he comes in a close second Romney says he wants to pick up as many of the state's 58 delegates as possible. Well polls indicate a two man race Gingrich is making a small surge and picking up last minute endorsements from state lawmakers. For NPR News I'm Blake Farmer in Nashville. Congressman Donald Payne the first African-American in the U.S. House to represent New Jersey has died. Payne's office says he passed away this morning at St. Barnabas Hospital of complications from colon cancer. In a statement President Obama credits pain with playing a leading role in U.S. Africa policy and promoting democratic reform as well as human rights. Congressman Donald Payne was 77 years old. You're listening to NPR News. Good afternoon from the WGBH radio newsroom in Boston. I'm Christina Quinn with some of the local stories we're following. Another radio station has dropped Rush Limbaugh's radio

program. The Boston Globe reports that Pittsfield radio station 14 20 a.m. WPEC says it has dropped Rush Limbaugh's program from its lineup due to the inappropriate remarks he made about a Georgetown University student on his syndicated radio show Limbaugh called a Georgetown called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a slut after she gave testimony to congressional Democrats in support of their national healthcare policy. That policy would compel the Jesuit University's Health plan to cover her birth control. In Rhode Island Woonsocket mayor Leo Fontaine is warning that the city could face bankruptcy by next month because of a mounting deficit and a lack of cash. The Providence Journal reports that city schools are running a 7 million dollar deficit this year and have four million dollars in past due bills. Fontaine says the city is running out of options to meet the school system's obligations. But state officials are hopeful city leaders can find a solution before bankruptcy. Governor Lincoln Chafee is calling on state lawmakers to restore past cuts to state aid to municipalities.

Kosovo's president is giving a public lecture today at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire on the challenges of building a new state in the wake of her country's 1999 war for independence. President Jogja is visiting Dartmouth for two days ahead of the woman in the World Summit in New York City. In sports the Red Sox play the Orioles in Fort Myers this afternoon and the Celtics take on the Houston Rockets tonight at the garden while the Bruins play the Maple Leafs in Toronto. The weather forecast for this afternoon. Right now we have clear conditions in Boston at 34 degrees and the sunny and breezy conditions will continue for the rest of the day with highs in the upper 30s tonight mostly cloudy. Not as cool with lows around 30. Support for NPR comes from America's Natural Gas Alliance representing the natural gas industry and supporting nearly three million jobs across the country. Dot us this is WGBH. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley decades after its publication Charlotte Bronte's classic Jane Eyre continues to draw ardent fans. Millions

have devoured the moody romantic novel whose poor but feisty heroine Jane is one of literature's early independent women. Do you think that because I am pole obscure plain little the time soulless and heartless I have as much solace you will almost watch out and if God blessed me with beauty and wealth I could make it as hard for you to leave me as it is frightening even. I'm not speaking teens from all to flash. Tis my spirit that addresses your spirit as if it passed through the grave instead of cold feet as we are. Today I'm joined by Margaret Margot Livesey who many say has given us a Jaina for modern times. Her book the flight of Gemma Hardy is a reimagining of Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre. Welcome Margaret Margot Livesey. Thank you so much. Kelly I'm delighted to be here. So we got start at the beginning which is what is the inspiration for attempting to write a book like this and writing it and having the nerve to tackle writing it.

Well I think having the know is the key question. When I realized what I was doing I was quite horrified at my own presumption. But whenever I stopped working on Gemma Hardy I thought No no I this is a story here I want to tell. And I think at the heart of the story is that I think Charlotte Bronte is essential question is still hugely relevant question what are the possibilities for Women's Lives. How can a woman who has to make her own living in her own way in the world do those things and still retain her self-respect and dignity. What are the choices for young girls and women. Margo Where were you or when you thought I think I might want to re-imagine Jane Eyre. I had just come home from talking to the club at Newton Vale books here in Boston and I'd been talking to them about Jane and the room was full of women who had mostly grown up around Boston who just loved Charlotte Bronte's novel and I thought.

It really has nothing to do with my affection for the novel it really has nothing to do with growing up in Scotland or growing up in the grounds of a Gothic boy's school as I did. Her appeal is just much more universal than that and I think that appeal to something that I might call the inner orphan reaches across gender and generation. So as I've said you re-imagine this and in doing so some of the details may sound familiar to people who know the plot of Jane Eyre so I'll just put a few out here. Gemma is orphaned as a toddler she's sent to live with a kindly uncle and a cruel aunt and some horrible cousins. She sent away to a boarding school where she was treated horribly because she is poor and she goes on to be an au pair to to the niece of a wealthy older mysterious man who lives in a large house in an isolated part of Scotland known as the Orkneys. But this is set in the 50s and 60s to begin with so that's a big

difference. And. Even though those details are very reminiscent of Jane Eyre You really is an entirely different book. Gemma is an entirely different if you will Jane. Thank you so much for saying that Kelly because a big part of my ambition once I realized in a horrifying way what I was doing was to write a novel that could be appreciated both by people who love change but by people who had never heard of Jane and that was crucial for me I didn't want to write a book that excluded some readers especially as I was one of those readers. And I also followed Charlotte Bronte in stealing from my own life so I didn't have a cruel aunt. But I had a very difficult stepmother. She caused me great misery at five. But at 55 she suddenly became great material. And I went to a very difficult boarding school not exactly as bad as Claypoole school. The school Gemma

goes to bed again. Misery became material and I thought I can really use this. And of course Charlotte Bronte did the same thing of borrowing from her own life to create her an imaginary life for Jane Eyre. So who is Gemma. Gemma is at the beginning of the novel she's a very opinionated 10 year old girl who almost feels like a grown up in a child's body. But she's also quite a realist she would love to run away from her cruel aunt and her difficult cousins but she knows that as a child you can't just run away. That would be a terrible fate to be for you and so she determines to soldier on and to get a scholarship to this school that she thinks will be give her both education and liberation. And of course the school turns out to be very exploitative. She becomes a working pupil doing all manner of housework but she does in the end manage to get an education there

so good things do come out of that difficult experience. What about your own experience that you referenced. It really made you understand as she as she is portrayed in the book. Well when I was five I was living with two 55 year olds who never never walked when they could drive and who my father my step mother each smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. So maybe walking wasn't really an option. But I say all this because I want to just say no subordinate clause that I now think of 55 as the prime of life. So yeah. But I did feel very very isolated as an only child living with these two elderly parents and that isolation was intensified when I went to this boarding school and I was a day pupil there but I was younger and smaller than everyone in my class and I was terribly

bullied so all of those things I sort of brought to bear on Gemma although I made her much feistier than I am and much more opinionated than I am. My guest is Margot Livesey. Her book is the flight of Gemma Hardy and it's a reimagining of Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre. I think you have captured the aloneness that Gemma feels so poignantly I'd love you to read a piece from page 10 just to people get a sense of GMR early on in the book. I knew from my uncle that in Scotland one could go to university at 17 and I'd come to think of this is the age at which I would magically become an adult. But how was I going to endure the next seven years and how when I left you house would I earn my living in Veronica's comics girls ran away from home and discovered long lost relatives and unexpected talents. I had none of the former and doubted the existence of the latter. I was good with

numbers. Could recognise most common birds by flight and song was capable of passionate attachments and of daydreams. So vivid that my immediate surroundings vanished but I was hopeless at sports and had crooked handwriting. I could not act or play an instrument or cook or so far as I laid smoked. I could swim but had twice failed my lifesaving exam. Lying there on Christmas Eve clinging to my hot water bottle I had understood more urgently than ever before that I was alone in the world. Oh it just got me. I mean really. You know you just have that that that sense of just her complete. All these people around her and she's just by herself. And you describe her as being so small so her stature also became a part of almost her invisibility. That's exactly right. I mean people I think often judge women

and children by their size being smaller she's perceived as less intelligent less capable less everything. So she eventually escapes what she thinks is can't be any more miserable and goes to if you can believe it much much more misery at the Claypool school school where she learns that she's a working girl supposed to be a student but it's really it's not I thought about maybe describing it as an indentured servant but I don't know that people treated indentured servants that way how would you characterize her role. Yes I think indentured servant or or almost a serf. I mean she receives no money. Theoretically her education is her recompense for all this housework but her education is constantly being interrupted. And I should say that this part of the novel is really imaginary. But what isn't imaginary is the way in which these private schools which flourished all over Britain

at that time were really sort of kingdoms and to themselves. You the school grounds were surrounded by a high stone wall and there was just one gateway in and out and there was a gate keeper and there were no school inspectors and parents only came at the beginning and the end of it was really a world unto itself in which very different rules prevailed and those parents I should say appeared to be lied to on a frequent basis so they never got the sense of what was really going on only the girls who managed to survive it knew what was really happening. Yes and of course I did construct a two tier system there are privileged girls there who were treated much better than Gemma and her cohort of working goals. And I appreciated also the reference to Jane Eyre and her one friend that she finds that school that she ends up. And here we have Gemma Hardy finding her one friend. Who is a privileged girl

Miriam that I thought was just a beautifully told relationship because it was all the more fully in my opinion realized and characterized then Jane Eyre. I mean we got a sense of their relationship and in Jane Eyre but here Gemma they really had a friendship on so many different levels. They they really do and I mean as an only child friendship has always been crucially important in my life so I didn't want Gemma to be friendless I wanted her to have friends throughout what I think of as her journey and Miriam and she appropriately enough meet in the library they have a connection through books although I would say Gemma is a better reader than Miriam and they help each other with schoolwork They're both bad at sport so that's another bond between them mirroring their or serious relationship with sport I'm afraid to say. And of course one of the things about Helen Burns in Jane Eyre is that she's very religious which I always found a little bit annoying I'll confess I tried to make Miriam

perceptive but not but not religious in a doctrinaire way. And she does seem to be certainly compared to Gemma to be worldly. I'm sure some of that was part of the privilege of having a different exposure because of the privileges of her life. But and she was a little bit older then than Gemma but I thought that was something that she expressed to her. It was really a turning point for Gemma as she's looking toward the rest of her life I wonder if you read page 83 which is a little description of Miriam in Gemma's interaction. Julie 83 was 63 83. Miriam was almost four inches taller than me and three years older. But most of the time I forgot the differences and I was sure she did too. One evening though when I described my aunt and how she gradually banished me from the family Miriam suggested she might be jealous. I like to Tanya with Oberon she

said. We had been reading A Midsummer Night's Dream. Jealous I said. What could she be jealous of. I didn't have a changeling boy or anything else she wanted. I scratched my car off wiped my forehead. How could Miriam be so mistaken. I'm only guessing she said calmly. As you get older Gemma you understand things that don't make sense now. Think how much you've changed since you left Iceland. You're going to change that much again in the next 10 years. She had never before pointed out my youth and I was stunned. I'll be over to a soon I said. My birthdays next week tell me the things I don't know. Miriam patted my knee. Don't be grumpy I'm just saying that people's feelings aren't like arithmetic. They don't always add up. As for telling you I don't know if I can. Some things you can learn from other people and books. Some you have to live through. And we're going to live through a little bit more of Gemma Hardy's flight. When we come back

my guest is Margot Livesey we're discussing her latest novel The flight of Gemma Hardy. This book is a retelling of Jane Eyre. It's set mostly in Scotland in the late 50s and 60s. The protagonist Gemma hardy like poor obscure and little Jane Eyre is beset by bad luck. You can join the conversation now at 8 7 7 3 0 1 eighty nine seventy eight 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. We want to hear from you. If you've read the flight of Gemma Hardy call in if Jane Eyre speaks to you. Is this a book that felt like it was written for you. 8 7 7 3 0 one eighty nine seventy eight 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. You can write to my Facebook page or tweet me at. Cali Crossley. You're listening to WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is made possible thanks to you. And the Harvard innovation lab a university

wide center for innovation where entrepreneurs from Harvard the Austin Community Boston and beyond engage in teaching and learning about entrepreneurship. Information at the lab at Harvard dot edu. And Greenberg Traurig an international law firm with offices in Boston and more than 30 other cities worldwide addressing the complex legal needs of businesses from startups to public companies global reach local resources law dot com. On the next FRESH AIR how the Federal Reserve made one of its most critical oversight decisions in the wake of the financial crisis a decision favorable to the banks and why the FDIC objected. We'll talk with Jesse Eisenberg about his investigative article published jointly by Pro Publica and the Atlantic. Joining us. This afternoon at two here on eighty nine point seven WGBH.

I'm Brian O'Donovan letting you know that tickets are running for St. Patrick's Day Celtic So you're a remarkable evening of music and dance within the realm of Celtic tradition featuring performances from Susan the kill and the Peters journey kittle and many. Joyous. To. Secure seats at WGBH dot org stash Celtic. See you there. Morning essential. Good morning for later would you be a trader news from in Boston I'm Bobbsey with some of the local stores will start your day. Well-informed Bobsy and MORNING EDITION here on WGBH radio. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just joining us my guest is writer Margot Livesey. We're talking about her latest novel The flight of Gemma Hardy. It's a

retelling of Jane Eyre in this iteration. Gemma Hardy is the young protagonist and the story takes place largely in Scotland in the late 50s and 60s. You can join the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Jane Eyre enthusiasts we want to hear from you. Margot Livesey enthusiasts give us a call at 8 7 7 3 0 1 0 8 0 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. You can write to our Facebook page or send me a tweet at Kelly Crossley. So I've read that you've said in doing this book you were writing back to a Charlotte Bronte and to Jane Eyre her main character what do you mean by that. Well I think there are number of books out there that are faithful retellings like Jane Smiley's a thousand acres in which she transposes every scene of King Lear to a farm in Iowa. And there are other books that just that take a marginal character and put them at the center like say Tom

Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. But I sort of this is more like obviously I'm to some extent retelling parts of Jane Eyre and structuring my novel as a as a journey for my heroine but I think that also I was writing back to Charlotte Bronte and saying you know what would happen now a days or perhaps not now days but on the eve of feminism and the pill and equal rights and all those good things that are coming towards Gemma and what the possibilities are for this young woman as she steps into adult hood How did you. It's maybe because many of us know the details of Jane Eyre so well and I assume you do too. You don't have to look at the book as you were going through your own writing or did you consult it along the way. I did not consult it I hid it on a shelf in my workroom so so obscure that I have been unable to find it since I finished Gemma Hardy and actually had to go and buy a new copy last week.

Oh my goodness. But and that was deliberate. You don't want that was deliberate. I thought it would just be too daunting if I kept going back to see what Don and I thought what really matters is my memory in a funny way and in this case is my memory of the novel and what stands out for me and what I want to echo and what I want to diverged from now. We've mentioned that early on when you were little Jane Eyre was a book that you embraced it was a friend to you as you are now writing did your relationship with Jane Eyre change it to you did a number of ways. I was even more astonished by what Jane and Charlotte accomplished and sometimes I was a bit grumpy with both of them. You know I think that certain things like the religiosity around St. John River are quite hard for me as a rather secular person to to to understand in a really emotional way.

But the limitations on women's lives. You updated and translated but there very much they are still even as the changes coming in the 60s. And I was very conscious of that for both Charlotte and Jane I mean really the only course of earning a living open to them is teaching either as a governess or in a school and that was true for middle class women with not much income I mean there really wasn't anything else to do but get married and you know for my character I mean there are going to be more possibilities I'm glad to say when she when she finishes university assuming she gets to finish university wrong give away everything in this book. One of the things that I thought about because I'm always fascinated by how people come to titles and how they relate to the subject matter. So the flight of Jim Hardy as I thought about it I mean it could be literally you know the birds of which she's so expertise she has so much expertise about the birds in and around her and she loves that. But she also loves the fact that they have both a

routine in which they have a home something she seemed to be searching for but they also had the freedom to fly about as they might before going returning home. And I thought this is just my read of it that that's what you meant but so I have you're not going to ask you. You know you put it so beautifully Kalai because I think that's something very enviable about birds the way they can decide where to build their nests and then they can leave those nests and go go other places I mean no wonder we we think of them as sort of magical mystical in some ways and for someone like Jammer encircled by the high wall at the school and then in a certain sense encircled on the Orkney Islands by the ocean. The birds come and go with enviable freedom. And we should say that when last we left Gemma in our conversation she was at the clay pool school but she moved from there finally the school has to close referencing back to what was happening at the time in Britain you said there were these private schools but now

your book really articulated some of the financial pressures that were happening to those institutions and Gemma's own own fate was mirrored by that in the book. I'm happy to say that you know the 60s were a great turning point in a huge number of ways and one was the shrinking of the British Empire. So while I was paying praying nightly for my dreadful school to close down what actually finally did close it down was the fact that far fewer people were sending their girls to boarding schools and the number of pupils just dwindled. All right so Gemma gets out finally after and I can tell any Jane Araf file such as myself it's our our law. Before she gets out. That's just right for her and she manages to get a position at a wonderful mansion where the guy's very rich and mysterious. Sounds familiar. And she's going to be an au pair too. The young girl who is his

niece and that part of it you want to keep the same. I did it just seemed negotiable that I had to be somebody who resembled Mr. Rochester and I had to be some some comparable situation if I was going in any way to address that. The Brontes famous situation right well I'd love you to read the first meeting of Mr. Hugh Sinclair who is Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. Of course again this is the 60s 50s and 60s so our Gema is bicycling back from the village and she finds herself seizing on the roadside a guy who is changing a tire. And on page 175. We get a chance to. Visit with them and their first meeting. From the safety of the darkness beyond the torch I glimpsed brown hair and a smear on one cheek oil on mud. Perhaps I could tell by his

voice that he was older a man not a boy. It isn't rocket science he said. Where are you heading on your still sea bicycle Blackbird hole. It's not far from here. I've heard of it. There's a foam of there who breeds cattle who has less manners than his cows. I said. I see you have opinions he said slipping the wheel into place. Are you part of the household. I'm the Opana. Vicky had used the word nanny in her advertisement but that brought to mind someone with a bruise and stern and gray haired au pair. It means you're a member of the family with special duties here. I reached for the knot. He dropped. Actually he said it means a mutual exchange of services. Oh pat on the level. I don't teach French yet I was explaining that my pupil was only 8 when the wrench slipped and the man swore. Bugger it I dropped the

torch. The light shone upon two gleaming brown shoes shoes so beautiful that I pictured them in a shop window in Edinburgh costing more than I earned in a year. Are you all right. I said. I banged my hand I retrieved the torch and he stretched his left hand into the beam in the light his index finger was already swelling slightly crooked broken. He pronounced Oh no we should get a doctor. In this time and place. I doubt that's an option. Don't worry it's not fatal. Just a useful reminder of stupidity. He finished the knots and then held the light while he instructed me how to lower the jack and extricate it from the car. I could hear him trying to curb his impatience as I fumbled with the Levis. But soon the jack and the punctured tire were in the boot and he was assuring me that he was fine to drive. Farewell still see cyclist. He said. Thank you for your illumination.

I love that meeting better than any horse knocked down I think it was just a very very romantic I thought great. Let's take a call Jessica from Lexington Go ahead please you're on eighty nine point seven WGBH. Yes thank you Kelly. For having me on I'm a fan of Marco Lizzie's and especially this new book I'm looking forward to her reading tonight at noon until book and I have a question about the research she did for the book I've got to write about something I did. If you could talk a little about your experience it just broke up at the end can you repeat that the gamut really of life I was wondering what that experience was like. Okay all right. What we have gathered. You want to know about her research in Iceland because part of the book is a journey with Scotland and Iceland is involved. All right here is Margot and she will answer your question.

Thank you for calling in. I had decided that Gemma shouldn't just have Scotland in her background and I wanted to choose a place that wasn't too far from Scotland and had historical connections and as Iceland was part of the old Viking Empire it seemed a wonderful choice and I also liked the fact that it was an island or several islands and that it had a population of only a little over 300000 people who insist on having their own culture their own language their sagas their ponies and of course having made the decision to set part of the novel there was a wonderful excuse to to go and visit. And I would recommend it to anyone who likes bleak landscape. I was by the time I left after five days I was so excited when I saw a tree or a blade of grass after all the fields of lava. Extinct volcanoes that it really changed the way I saw I saw the world around me and I

loved the sense of history in the culture and the way that the people there actually did have connections historically and I was also very fascinated by the fact that something like 75 percent of Icelanders actually believe there may be elves and so you'll be driving along the road and suddenly it will make a kind of loop around a rock. And it's because that rock is believed to be one of the places that elves live. Wow. Well that was a great question. I had no idea. I will say that one of the things that I appreciated about the book is that there's a kind of there's a lot of spirits. Friendly ones floating around literally in this book that just seem to be there when Gemma needs to hear from people. And I think that that is part of the Scottish landscape where I grew up but there were always stories about supernatural occurrences of one kind or or another.

Many of them not particularly threatening or or scary. One person I knew claimed to have a household ghost that regularly cleaned the shoes and I just thought oh how useful that would be. Absolutely. I one of the things that I love about the book that and maybe because you have such a you know the place so well is your descriptions of the landscapes not only the places in Iceland that you just beautifully describe but certainly Scotland. There is a piece here that I'd love you to read which I think gives us a chance to hear a little bit of it of some of that that you were able to describe so beautifully. Page Three twenty nine. And this is Gemma in her she was always walking and looking about in it and looking at some of the structures that you've just described in Iceland which she was very interested in historical sites. With a couple of sandwiches in a knapsack I followed the path up through the brick beech

trees to the little spring at the foot of lean rock. According to Hanna St. David's well had long been a resting place for travellers perhaps a sacred site. I knelt down to my hand to dip my hand in the clear cold water and watched the leaves at the bottom step. From the well the path traversed the hillside climbing steadily. Soon the beaches gave way to conifers and birches. These two were beginning to sin. When I caught sight of a stone house set back from the path the roof had fallen in but the walls were intact. Who had lived in such a lonely place I wondered. And why were all the windows barred. The house looked too grand to be a shepherd's cottage. Hoping to discover some relic of the occupants I stepped inside. But there was only a rusty saucepan. Couple of empty tins buried in the nettles on the hearth stone lay a small pile of mossy bones some animal a sheep or a fox had crawled in here to

die. If I had found a ruined host about a new week I thought that might have been me. I hurried back to the path. Well of course it's made all the more romantic by you know your accented reading it but the descriptions of the place you just want to go to Scotland you know instantly It's very romantic for the story of Gemma hardy as well. My guest is writer Margot Livesey we're talking about her latest novel The flight of Gemma Hardy a retelling of Jane Eyre. You can join the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Did Jane Eyre speak to you. If you are reluctant to read an adaptation of the classic Are we changing your mind. Are you ready to take the Gemma Hardy plunge 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. You can write to our Facebook page or send me a tweet to take the flight of Gemma Hardy. This is WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is on WGBH thanks to you.

And Boston Symphony Orchestra's family concert. Thomas Wilkins conducts the beat goes on a fun filled performance for the whole family. Saturday March 17th kids under 18 are free VSO dot org. And the English Channel on WGBH 44 where you can catch Lark Rise to candle for Doc Martin and waking the dead. It's a drama with a British accent. Wednesday night starting at 8:00 on WGBH 44. A tax hike of 18000 percent that's what some farm owners in Spain are facing during the Nation's building boom their land was reassessed higher much higher. Their fields were suddenly worth a fortune. But since Spain's housing bubble burst. No one wants to buy that land. And farmers are left with a whopping tax bill. Our story from Spain next time on the world. Coming up at 3:00 here on eighty nine point seven

WGBH. According to Oscar Wilde art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. Find the piece that speaks to you. With the 30th annual WGBH Beinart auction the online catalog is filled with one of a kind works of art from all over the world. And in addition to supporting new and renowned artists you'll also be doing your part for WGBH programs and stations sponsored by Landry in our Cari oriental rugs and carpeting and circle furniture full listings at auction dot WGBH dot org. Great question. That is a great question and that's a great question. It's a great question. Rick great question on FRESH AIR. You'll hear unexpected questions and unexpected answers this afternoon at 2:00 here on eighty nine point seven. WGBH. I'm Cally Crossley. If you're just tuning in my guest is author Margot Livesey. We're discussing her latest book the flight of Gemma Hardy which is a reimagining of

Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre. You can join the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Or you can write to our Facebook page or send us a tweet at Kelly Crossley. Well I'm pretty much a Jane arrow file. I mean on this show alone we have talked about the insurance of the novel. Jane Eyre we've talked about movies that you know tell the story of Jane Eyre and I've even interviewed a guy who wrote a book about life lessons from it. So I've covered the gamut I love Jane Eyre So I think this story is speaks so much to me and any form that you give it to me so it's been exciting to see it in a more modern form and I should say again that even though I am a Jane Arraf file you do not have to have read that book to really enjoy this story it's completely it's you know has some reference points but it's a whole different book. So I just want to put that on the table for people who are listening saying well I don't like Jane I don't think I'm going to like this and I think

it appeals to people and. Across the spectrum whether you like the original or not I think you'd find this interesting. This is just my take on it. I am curious about just how you began to approach the central tension of the book on one of the central tensions and that is it's a romantic story leading up to a big kerfuffle with in this case Mr. Sinclair because by this time our lovely Gemma has fallen in love with him. One of the things that you could have updated that you didn't and I'm curious about is the age difference there's always been an age difference a huge one. Why did you elect not to close it. That's such a good question Kalli. I think if I had been writing the book in more in accordance with my own politics then it Gemma would have been in her 40s and Mr. Sinclair would have been 18 or 19. I don't really have like that she do that. But I did have certain plot considerations which I don't think I should mention on your

show which made it convenient for Mr Singh to be a certain age and to have had certain experiences and so that was my biggest constraint and why his age crept up inexorably. But one of the things I really did want to to change him and rewrite was that I often think Mr. Rochester is quite horrid to chane is quite mean and he teases her in certain ways and he does take advantage of the huge power difference between them so it was nice to be able to I hope make my Mr. Sinclair a more a less secure less confident character who was not given to that kind of grandstanding. Well I think yes you did that and that and I I'm not absolutely certain that those of us reading of a modern Jane Eyre could have tolerated it but we've been somehow set in in Charlotte Bronte his time not that it's acceptable but you sort of

go with the flow because of the time but now in the 60s I don't think that you could resonate with it. No I think we wouldn't put up with his kind of cruelty. Well it comes across to me as cruelty. And I think mirrors Charlotte Bronte his own experience with being in love with a married schoolteacher to whom she wrote the most torrid less letters. And we actually have a few of those letters because although the school teacher tore them up his wife fished them out of the waste paper basket and piece them together. Well let's take a call. Margot on the road. Go ahead please. You're eighty nine point seven WGBH. I don't think that I would want to look it up when I could. And I want to read that in a few years back when I wanted any. Well when we talk about quite a friendship a Croat and both of us

and stop having an Arab our favorite book we have a lot on me right now get to be you know a talking point to do what I asked and so I'm looking forward to buying the book and beating it. All right well you're going to enjoy it I'll tell you. Thanks for calling Margo. So I want you to read a little bit. Skipping way ahead. Now our Gema is. About to marry Mr. Sinclair and this is leading up to the days of her wedding page 262. Just to get a sense of of how it is. So a bit like Jane but not quite. The last days of my own married life passed as slowly as a snail creeping along a wall as swiftly as a gannet diving into the sea. Every morning I gave Nell lessons in the afternoons when it was fine with visited our favorite haunts

with Vicky's help. I drew up a timetable for the week of my honeymoon. The piano lessons were arranged visits to two families with children L's age. Meanwhile Hugh worked long hours at his desk and paid several visits to Kirkwall. In the evenings we sat in the library or sometimes watch across the fields down to the cove. In moving to London I was breaking my vow to always live beside the sea and I tried to store up the sights and sounds and smells of the ocean. When evening as we walked along the shore I asked why he kept his door locked months ago. Vicky had confessed that she'd cautioned me about locking mine not out of the fear of her brother Seamus sleepwalking but because Nell had ransacked Miss Cameron's room. Hugh bent to examine a starfish its pale pink arms cold stiffly in a strand of seaweed and I thought perhaps he would dodge my question. But when he had put it back in the water he said I'm afraid you have an anxious husband

fiancé. I corrected. I had only a few days to use the word fiance he said kissing my hand. Then he told me he'd been looking into finding a tutor to help me prepare for my exams. You have to decide what subjects you want to study he said. And in the excitement of discussing my choices I forgot to ask what he could possibly be anxious about. Well we know that doesn't end well. Thank you. He's got a big old secret I have to ask you because if there's been any criticism in the book it's been mild but it it speaks to the comparing he use in Claire's awfulness. Awful secret with Mr. Rochester who had a mad wife in the attic and a couple of people have written and said well I just can never compare to that craziness. I mean that's just so extreme and and you've talked about trying to change the dynamic between Mr. Rochester and Mr. Sinclair because of not liking the

dynamic between Rochester in Jane Eyre. And I wonder if that's what you intended to do also with the big secret which we're not going to reveal here but some people say it's not mean enough it's not hard enough it's not ugly enough. That was a huge challenge for me because I thought if I go into any kind of romantic territory it's going to be impossible with contemporary mores and morals we just don't put the same value on infidelity divorce it etc. etc. I don't sink toward or at least not in literature perhaps in life we do. I think in life we do. So I tried to come up with a secret which has more to do with with moral choices and moral character. And I do think for some people it has been an anti-climax that it doesn't resonate quite the same level how could it as keeping a mad woman in an attic. But I think if you stop to think that Mr. Sinclair's secret is actually a huge

and burdensome one that what he does is quite grievous. And of course. The nature of Secrets is such that just keeping something secret changes it. So part of what makes Gemma react in the way she does is just the fact that he's not the person she thought she is he's not the person she thought he was. And I think it is as the book goes on and she starts to think about that as Miriam said she would in more adult terms then it becomes real to her in a way that she couldn't accept at that the moment of impact when she's first confronted with it. Yes I think that a big part of the novel is Gemma's journey from being a rather moralistic child with you know these very severe ideas of right and wrong good and bad to a more complex adult understanding of morality and how perhaps we can't always tell the truth or at least not 100 percent of the truth.

Now dealing with the much more Dermody of the story because the story itself I feel is quite timeless. But because often we're Gemma was living was so isolated. You know you would forget that you were in the 50s and 60s and so I'm thinking long skirts you know 18th century whatever and then something would happen you describe her wearing a cardigan and trousers or answering the telephone and I'm thinking well it was it was startling. I found it a bit startling myself but I did. I mean where I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland we didn't have a telephone or a refrigerator until I was or a television until I was nine or 10. All those things came into my life quite late and in more remote parts of Scotland I think that was even more true. So although the swinging 60s were going on in London they didn't really get to Scotland. All I think about 1972 we knew they were happening but we weren't all down on Carnaby Street cruising in our mini skirts we were still smoking

around in our Wellington boots listening to our transistor radios. Well I would say that that to me was one of your genius if I can say that to sort of balance that isolation and therefore that removal from what was happening in the big city to small pieces that would bring you back to understanding the time period for example listening to Nel play or the record player. I mean that was just like oh yeah ok right. We're in the 60s and naming the cars softer. You know singers like Herman Herman and his hermits. That's right Clark most people haven't thought about for a while. But it was it was a perfect timing for that that I just wanted to talk about. So in. In the in the joint sort of coming of age story of a young girl which is Gemma and the Coming of Age of womanhood in general now women's roles have changed such that this character Gemma is articulating some choices even in her limited existence

that women didn't have so I love this quote. I never meant to be a wanderer. There perhaps being a wife was not the only choice that would be startling to a lot of people who are fond of Jane Eyre who that was her whole reason for being in some ways you want to be married. And that is one of the very striking things about Charlotte Bronte I mean she really was an extremely ambitious person she wrote to the poet laureate when she was 20 years old say sending him some poems and saying I want to be forever noan but at the same time even while she was writing and writing increasingly professionally and increasingly successfully she was very conventional she she was a minister's daughter and she didn't want to be seen as Bohemian she didn't want to live like say George Eliot out of wedlock and do all those bad things. So I think she was very pleased when she finally got married at the age of 39. But your Gemma now you know. Jimmy feels she can take or leave marriage it's not the it's not the only answer. Maybe

eventually she will move into something like a marriage or maybe she won't. And I like that ambiguity toward the end it's really interesting. I'm interested in what you've heard about the embrace of the book by so many that really pleases you that you know the people that sort of get it as you've they've read it in and recognize it to be an entity unto itself. I think the thing that's been most gratifying is people's just really becoming absorbed in Gemma's journey and understanding how high the stakes are for her that she how many ways she's alone in the world to come back to what where sort of where we began and how she's looking for a home in several senses of the word and happily people have understood the title not just both not just as a soaring like a bird flying but also as fleeing and the way those two meanings become braided together in her story.

I think people have also appreciated that she actually does that unusual thing which is approach being a grown up and in my experience there aren't very many grown ups but I think that Gemma might turn out to be one. So do you think having done it now to where you've taken the story the reimagining to the 60s could we see a I don't know 2000 version of Jane Eyre with its own Gemma Hardy. I've wondered about that because of course at first I did think about making the novel contemporary and then I realized I did want to set it in that period just before feminism. I do think that there could be a novel to be written but I think it would be more complicated because of modern technology and that our interconnectedness with cellphones it cetera just makes it that much harder to picture a character's isolation. Do you think that this is just a total softball question to you

because I love the book. See the book being becoming a kind of classic that Jane Eyre has become albeit a you know different. Different story different character women innocent of. But it has some of those themes and that story that that just is so appealing and that. And your heroine is really draws you in. So I love that you use the word heroine because I really wanted Gemma to be not just a character but a heroine to be larger than life. And I do you hope that just as she finds her way in the world that this novel is finding its way in the world and finding readers who will take it into their minds and hearts. What did you learn from Gemma. I think what I learned is that I should be better at standing up for myself and that I would do well to emulate her tenacity of spirit. She despite many many trials and

tribulations and dragons and demons she doesn't give up. She doesn't give up herself. She doesn't give up her journey she doesn't give up the belief that things could get better. And I think of that as a huge virtue and one I'm going to try to practice in the coming years. Does Margot Livesey need to take flight or live so you could take some flying lessons. I heard that when you finish the book you were going to celebrate by visiting Charlotte Bronte cells did you. I did visit Charlotte Bronte his house and it was so moving. I stood there in the dining room where the three sisters wrote and I just looked at that table I wasn't allowed to touch it and that sort of conjured than the mark on this extremely stormy day in December and it really was a magical moment. What came through to you in that moment. What came through to me was was I think she Charlotte's tenacity of spirit you know that there they were in this dark small windy house in this working class town.

On the edge of the Yorkshire moors and she thought I can be forever known and she actually accomplished that. I just I loved seeing how far she'd come and how she'd written her way into history. Well I think you've written Gemma into history and I loved her. Thank you so much. I've been speaking with writer Margot Livesey Her latest book is the flight of Gemma Hardy. You can catch Margot at 7 tonight at noon Ville books. Thank you so much. Thank you Kelly this was wonderful. You can keep on top of the Kelly Crossley Show at WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley follow us on Twitter. Become a fan of the Calla Crossley Show on Facebook today show was engineered by Ellen Mathis produced by Chelsea murders will Rosalynn and Abby Ruzicka we're a production of WGBH Boston Public Radio.