She also annoyed the everloving lights out of me while simultaneously boring me, which is kind of an accomplishment, come to think of it. There seems be an emphasis on this sort of identification pandering rather than the character on her own merits. The fact that Emma falls into a category that includes Bella Swann and whatsherface from A Discovery of Witches-“look! she’s bookish and teased and is secretly super-attractive! Just like you!”-is just the icing on the unfun cake.

But whereas Rowling manages to make Harry likable by having him, oh, try to improve himself and valuing what few friends he has, Emma doesn’t make the effort. Now, being self-centered isn’t necessarily a bad thing-for instance, Harry Potter is fairly self-focused, which is the legacy of his childhood abuse, and I can understand a shy girl like Emma, who doesn’t have any friends and prefers to read, being more focused on herself. If it wasn’t for the fact I love pretty much everyone on Teen Wolf, I’d start to secretly suspect that I hate teenagers. Does Emma belong in the novel or in the real world?

As she befriends her new roommate and actually meets boys for once her life (Gray Newman, the cute but brooding guy dating the head cheerleader, is way off limits), she finds herself drawn to Jane’s story, until a lightning storm happens and she wakes up in Jane’s life. On her sixteenth birthday, a family friend gives her a copy of Jane Eyre, which she begins to read as she returns to school.

Normally I wouldn’t seek it out, but the thesis and morbid curiosity compels me.Ī Breath of Eyre follows Emma Townsend, a shy, bookish teenage girl who lives with her distant father and a Southern step-mother who can’t understand her and attends an exclusive private school on scholarship. To be fair, it’s not the same-there’s some ambiguity as to whether or not the heroine is actually in the book or it’s all in her head-but I hadn’t expected to find one for Jane Eyre, especially one for the young adult market. I thought it was a total fluke born of some seriously cynical marketing geniuses (I’d say that’s redundant, but that would be mean), and then I encountered A Breath of Eyre. Y’all remember Lost in Austen, right? It’s a miniseries historically significant because I think it’s the first time a self-insert Mary Sue fanfic has been produced for the screen.

A Breath of Eyre by Eve Marie Mont