In Wild Island, the plot of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is used by author Jennifer Livett as a literary device to interest the reader in the history of another Jane - Jane Franklin, wife of John Franklin, the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1837 to 1844.
It is a rather ambitious exercise and, perhaps because the author recognised her own literary limits, Jane Eyre and her husband, Edward Rochester, are despatched from the scene rather early in the piece.
This comes after some extraordinary events on board the ship taking them to Van Diemen’s Land to find Rochester’s older brother, Rowland.
Meanwhile, Bertha Mason, the West Indian mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre, after even more miraculous events on the same ship, continues on the journey to find Rowland who may be Bertha’s legal husband. She travels with her “keeper”, Harriet Adair who is the principal narrator. But Bertha, or is it Anna?, also departs the narrative relatively early on. With the love sick ship's captain, she undertakes an interminable journey to New South Wales and beyond (the reader gets a real sense in the book of how long individuals could drop out of people’s lives due to slow transportation and slower postal services). We hear little about her again (or about Jane and Edward) until much later in the book. So it is Harriet who continues with the quest to find Rowland and in doing so mixes with the people, life and political intrigue of colonial Hobart, only a year after the arrival of John Franklin as Lieutenant Governor.
There is rather a large number of historical and fictional characters to get your head around in this book and the author helpfully provides a list of who’s who in the front. One of our members complained that, at 431 pages, this is not a book for busy people, and it is true that some will find this book rather long-winded with quite a few plot lines that could have been pruned from the narrative. Nevertheless, for those of us who persisted, we found an interesting history of the times, particularly engaging for those readers who have visited the historic sites in Tasmania that are backdrops in the book
The author has clearly done a lot of research and takes care to write in the language of the times, even to the point of borrowing a shopping list from the records of a real family in Van Diemen’s land in the 1800s. This can be more satisfying to the reader than the work of popular authors such as Geraldine Brooks who tend to slip into their novels jarring modern viewpoints and language.
However, authenticity does not condemn this book to being staid and dull. The author has a sense of humour and a lively way of writing. She notes that one character survived “despite the kindness of friends” who used blood letting to aid his recovery.
And she had us all rushing to our encyclopaedias to find out more about belladonna, used by society women of the day to make their eyes sparkle (it is in fact a relative of deadly nightshade).
She shows us how Jane Franklin’s keen intelligence and superior communication skills are belittled by the male dominated political factions of the day (reminding us of how little distance we have travelled from the past), and how St John’s niece, Sophy, works to ensure the records of Jane’s role in the governing of the colony do not survive to outshine her uncle’s.
The sad story of John Franklin’s humiliating return to England and his ill fated expedition to discover the North West Passage are not neglected in the narrative.
Who is Jennifer Livett?
If you guessed on reading this novel that Jennifer was an academic, you'd be right.
Although born in Hampshire in England, she arrived in Tasmania as a child in 1952. She went on to complete a PhD in English and worked as a tutor and lecturer in the English Department of the University of Tasmania for nearly 20 years.
She was a keen printmaker, learning the craft at the Tasmanian School of Art, and contributing work to several exhibitions in Hobart. Harriet, the principal character in her novel, is also an artist who decorates the walls of society houses with landscapes and family portraits, and who works with Eliza and John Gould, the famous bird illustrator, collector and taxidermist, when they visit Hobart.
Although she also wrote for academic journals, this is Jennifer's only novel and it took her 40 years to write.
Jennifer is now retired and lives in Sydney. She has started a second novel set in modern day Tasmania.
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