The Wife Upstairs, by Rachel Hawkins

She’s been gone for nearly a year, but the arrangement of lilies and magnolias on the front table of my house were hers, and every time I walk past them, it’s like I’ve just missed seeing her, that she’s just stepped out for a second.

—The Wife Upstairs, by Rachel Hawkins

Shades of Rebecca, right? Which makes sense, as The Wife Upstairs is a loose retelling of Jane Eyre, but as a contemporary thriller set in Alabama.

It’s a page-turner of a read that hit a real sweet spot for me—it kept me hooked, plot-wise, but I was never so invested in the characters that I was particularly WORRIED about terrible things happening to them. Which, when you’re reading a contemporary Gothic thriller, is probably a good thing for one’s emotional state?

(Obviously, sometimes that can be a letdown of a reading experience, but in January 2021, it feels like a relief to not be super emotionally engaged in something???)

It may have finally put to rest my childhood love of Mr. Rochester?

Which is a fascinating (<—to me, apologies to the rest of you, lol) glimpse into my brain, because a sliver of that love survived my recent re-read of the original, it survived reading Wide Sargasso Sea… and obviously, for decades it had survived the whole wife in the attic thing and the paternalistic attitude and the jerking Blanche Ingram around thing and the mind games with Jane and, you know, the attempted non-consensual bigamy.

No, for me, the dealbreaker is apparently him being called ‘Eddie’ instead of Edward.

Which, sadly, says a whole lot more about me than it does about him.

Sigh.

ANYWAY. In The Wife Upstairs, Jane is a Poor Dogwalker with Secrets.

Eddie Rochester is a Rich Grieving Widower with Secrets.

Bea Rochester is a Presumed-Dead CEO with Secrets.

Jane and Eddie meet, hit it off, and before you know it, she’s living with him & they’re engaged. She’s VERY into being financially secure, and he’s VERY attractive and all, but there’s this occasional weird thumping upstairs in the house and Eddie… well, sometimes Jane doesn’t feel particularly safe around him:

Pressing my forehead against his chest, I breathe him in. You’re being stupid, I tell myself. I’m so used to men lying to me, manipulating me, that now I see it where it doesn’t exist. Maybe Eddie is the type to go a little over the top when he’s into someone. There could be all sorts of stuff about him that I hadn’t worked out yet.

I really loved how most of the tension comes from the power dynamics and from the ENORMOUS and PLENTIFUL red flags that surround Eddie—EDDIE!! I can’t.—and his behavior.

Hawkins also definitely leans into the social and economic class of it all, which works in terms of the book as a retelling AND as a modern contemporary. Given Jane’s life experience, it’s entirely understandable that she’d be skittish around the police, and that she’d be very aware of Rochester’s—sorry, EDDIE’s—cluelessness about his own rich white dude privilege. The ladies in the neighborhood come off as pretty awful at first, but largely accept Jane into the fold once things are settled(ish), which sent me off on a serious Stepford Wives mental digression.

DIGRESSION: It makes me BANANAS that the term ‘Stepford Wives’ has evolved to refer to interchangeable rich white ladies who are only concerned with achieving the appearance of perfection, etc., etc., when in the original story, they were actual normal women with their own dreams and ideas and AGENCY who are TOTALLY THE VICTIMS of their JERK HUSBANDS who KILL THEM AND TURN THEM INTO FEM-BOTS. Like. That book and that movie—the original, I haven’t seen the remake—are not dunking on the women, they are dunking on the dudes, and THAT EVOLUTION FEELS LIKE A VERY POINTED INJUSTICE GAHHHH. END DIGRESSION

Towards the end—I’m trying to keep this vague because spoilers—there’s some good stuff about how much Jane’s acceptance into the social fold is about her economic status, which felt like a callback to the idea of the original Jane chafing at the idea of living out her life as a charity case. Comfortable, but always beholden to her benefactors, as it were.

Oh! Delightfully and appropriately, John Rivers is a grody blackmailing incel, and this line is EVERGREEN:

I already feel solidarity with her, this unknown girl, my sister in Vague Distrust for John Rivers.

So. It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s emotionally low stakes, it’s appropriately twisted (because Gothic). I’m certainly here for more along these lines, so let me know if you’ve got recommendations.

Note: Quotes pulled from an advance copy; subject to change.

More Jane Eyre