Transference: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him. Esther Freud
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Transference
Esther Freud
Published by The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Foreword © Tracy Chevalier 2016
Transference © Esther Freud 2016
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Jacket photograph © Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the authors’ imaginations.
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Source ISBN: 9780008150594
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173470
Version: 2016-03-16
Contents
Why is Charlotte Brontë’s “Reader, I married him” one of the most famous lines in literature? Why do we remember it and quote it so much?
Jane Eyre is “poor, obscure, plain, and little”, with no family and no prospects; the embodiment of the underdog who ultimately triumphs. And “Reader, I married him” is Jane’s defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, “Reader, he married me” – as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, “Reader, we married.” Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester. Her self-determination is not only very appealing; it also serves to undercut the potential over-sweetness of a classic happy ending where the heroine gets her man. The mouse roars, and we pump our fist with her.
Twenty-one writers, then, have taken up this line and written what it has urged them to write. I liken it to a stone thrown into a pond, with its resulting ripples. Always, always in these stories there is love – whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers – in its many heart-breaking, life-affirming forms.
All of these stories have their own memorable lines, their own truths, their own happy or wry or devastating endings, but each is one of the ripples that finds its centre in Jane and Charlotte’s decisive clarion call: Reader, I married him.
Tracy Chevalier
“NOTHING’S GOING TO HAPPEN,” he said, standing and striding towards the door. At least that’s how I pictured it when I thought it over later – but it couldn’t have been that way because the next time he spoke he was sitting in his chair. “It’s not as if we’re going to jump into bed together.” He was under the window then, so close our knees were almost touching, although in reality he can’t have moved because a moment later he was still there, facing into the room, the low glass table between us.
I’d gone to him for help with my obsessive thinking. I was fixated on my boyfriend, his coldness, his resistance to getting married, and the discovery, still fresh, of his unfaithfulness. “Why don’t I just leave?” I sobbed through my first session. But instead of leaving, I spent hours running over past events, bewailing my passivity, recasting myself as the fiery, outspoken woman I wished I was. I’d sit at my desk, my work neglected, and re-enact how it might have been – standing up to him, storming out, throwing my possessions into the car and driving off. How powerful I felt when I was speaking the truth. But that was inside my head. On the outside nothing had changed.
“It’s a torment,” I told him. “Like being in some kind of trap. He says he loves me, but …” I cried and gulped water, tissues and tumblers helpfully lined up, while he looked at me in a sympathetic way and waited. It didn’t take long before I started up again, listing the endless cycle of events that made up that week’s sorrows, stopping only to blow my nose and swat away new tears. “I’m so embarrassed,” I said eventually, rising up for air. “This isn’t who I want to be.”
That’s the first time I sensed that he’d come closer, although of course he hadn’t moved. “I don’t mind,” he said.
I know you don’t mind. It’s me that minds. I’m embarrassed for myself. But I didn’t say these things, because that’s why I was there. I didn’t, couldn’t say.
Each week I dragged myself to see him, crossing London from west to north, walking through terraced streets, compiling lists of things we might discuss – longing, regret, forgiveness, marriage. But as soon as I was in his room, had removed my coat and then, with some embarrassment, another layer – for it was always hot – I forgot about the lists. Instead I started on the story. It was as if