Re Jane

I think I first saw Re Jane on Books & Bao, maybe on a reading list about Korea. I’m not entirely sure because I put a lot of recommended books on hold over the months that the library was closed for covid.  Going in, I knew this was about a Korean-American girl in Flushing, but I didn’t realize until the familiar names started to mount up that this story is heavily Jane Eyre-influenced. I say influenced and not a retelling, because many names and some of the major story points transfer, but most of Re Jane is a unique coming-of-age story, not just a Jane Eyre modernization.

Jane Re is half-Korean, half- American, but growing up with her Korean aunt, uncle and cousins in Flushing.  I loved the setting, with so many familiar details. Windows on the World really was the fancy place to take visiting relatives. Later on, “Dan’s ESL Coffeehouse” posts jobs for traveling ESL teachers, and ESL students choose their names from Friends. (I taught abroad slightly after Jane did, with Carries and Mirandas in with the Monicas and Rachels.)

In the original, Mr Rochester isn’t really a great boyfriend, I mean, locking his wife away and then the attempted bigamy should pretty much disqualify him from heartthrob status, right? Here, Ed here is exactly the kind of guy you’d imagine flirting with the babysitter behind his wife’s back.  Instead of telling his wife that he doesn’t care about organic food as much as she does, he and Jane sneak his daughter Devon bright-colored ices and McDonalds dinners whenever Beth’s not around. This comes off much less forbidden-romance and more cringe.

I guess I didn’t see Beth as deserving of any of the awful things that happened to her. Ed’s wife, Dr Beth Mazer, is a women’s studies’ prof at Mason College, and the idea of a feminist academic who drinks wheatgrass juice and doesn’t shave felt like an underdeveloped stereotype. In some ways, I think Beth’s sloppy style is meant to set up a contrast to Jane’s hyperpolished Korean coworkers, but a woman who dares to look her age just doesn’t seem particularly villainous to me.

It’s really when Jane goes to Korea that the story of Re Jane takes off.  The Rochester romance is so cringy that I wanted her to marry perfectly-fine Changhoon just to stay away from him. (I knew he was the underwhelming St. John match, but still.) In Korea, the story of her family, and then some of the disparate pieces of her identity start to come together, and the narrative diverges from the expected Jane Eyre arc in interesting ways.  This is really the strongest and most engaging part of the novel.

I enjoyed how we saw characters grow and develop over time, not just Jane. Little Devon grows up, uncle Sang changes too, and Jane’s Brooklyn friend Nina finds her own path, with connections to the old neighborhood. Overall, I enjoyed this engaging coming-of-age story, with great scenes of older Brooklyn and Queens, but the central romance falls flat for me.

For other Jane Eyre-inspired modern fiction, I liked the Southern suspense reinvention The Wife Upstairs and the Australian outback version The Other Wife.