The Room author evokes a touching relationship between the lesbian diarist Anne Lister and her boarding school lover Eliza Raine
Much less is known about Eliza Raine, who was born in Madras, the illegitimate daughter of an English father and an Indian mother, sent back to England at the age of six and orphaned shortly after. In 1814 Eliza was committed to an asylum where she remained incarcerated for the rest of her life. Scholars have claimed her as the inspiration for Bertha in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
There is no doubt that the two girls were deeply involved. While the first known surviving entry of Lister’s diaries was written after she had already left the school, it was prompted by a long visit to the Listers by Eliza. The two girls continued to write passionately to each other for years, Eliza addressing Anne as her “darling husband”, until forced by Lister’s infidelities to accept that they would not have a future together.
Donoghue is at her very best evoking the mysteries and miracles of first love, the magical discoveries of an intoxicating private world for two. The two girls share an attic room at the school that they nickname the Slope. Under the eaves in this unlikely box-room paradise, Anne slowly and skilfully draws the outsider Eliza from her carefully constructed protective shell and sets her blazingly alight.
If she had confined herself to the tiny world of the Slope, Learned by Heart would have been a triumph. A trademark of Donoghue’s fiction is her blend of profundity and plot, but in this novel she has allowed research to take the place of action. The book brims with the minutiae of school life, the lessons studied and games played, the outings taken and the many draconian rules and regulations. While these are interesting enough, they do little to keep the pages turning.
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