Reading Groups

The Gothic Heiresses of Jane Eyre with Mary Anna Evans

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4 Sessions Mondays, 6:00 pm EDT - 7:30 pm EDT April 13 to June 1, 2026

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
4/13, 4/27, 5/11, 6/1
Online via Zoom

Join Dr. Mary Anna Evans for an exploration of flawed, but very human, women fighting to choose what their lives will be—all inspired by the tale of Jane Eyre.

In Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë interpreted the Gothic novel for her time, portraying the unforgettable title character with a revolutionary first-person narrative style that changed the art of novel writing forever. Widely regarded as one of the first feminist novels, Jane Eyre celebrates a woman who charts her own path through a world that would like to force her into a life considered “suitable” for a woman with no money or family. This path winds through a classic Gothic milieu—a foreboding mansion, a troubled suitor, frightening voices in other rooms, the threat of fire and destruction—and it has inspired novelists since then to reinterpret this story of a woman navigating a dangerous world alone.

Almost a century later, Daphne du Maurier re-interpreted Jane Eyre and its Gothic sources in Rebecca (1938), placing her crumbling mansion and Byronic hero in an interwar England where modernity is rapidly shunting aside the man, the aristocracy that made him, and the feudal estate that supports him. In Rebecca, du Maurier pushes Brontë’s first-person narrative technique even further, giving readers a protagonist who reveals everything but her name and the things she hides from herself.

And, in this century, twenty writers came together to write original stories for an anthology inspired by and named after one of Jane Eyre‘s most famous and beloved lines: “Reader, I Married Him.” Inspired by that immortal declaration, these stories range from intimate explorations and modern retellings to futuristic imaginings. Taken as a whole, they lead readers of today through a fresh exploration of Charlotte Brontë’s evocative creation.

Reading List:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read Jane Eyre up to the introduction of Rochester, which is about a quarter of the way into the book.

What to expect from this reading group: This will be a guided conversation. Dr. Evans will provide context, but the participants are encouraged to come with questions and observations of their own to share.

Upcoming Programming: Continue your exploration of the Gothic in other reading groups at The Center, including Skin Deep: Beauty, Horror, and the Gothic Tradition with Amanda Lehr, starting in April, and Revisiting Frankenstein with Ana Klimchynskaya, starting in May. Then, join Kyle McCarthy and Leslie Jamison on May 6th when they discuss Immersions, a modern Bluebeard tale steeped in the shadows of New York City and the cloisters of rural France.

Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable. Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Mary Anna Evans

Mary Anna Evans

Mary Anna Evans holds an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Camden and a PhD in English literature from the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on female crime novelists’ approach to the portrayal of gender and justice. This work has taken her to archives on both sides of the Atlantic, including the private holdings of The Christie Archive Trust. A book based on this research, Agatha Christie and the 20th Century Woman Rewriting Female Justice, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026. Evans is the co-editor of the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity, and HRF Keating Award-nominated Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie. She is also the author of seventeen mystery novels, which have received recognition including the Benjamin Franklin Award and the Will Rogers Gold Medallion. Her seventeenth novel The Dark Library was published in June 2025.

About this series

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