Author: Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

‘I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist.’ – FLEABAG.

“Where’d you just go?” – HOT PRIEST. At the heart of Fleabag’s awkward sex scenes, off-hand quips, and family rifts lies this most important question: “Where” is Fleabag going? Often described as a ‘tour-de-force’, the fever and frenzy of Fleabag lies in the show’s refusal ever to stop. Fleabag narrates her own life whilst the action around her continues, rapidly focusing in and out of these two spaces, hanging between the balance of the two. But this constant momentum never falters or halts, seemingly in perpetual pursuit of whichever destination Fleabag is aiming for, regardless of the chaos surrounding the tracks. The confessions of Fleabag still echo – confessions we have taken to be ‘honest’, ‘feminist’ windows of clarity about ourselves, about womanhood under the strain of the 21st century. But, what if Fleabag never tried to “go” to us in these moments of fourth-wall fragmentation? What if we were not just spectators, but Fleabag’s new best friend, or Fleabag’s psyche? Fleabag doesn’t define our role, our role is irrelevant; our connection to Fleabag is the destination. 

Bertold Brecht redefined the role of the audience under his pioneering theory of ‘epic theatre’ isolating the audience and manipulating the tether between audience and actor. There is no set power. No set control. In one scene the audience is held by a leash only to be holding the leash over the actors the next. The audience’s perception and jolting of the stage allows for art to be transformed, making it “not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”. Fleabag’s first televised word is “you”;  Fleabag effortlessly seizes you, hurtling you along with her. I have yet to find someone who wants her to let go, who finds her immediate intensity overwhelming. The connection we create with her by becoming “you” is non-confrontational and seemingly natural.  We are “you”. But who is “you”? “You” is deictic and cannot exist outside of the context Fleabag has placed it in, thus redefining the audience, not as spectators of her so much, but also spectators of ourselves and how we draw these connections with others. “You” is a role waiting to be filled, reflecting Fleabag’s loneliness, but also the show’s examination of connections. We are an undefined role to her. We don’t exist to her outside the ramblings of her mind. We aren’t her confidants. We aren’t her attempt of rationalising her behaviour through finding a common, shared experience of “you”. We are the glance she gives in the mirror, the raised eyebrows we give when eye contact flits to another. We are figments of her perception and an example of the very extremes of connections. 

“I am obsessed with audiences,” confesses Waller-Bridge in her introduction to the play’s script. The audience isn’t trying to be won, bought, or rationalised by Fleabag – our connection with her exists out of a compulsion to distract and input. The original play reads like the fumbling mind palace of post-embarrassment realisation, provoked by flashing a loan manager. Whilst there is no explicit direction to suggest this, the play is split into thirds: meeting the manager, acting as a descent into Fleabag’s mind with the manager just being a voice we hear and process; Fleabag’s inner monologue where time seems to stop as we enter her hysteria; resuming and returning to the manager and the blur between monologue and naturalism. The middle part, which is the main part, is a dialogue with herself where she is frantically self-criticising and searching for the right answer, getting lost in her memories along the way, where she distracts herself from the situation at hand with macabre intrusions. 

My attempt at watching Fleabag aged 16 threw me into a spiral of over-analysis. Who was I meant to be connecting with during the dialogue? Where is Fleabag going and where do I break? My countless rewatches of the show couldn’t answer it. With every run I found myself addressing different people and changing the levels of connection I held with the audience, loosening the leash on a line before clinging onto it for dear life the next.  There is no clear consistency; you, Fleabag, must decide what information is going to directly connect to the front row.  Waller-Bridge wrote a script that rigorously demands you to perceive yourself through connection. The play cannot function without the understanding of it. The realisation is she is not speaking to us, but herself, addressing us as a distraction from the mess and trying to realise which response to her life will make the best connection in order to move forward. In the same way that we can’t make eye contact when stressed, feel the need to fiddle when anxious, or fidget when bored, Fleabag speaks as a way to distract herself.  Her mind is boiling over, and we are her thought process and intrusive comments, before choosing to turn the heat off or scream. We are the distraction taking her out of the constant momentum of her life, allowing her to live in her head and her body. We are both being taught by Brechtian whispers about our connections and are being used, obsessionally, by Waller-Bridge’s hunger for extreme connectivity.

“I’m not obsessed with sex. I just can’t stop thinking about it” confesses Fleabag, almost immediately after showing us a racy night of anal sex whilst meeting us for the first time. If Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s intention for Fleabag to explore “power, control, people trying to hold everything together”,  is to be realised, this is achieved through Fleabag’s connection with us, and with sex.  

FLEABAG -I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like. What to hate. What to rage about. What to listen to. What band to like. What to buy tickets for. What to joke about. What not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in. Who to vote for and who to love and how to…tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far, I think I’ve been getting it wrong.

Her confession epitomises the experience of operating in extremes. Clinging on to sex, people, whatever, obsessively, acts as a way to find a calling. An honest distraction, a pause, in her life. The sex is complicated, hot, raw, confusing, tender, and tangled much like her connection with us.  The hunt for sex is often seen as a game, a mission. Take Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. “Let us sport as we may” for the victory of pleasure. Pleasure that is won through an art of persuasion and flirting,  a series of steps and follies to achieve, a game we’ve knowingly played for millennia. For Fleabag, sex is the final destination, acting as her “someone to tell me” when she has no one.

 Fleabag operates in extremes; extreme honesty, extreme connection, the extremes of sex. Fleabag goes from sex as a constant distraction, to celibacy.  After a night that left me a confusion of anger, grief, loneliness and fear, I took the same vow, albeit brief. Abstinence, however, cannot miraculously solve everything, and once sex enters your life, it is difficult to get it to leave; that part of yourself grows into a nagging obsession but in a new unrecognisable form of relationship. Celibacy acts as a stopgap for this higher calling Fleabag craves, as it comes with its own rules, regulations, and restraints. A primal direction, like intrusive thinking to the point of dissociation or mindless shagging, to keep you in line. But, for Fleabag, as for me, this change is still a distraction. She repeatedly turns to us, gushing over “his [HP’s] arms” on the way to a Quaker meeting. We are her distraction, her loophole, so that she can explore a new connection, whilst retaining the habits of old connections. We aren’t the connection with a being outside of herself that can “tell [her] how to live her life”, as we are part of her life.

Despite the distraction of sex, Fleabag continues to talk to us during it. The connection is stifled, unable to reach its full potential causing her to connect elsewhere. When Fleabag finally has sex with Hot Priest she doesn’t want to be distracted. She doesn’t want us, actively pushing us away, shutting the door on us as if we’ve walked in. A new, full connection has been formed. One that she wants to wholly cherish and not leave. One she wants to be completely present for. Slowly,  we see her cutaways become less frequent during scenes featuring the two of them. She is letting us go, she is not letting her perception and the intrusions of her mind limit her. The connection with us is re-evaluated towards the end of series two, and we see her relationship and use of us change. She isn’t moving on from hijacking us into being her therapist, because we never were that to her, she is choosing to be present, to make lasting connections, and to stop making the most lasting connection and presence in her life the way she responds to life outside of herself.  The context of her “you” has changed; we still exist to observe her, but we are no longer invited into the inner sanctum of her mind. To escape the distraction of self-dependence. To teach us to live presently. To “shape” the way we perceive ourselves and our love. 

Image from the National Theatre 2019 production poster at Wyndham’s Theatre, London

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

“Many things might be regarded as the hallmarks of this competition, but the eagerness to embrace change isn’t one of them” – Jeremy Paxman, 2020.

“University Challenge. With your host” … “Bamber Gascoigne” interrupts my father, tea in hand, settling down for some Monday night armchair quizzing. For my father, the host will always be Bamber, whereas I am part of the newly inaugurated Amol generation. We, like thousands of other families, groups of students, and housemates, up and down the country, see each era of University Challenge as part of the Monday night ambience – consistently transmitting throughout the school year, consistently baffling us, and consistently challenging the random pockets of seemingly useless information we have stored away. But how does one graduate from the sofa to the lightbox adorned desk?

The team from Durham University is representing an institution famed for its cobblestone streets, a beautiful array of colleges, and the worst nightclub in Europe. Its recent academics include Joe Ancell, historian, flautist, Greek dictionary, and expert climber; Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini, Elvet Riverside’s noisiest shoe wearer, anti-Dickens advocate, and fashion secretary; Jake Roberts, their captain with a profound ability to store away information on both Dutch masters and long dead physicists; Luke Nash, our physical incarnation of Merlin Bird ID, and enthusiastic social sec; and James Gowers, football trivia coach come step-in Paxman, and reserve player.

 “How many do you reckon you can get?” James asks his grandmother, setting up the competition UC emits into living rooms, each viewer tempted by the allure of the small intellectual victories a correct starter buzz can provide, and “watching to be impressed”, as James reveals, by the spectacle of intelligence and reflexes on display. For a show that has cemented itself in pop culture history for having 14 letter Greek words as answers, being gifted a round that fits your unique knowledge-scape seems almost miraculous – spurring your viewership forward. Post-UC Twitter, a place that has become both coveted and feared by us as our broadcast date draws ever nearer, feeds this excitement, no matter how high or low your score. One thing UC has taught us is to be content with your knowledge and take pride in it. Until a recent shift, the consensus of the show was something, as Luke put, where students in “dodgy fashion and unironed shirts” battled for academic valour with highly classical questions and antiquated answers. Now, however, the academic valour is something to play with, enjoy, and laugh about. Correct answers may not be derived from the most lucid stream of consciousness, you may be reeling the answer in from a vault of facts originated through 1am doom scrolling and not from a sophisticated book, however, “does it really matter where knowledge comes from?”, mulls Jake, “if your answer is still right?” When we, from Jake’s living room during Monday evenings in deep January, buzzed in with a correct answer, we still got to experience that pride and satisfaction that we’ve felt for years watching the show, even with our filming date looming above us. Knowing that your answer to a question derived from an offhand comment from a lecturer, or that the composer of the music round bonus came to you from a Wes Anderson soundtrack, you realise it doesn’t matter at all where knowledge is gathered as any knowledge is celebrated here.

Quizzing prowess is often celebrated in this country with jackpot prizes, rounds of pints, scampi fries, and bragging rights. “It’s quite easy to get yourself involved” according to James. After all, who doesn’t love a pub quiz? The arguments over a sticky pub table over the right answers are “fundamentally intertwined with British pub culture”, says Luke. Mates, UC inclined or simply up for some fun, gather together for some knowledge-based rivalry. The Old Elm Tree became our pre-UC watching haunt, suggested by Luke due to its boast of hosting a challenging pub quiz that confuses both students and professors. For the rest of my team University Challenge wasn’t a graduation from South London pub quizzes, but the next step in their quizzing journeys. Luke and Joe had both been part of competitive quizzing teams at school and met James and Jake at Durham Quizbowl. Imported from America, Quizbowl is a place where the questions are cryptic, varied, and rapidly fired at contestants. Universities face off at large-scale tournaments that attract hundreds of quizzing students, who can be recognised from a UK quizzing leaderboard, featuring alongside Chasers from ITV’s The Chase. “Sport-like quizzing”, as Jake put it, seemed to me like UC on steroids, a far abstraction from the pub quizzes I was familiar with. However, my first visit to Durham’s Quizbowl practice as part of my preparation for the show was a warm welcome into the quiz-world that UC, in part, has helped cultivate. 

When telling people about my imminent airing I’m often eagerly asked “did you win?” and “what do you win?”. Whilst a BBC contract guards the answer to the first question, the latter is nothing, which is often met with confusion. UC offers simply bragging rights, your lightbox nameplate, and a trophy for your institution. Whilst the quiz being televised for the scrutiny of the nation, or your university being reigning champions at the time of filming, does set some lofty expectations, the stakes themselves aren’t high; it’s all for some light entertainment and a good story at the end of it. Quizbowl echoes this friendly form of quizzing, even when the questions are harder than UC ones (difficult to imagine, I know). We laughed over clues that were painfully directed at American players and were nonsense to us, we poked fun at the absurdity of some of the bonus round categories, and we traded tips on how to learn more random points. During filming Jake and Luke recognised many of our competitors, both in the greenroom and on the airing series, from Quizbowl – showcasing the breath of this community, both in knowledge and location. As a nation we love quizzing, and from pubs, schoolrooms, studios, and unoccupied seminar rooms, we know how to have fun with it – something the Amol era of UC has nurtured.

“You are people of ignorance too” responds Paxman to a slightly bemused, slightly terrified team of KCL’s brightest. Paxman approached the “smart ass” teams he was presented with with the contempt of a Victorian schoolmaster. Unapologetic. Scathing. Formidable. The Paxo era is noted for its presenter’s brazen approach. Being fans of the show, we were unsurprised to hear he would be stepping down, yet looking back, we were all at a loss for who would take his place. No one would be like Paxman. But, the show didn’t need another Paxman. During his later series, more and more questions began to reflect the more diverse university courses on offer, like animation or game design, allowing more students to be included in the game than before, keeping UC in the quizzing zeitgeist.  “Paxman’s snobbery was part of the appeal” confesses Luke. But, “Amol was definitely more welcoming” admits Luke, with Jake adding that “he didn’t have to be so friendly during filming…”.  The show is still fiercely mind boggling, but what we came to realise as our anki-decks piled up by the thousands, is that it is just fun and games – especially when the history of house music round briefly became memed and remixed. Amol asks about mascots and adds in quips about his own favourite musicians and philosophers during filming. Off-camera he talks about his lunch and jokes around with us. The days of stuffy Oxbridge teams in St.Michaels jumpers gifted by their grandmother’s Christmases ago are firmly behind, instead, one could even describe the new UC look as cool, with contestants and presenter alike having as much fun as possible when faced with difficult questions, 5 different cameras, and Roger Tilling’s voice booming around the studio.

***

I signed up for University Challenge, partly, as a joke. During my rather structureless gap-year, University Challenge’s consistent Monday night slot became a weekly marker and something I looked forward to returning to after work. My good friend Olivia had started English Literature at Oxford, and I received an enviable text, ‘Just did the University Challenge application test, I got 11…’. I never anticipated that my desire to send a similar text back, and to laugh about our lacklustre performances of academic rigour, would lead to me texting her ‘I MADE THE TEAM????’. We found out we made the team in the last week before Christmas, each nursing various stages of hangovers and being unable to contain the excitement. “UC kind of felt distant, [something] that just happened on TV, and that other people did” recalls Joe, my fellow Fresher on the team; it had never occurred to us that this is something that people actually applied to do. But now we, being newly inaugurated university students, could be challenged, and so we applied for the written test. Our first challenge would be to find these testing sites. “I couldn’t actually find my way to Mary’s and bumped into Jake who was also a bit lost” admits Ancell. This would become a theme of ours as our team would learn to navigate Manchester train stations, the maze of Media City, and the eternal corridors of the studios whilst all being a bit lost and clouded by the excitement and fear of the questioning that would come.

The “distance” of UC kept us in a perpetual state of amazement. Post-dinner revision slots  in the tucked away desks in St. John’s library, I would look out at the dark Durham sky, depressed with the blues of January, and catch my reflection. An array of flashcards in front of me, of which our collective pile of cards and Ankis reached 8000 –  “is this really happening to me? Am I now a person who is on a show like this?” I still can’t believe it, and neither can the rest of us realise “how the hell”, as Luke put it, got to this point. I probably won’t until I see myself on the TV; the same TV that has projected all those “distant” UC students and stars on a Monday night, will soon bare my face too, and maybe that will make it less distant. The Media City Holiday Inn, our refuge during filming, echoed this distant, start-struck bewilderment down its corporate corridors. We couldn’t believe that Amol Rajan and Roger Tilling (an actual man not just a voice) were eating breakfast on the table across the room. The evening before in the bar we scouted out other suspiciously studenty groups of 5 that appeared, a sort of celebrity gracing the air, as we realised these people were here, taking time off uni for a reason that had to be kept secret, now part of the same club as us.

Before filming you aren’t told who you’re playing, you have a time and that’s it. The team you just brought a drink with could very well be the team who thrash you the next day for millions of people to watch. This “distance” between you and the people of University Challenge never really leaves, even when Amol is joking with you behind your respective desks during a filming break, or when you buzz in and hear your name, or when the iconic theme tune blares through the studio to count the cameras in; you can’t help but laugh with complete amazement.

Keeping the team a secret has been “almost impossible” admits Luke. Seeing five students tapping a table in the SU cafe and blurting out answers to questions read from a brain-sized book probably did look slightly suspicious. For once we weren’t allowed to give the correct answers, having to hastily reply “quiz” when people would ask how we all knew each other when we bumped into each other in Jimmies, or were asked by friends at the Trevelyan College pub quiz. 8 months since filming we can now share our starters for 10 with you on Monday the 7^th of October, BBC 2, 8:30pm. For now, it’s goodnight from the Series 31 Durham Team, goodnight, and goodnight from me too, goodnight.

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini 

The world of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel contains the nostalgia of a time we never saw. A time when tourism was more than Instagram destinations and drinking cheaper booze. As the symmetrically perfect landscape of The Grand Hotel flickers between the hotel’s height and its slow descent to obsolete grandeur, we must ask what happened. Where did all these buildings go? The truth is, they didn’t go anywhere, we simply moved on without them, trapping them in a Haversham-like web of past and decay, with no room for the future to whisper some resurrecting hopes through. L’Hotel Grande Bretagne haunts the promenade of Bellagio, as oblivious Americans snap and sip in the shade of its glory. 

In my almost 20 years of life, my Italian homeland has changed. Gone are the days of people not knowing where Lake Como was; I have met people now who not only know where the place that has defined my summers is, they have swum on the shores of my village, walked the same cobbled staircases as me, jumped off the same bridge as thousands of Italians, Romans, and Lombardian people did before. People want that Italian summer. It’s a rather enviable summer and one I have taken for granted for a long time. There are certain times of the day when sitting on the porch back in Nesso the whole lake goes quiet. The lake glitters as the sun arches over the mountains just right, stardust dancing from the watery depths below, the boats retire, and even from my perch up in the heavens of the village, you can hear the gentle sighs of the lake, yawning as it nuzzles against that familiar shore. This should be enough. This was enough. But it isn’t anymore. 

Lord Byron spews hundreds of tourists off its deck. Manzoni lingers, puffing and panting, zigzagging across the lake not far behind, carrying the same load of hungry eyes and cameras. Out onto the promenade of Bellagio, they flounder, wondering where next to sit and sip. The Grande Bretagne looks on, paralyzed. Birthed as a response to Lord Byron, the Grande Bretagne served to house these future poets of the English upper class. This pilgrimage to the ‘pearl of the lake’ was one to see a place of wildness, of mystery as the mist rises on a silent morning, of inspiration, all under the shelter of the endless mountains, water and sky. Before meeting his end, Percy and Mary Shelley took shelter by the lake, hiding from the endless troubles flung at them during their marriage. A refuge. A stop away from the rest of the world. To find inspiration and keep beating on against the current. A sanctuary like no other. The Shelleys, Byrons, Flauberts of a new age, a belle-epoch, were to be sheltered by The Gran Bretagne. She provided all they needed. The grand mistress of the lake, providing international schooling and scandal in her grounds. Home comforts next to Italian ruins. Panoramic views of infinite sublimity. A search for Italy. Elegentiza from all over Europe flocked to her arms, longing for that Romantic experience. To bathe oneself entirely in all the lake had to offer to them. And yet, to remain hungry. 

From there she rose. The Gran Bretagne. Named in honour of those poets who came before her, she reached out to those around her after being wrongfully christened L’Hotel Grande Italia. Tourists crept back in after il Duce was caught along her shoreline, and with them crept old fashions, roast beef, and a surprise visit from an unelected Churchill. Whilst cigars, watercolours, and oysters flowed, locals learned how to become professional mixologists, oyster shuckers, and linen pressers. It was here my Nonno learned to cook; having never been afforded such continental delicacies at home, this job gave him more than a culinary education. The peach wedding cake on the lake was feasted on by all. 

However, the Italy the tourists were searching for wasn’t one that was pleasant to those who had always known her. Coffee cups clinked on the terraces outside, whilst inside people dreamed dreams unlike those of the Romantics; escape, revolution, to be better. She was like no other. She saw it all, and her arms heavy, mustered a response. People came to her for a better life, even if only for a night.

Sunrise. An orange lake. An old man pushes out a batell further into the abyss. The battering of a carpet, the hum of a lawn mower. Through the green, the snakes draw open their eyes to the uninterrupted, mice playing in her skeleton. Something happened. A shift. And now she lies alone, unable to keep up. No more Romantic poets. No more escape. 

Since Succession, James Bond, Clooney, and Star Wars arrived, she has been forgotten. They are the future, the ideal portrait of wealth, class, and taste. She can’t fit in. Her ballrooms, marble stairs, palm trees, and muraled ceilings mean nothing to the insatiable crowd of today. The iconic cobbled saliti of Bellagio is nothing more than a backdrop. Scenes of happiness, wealth, and a supposed Italian summer play out on her stage, the real Bellagio cowering off stage, hiding behind the alleyways, pushed far from the actions. Boats recklessly drive towards the shore, smiling for the camera as locals close their shutters. The towns swell under the mass of footsteps, yet no footfall is to be seen by the locals, as tourists flock to industry-approved havens, found from one of the endless flock constantly bleating about a perfect Lake Como itinerary, away from the alberghi, alimentari, and agriturismi. Mountains peep out from gapes between bars where Aperol constantly flows and boutiques where the silk industry has departed in favour of Armani and Gucci, the mountains that beckoned people all those centuries ago stand hidden from the spotlight, a minor role in this melodrama. Scripts written in English, costumes loaned from theatres from far afield, is this really Italian, or just an American fetish? 

Locked away in plain sight. Waiting ever patiently for this Renaissance of the Lake to reach her. Her, covered in cobwebs. Her, who’s marble staircase lies destroyed, stolen in some other house. Her, surrounded by a grail of thorns. Holding on to whatever of her she has left; using the cobwebs to feign a wedding dress, trying to keep the new rodent house guests happy. Like the rest of the lake’s features, she can’t come out, as she doesn’t align with them. Unlike The Grand Budapest Hotel, the love stories of The Grande Bretagne remain hidden, decaying with the timbers. There is no interest, no eventual demolition, only rot. 

This is the history of a building that no one wants anymore. Yet, we still need her. She carries a lot with her, representing what we could have been as travellers. People who slip into the scenery, do not make the scenery a prop. Lake Como is a place that is stubborn to move forward, and maybe you will think me stubborn and jealous too, yet this stubbornness is born of protection. There is only so much it can endure, and it is being exploited by too many, searching for the wrong Italy. When travel advice is so easy to encounter and when travel has become so quick, easy, and convenient, have we forgotten why we do it? We all want beauty, we all want the sublime, we want what those past travellers of The Grand Tour wanted, but we want it fast, on demand. By being too quick, and being too blind-sighted about where, and why, we travel, we miss out on where we are all together. We miss out on the immersion. We come to these places to pretend the beauty is ours, part of our existence, but how can we if we stay for so little time? The Lake is known by many, yet a stranger to most.

The Grand Bretagne is the cost of our travel. The lives, the history, and the buildings we affect by changing the way we travel. If we want beauty, we must be patient. We must push past the thorns, separate from the crowd, and bask in what once was, and what can still be. The beauty hasn’t gone away, we have just ignored it. 

By Emilia Brookfield

St. John’s College. 7:36pm. The window looks tiredly below at St. Mary the Less. The bar is not open yet, there can only be one thing left to do, become the “reader”. 

When my reading list for 1^st year English arrived those many weeks ago, the sight of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre caught my sneering eye off guard. What a field day it would have as I scorned the text for daring to exist next to Austen’s masterpiece of Emma; how could such a juvenile piece, sneered at by even the ever cynical 13-year-old Emilia, have reared its head as I emerged into the complexities of a degree level reading.

 Charlotte remains my least favourite Bronte. The turbulent, destructive (yet witty) Branwell ranks higher than her on my charts. His cartoonish scribbles of a taunting death at one’s elbow reach wit and gothic twistedness far beyond Charlotte’s reach. Bronte’s accompanying fresher’s author, Plato, rally’s that art is full of mimesis, simply layers and layers of shadow, light, and imitation; these imitations are especially apparent in Charlotte’s writing as she tries to emulate the broodiness of her sisters. Charlotte appears to only mimic those feelings that her sisters so perfectly put. When other’s swooned over the plateable gothic of Jane Eyre or the wildly stormy, yet ultimately dull, Villette, I cemented myself further away from Charlotte’s camp, declaring myself to be a firm comrade of Emily and Anne. Although perhaps in being so obstinate, I was more Eyre than met the eye…

Reluctantly I settled down to the opening chapter. The wind whips down the Bailey, swathes of tired students scurry along, the Victorian graves sigh under the weight of the leaf carcasses; I read in both this world, and the hauntingly similar world of Jane, from my window seat. 

Jane’s stubborn procession through life has become an oddly great comfort to me. Trapped in the red room alone, haunted by the whispery ghost of her uncle, I took solitude; I too am that girl afraid, in an unknown room, haunted by the spirits of those who lived before me, hiding behind the curtains of some haunted hide-n-seek.  Floating along in this strange newness, the first few weeks of freshers are full of expectation more than anything. Unknown voices rise around Jane in her new Lowood environment; threads of conversation catch her ear, yet she cannot grasp them. She is surrounded by people her own age, yet is unable to distinguish a single person.  This constant feeling of overcrowded loneliness permeates Freshers. The voice across the dining hall belongs to a physics student, yet turning you lose them, unable to connect that voice with yours in harmonious conversation beyond the parameters of the department they belong to and the papers they sat one June afternoon. 

Thrown into a tumult of new places, names stick when visuals can’t be mustered. Thornfield, Lowood, Millcote, Gateshead, Lowton – all these decidedly English names that could be anywhere. The anticipation of what these mythic places look like as you finally are asked to meet for an audition, a meeting, a seminar, in one of these made-up halls. Jane believes herself to be smart, admirable, respectable upon leaving Lowood; graduation to Thornfield displaces this. She has no idea where she is going, asks to help too often, and is naïve to the stately and suspicious goings-on. Out of depth is the best way to describe her, and as a fresher in those formative weeks. 

The window is fogging up with that Durham dampness. Only the leaves remain. My four walls creak under the weight of many maddening bodies. Am I that brooding girl? Or are we all her. Her adventures, dull and dangerous, make for a great selection of anecdotes, and is that all we can hope for at this moment? The gothic works as it takes the familiar and distorts it; you feel comfort whilst also checking behind you as you walk down the corridor. It’s that faint familiarity we hold on to when finding our ways back. Charlotte may have some merit as a trusty guide or a stoic beacon in the mist.