Dear Jane,
How I love your work. Reading your work is like listening to the voice of a women's heart. You are witty, honest, clever, refined. I do have difficulties following you sometimes. This is because you lived in such different times than mine. Your language was baroque, like your music. If only you knew how you never cease to inspire in spite of that. Your stories, the desires of your heroines, they are universal. I love how, in spite of your own situation and the "true" stories surrounding your life, there seems to be a sense of hope. Instead of turning bitter, like some writers do, your characters do not have to suffer for it. I try to imagine you. Sitting by the window, looking out upon green hills and grey skies. Dreaming. Simply dreaming. Your hand, holding a pencil. Your mouth, slightly opened. Most artists I have come to know in my life, were kind of mean and distant. Like they belonged to an exclusive club that you could never give the right password to in order to enter. They could never be great artists unless they learned how to be kind, generous, loving, warmhearted. That is how I see you. It speaks from the words on your pages.
If we were living in the same era, I think we could have been friends. How I would have admired you for your courage to choose for love instead of wealth. To choose a profession that everyone told you was not fit for a women. We could have gone to balls together (I love that fact that you liked to dance). We could have made long walks, sharing thoughts about life and love. How I wish to know more of you. How I wish to make those walks and ask you so many questions about writing and happiness and the way you view your life and works. Would you have done anything different? Would you rather have lived in my time than yours? What would you think of my time? We have freedom of love and equal rights now. Could you ever have imagined that? The manners of society have become much more vulgar though. You would be shocked. We live at a much faster pace. A lot of women, including myself sometimes, read your books and long for a life like that. They long for quietness, seclusion, searching for the right words, being courted, hiding their skin behind long dresses, not giving away their love so easily. But I know you write from that longing yourself. The life in your time was not necessarily like it was in your books.
I wonder so often what you would write about were you living in this day and age. This, I think, is one of my most important questions to you.
Know that reading your stories makes my heart swell in my chest. It feels as big as the sky. You have managed to touch me like that, even after a few hundred years. I thank you for that. Thank you for showing me the greatness that a women can achieve by following her heart.
Yours truly,
Angela
