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Regarding Unclaimed: Jane E, Friendless Orphan—Book 1
I received my first iPhone in 2010. My first thought upon using the touchscreen was, “Well, crap. There goes Jane_E.” That’s the danger of writing at the future, I suppose: there’s a very good chance you’ll find yourself wrong before you die.
Strangely, it was a comfort being wrong about something. All the thing’s I’d been right about—the burgeoning of bioterror, the spread of war and poverty across the globe, the ways in which they spread, our ever-widening psychic disconnect with biology—all had hit a little too close for my comfort in the years since I’d first let this Jane’s story hit daylight.
There is additional comfort in being wrong. The whole point of writing the 2006 edition of Jane_E, Friendless Orphan: A Memoir was to show that a poor orphan whose sole possession is integrity still has a lesson to teach us, living in an age of unparalleled material comforts. We will always need her strength. We will always need her honesty. We will always need her depth of self. Whether she hears the grinding of stagecoach wheels on gravel, the roar of a spaceship, or the gentle thump and swish of fingertips against a touchscreen, we will always need Jane Eyre.
Erin McCole Cupp
July 2016
