Why I Wrote Jane Blanks and the Weight of Her Name

For many years, Jane Blanks existed in my life as a name in a parish register.

She appeared in court records, census returns, newspaper reports — always described, never speaking. Her life was reduced to categories: illegitimate child, deceived wife, immoral woman, parish burden.

The more I read, the clearer it became that this was not a woman without agency, but a woman whose voice had been repeatedly taken from her.

My interest in stories like Jane’s began long before I discovered her in my family tree. While studying English Literature, I became fascinated by Victorian sensation fiction — novels obsessed with scandal, secrecy, transgression, and female reputation. These books asked readers to peer behind respectable façades, yet they often silenced the very women whose lives were under scrutiny.

Jane Blanks lived the reality those novels fictionalized.

When I realized she was my ancestor, I knew instinctively that I did not want to write her story as a curiosity or a crime. I wanted to understand how it felt to live under that level of judgement — and how she survived it.

This novel is my attempt to give Jane the interior life the records deny her. It is not an attempt to excuse wrongdoing, but to understand how power, fear, and silence shaped the choices available to women like her.

Jane stood in court twice and told the truth when it would have been safer not to.

That alone made her worth writing about.