Screen adaptions of Jane Eyre

[MsSilentia]

I know this kind of analysis has been done before but then it seemed at least to me to be more of proving a narrow thesis about the novel than an attempt to comment on the adaptions in their own right. I will just give my opinion and I would love to be gainsaid by people who have their own opinion about the novel or the screen adaptions. I will just stick to the 1983+ adaptions since they are the only adaptions I have been able to see complete. Some of the earlier seem to have interesting angles but my knowledge of them is too fragmented.



The 1983 adaption was a nice piece of theater, usually cherished by purists who wish an adaption to be as true to the details as possible. It really is very true to the details. Unfortunately, what works in a novel does not necessarily work on screen.
The best part of it – and here it outclasses all the other adaptions – is the time at Loowood. The child actors are marvelous, especially when they avoid long theatrical lines and just act.
Then there is the part of the grown up Jane. Sorry, but there is too much cherishing of long, complicated lines from the book and too little acting for me. It would be great on stage but not here. I believe Zelah Clarke might have been good at theater but none would believe her a young girl, fresh from a convent-like charitable school. She was too confident, to matured from the beginning and did not seem to change thru the play. And she never got out of the theatrical style.
Timothy Dalton was good – in a commedia del art-like way. I laughed almost every time I saw him, looking at Jane like the Wolf must have been looking at The Little Red Cap, overacting the lines in a melodramatic way, using great gestures. He was funny and if that was the intention – good.
StJohn had it nailed, though. That sublimely abusive part he plays, which in the end lashes back and rouses Jane from his spell, sending her head over heels back to Thornfield and Edward Rochester. That was a nice performance.

I believe it was a mistake to not choose one angle of such a complicated novel but try to cover as much as possible. In my opinion it was also a mistake to not choose one way to interpret the novel, if necessary with some added scenes, instead of just cherishing the lines. In the end it felt very stiff and shallow. Filled up with all those beautiful lines it ended up empty of meaning. But of course – to choose one angle would have made a lot of people disappointed.



In the 1996 adaption they kept to one angle. I think that version is shortened behind the recognizable and did not really like it but I still respect their way of choosing one theme (or two really) and stick to that. One theme is the rebellious Jane. She is a rebel in the book but here they have put more pressure on that. The hair cutting scene at school was not true to the book, but if you do not wish to use a narrator or long outspoken declarations you will probably have to add some visual things.
And then there was the thing that made the novel Jane Eyre so famous and controversial. The novel was provocative and free-spoken. It was even thought to be morally dangerous. Today there is very little in the novel to provoke. But there is one thing more provoking today than it was then and that is the age difference. In the 1996 adaption they have made the most of it and that is at least courageous. The cost is of course that Edward Rochester had to be changed into something really soft and respectful in order to keep the couple acceptable. If she had been just a little less headstrong or he a little less respectful, then it would have been morally impossible today. But in this screenplay they mastered it and I felt it would be ridiculous to interpret it just as him abusing a young employee. But just put them side by side and say what you think! I bet almost everyone would say a dirty old man taking advantage of a teenager girl. I would for certain. This means the real Edward Rochester is sacrificed and if that is acceptable – I cannot decide my own opinion on that :-)
In the end they did also another courageous choice. This Edward Rochester is not only Hollywood-like decoratively scarred. He does really look like he has been stuck in a bonfire. It is worth respect.



To keep to one angle is dangerous, though. If you keep to the wrong angle…
I thought the 1997 version was terrible. I believe Ciaran Hinds admitted he had not read the novel at all. For me I wonder if even the screenwriter had read it, or if the adaption was just based on overhearing some intellectual discussions among people who had.
Yes, Edward Rochester is domineering, capricious, manipulating…yes he is a womanizer and quite dangerous to know. Yes, he is narcissistic and as for self awareness, well there is some difference between self-contempt and self-awareness…
But what then does Jane see in him? What I can see in that adaption is just a brute. All the other adaptions I have seen bring out something of the charm. There is humor, intelligence, warmth, an open mind and some caring for others, even in his own selfish way. He admires the Jane he sees, just because she is independent, honest, careful about her self-respect and so on. And also you see sometimes the man of world, the educated and experienced man who brings the outer world into her confined life.
In 1997 I saw nothing of it. Not in one single scene could I see anything worth liking, leave alone to fall in love with. He was a tyrant to everyone, which he is not in the novel. Even Mrs. Fairfax had a subdued look. They could not even make him tasty in his bedroom after the fire. In the novel, that is the scene where it begins to sparkle between them and no matter how flawed some adaptions might be, they still never fail that sparkle. And Jane panics, but she is also excited. Except in the 1997 version. Here she just panics and the way Rochester behaves would make it very weird if she had reacted any other way. Back in her own room, she seems scared, humiliated and trapped. How on earth could that scene bring on the erotic awakening of a young girl?
And Rochester in the novel learns. It is a very hard lesson but he gains it. The way this one greets Jane when she comes back in the end shows clearly that he has not learned anything. I would not care so much if it was not for what that does to Jane. What have they done to her? Jane Eyre as an insipid sop who will take bad treatment as the natural prize for love? The only explanation I can find for this adaption is that she has been so habitually abused through her life, so that she will always go back to an abusive man, simply because that is the only relationship she is able to handle.
To me this adaption is an insult to Jane Eyre. Jane in the novel is very careful about her own integrity. She knows she will have to fight for it and starts that fight the day after the proposal. You see nothing of this in the 1997 adaption if you do not count a soft, playful “argument” about the wedding dress. Yes she leaves after the failed wedding in this adaption too but she returns in a very different way. StJohn in the book is ruthless and mentally abusive. In this adaption he is kind and respectful and even if he becomes a little too ardent he is never the least abusive. Is that the reason for her to not only reject him but to run straight back to Rochester? And this adaption leaves out a very material circumstance in the book. Jane in the novel is not dependent anymore. If she can bear the social ban, which she once said she would, then she might go abroad with Edward Rochester without being his powerless property. Things might not have changed for him but they have certainly for her. This circumstance does not exist at all in the 1997 adaption. In that adaption she returns to become his mistress and only Providence saves her from that fate.

I know this interpretation of the novel is unthinkable to many readers who insist on calling her a virtuous saint, even a metaphor for Christ. But that is rubbish. You need huge blinkers to not see what is gradually breaking lose in her mind during her way back to Thornfield. You will have no need for brilliant references around the literature of the time to see that. You hardly even need to analyze. Just read the plain text!

True, there is a sado-masochistic angle in the novel. Victorian era was dark in many ways and domination-submission in a sexual context would be a very relevant theme in the time. But Jane in the book is too level-headed to give in to that. In the hour of trial she comes out to care about herself and will not become an object. In the 1997 adaption I believe that is how she will end up since Rochester did not even know how to be a kind man when he was blind. Regaining his sight he will probably abuse her.



Then there is the 2006 adaption. I believe Sandy Welch thought: Sod the philosophy. I’ll go for the psychology instead and for the social context a governess lived in. If that was a good choice – well that is a matter of taste. It was at least a good analysis of the different options of two different kinds of media. I like very much the strict way they keep to Jane’s perspective. True Edward Rochester does also have some flashbacks were Jane cannot follow him but to the whole it is her view on him, on Adele, on Loowood and so on. To me, this is the only screenplay that had the same atmosphere as the book. That was also written from a strictly personal perspective. It is a very powerful portrait of a young woman coming of age.
If it is true to Charlotte Brontë’s intentions is another question. Nobody can know that. But at least it challenges the ideas about Jane as a virtuous saint, the instrument for Edward Rochester’s redemption. In the novel that is his narcissistic way of defining her which she rejects. It sometimes feels a bit weird when readers seem to interpret the whole novel thru this male narcissism. Most people accept this as an early feminist work for God’s sake and Jane strongly refuses to be his angel.
The 2006 version is not totally true to the novel. Rochester is much modernized. I believe Charlotte Brontë meant him to be a man of modern ideas but time has left him far behind. I reacted on this, just as many others did. But then he is not the only one that has been softened. Almost every person have their most distinctive characters softened in some way. Jane certainly, but also Blanche Ingram and the other house guests. StJohn is softened and Helen Burns is sharpened instead. In the novel she says she is not fit to live in the world.
I have no idea if this is a way to bring across the psychology, which makes it necessary to make the characters comprehensible. Is that acceptable? Well it depends on what you want. It gives some good options at least. Like the way in which the child sees her abusers as monsters. The grown up woman sees them as humans. Except Lady Ingram, who reminds her of Mrs. Reed and awakens the little girl from Gateshead. And, thank God, Bertha is transformed into a human being. Mad and mentally disabled, yes, but not a monster in its cave anymore! To me that was the most troublesome part in a brilliant novel.


My favorite so far has to be the latest. Not necessarily because of the angle, even if I think it refreshing, but the acting is very convincing. Ruth Wilson running away from Thornfield in the early morning, looking like an abused teenager on the run, or Toby Stephens falling in thoughts over Bertha and bursting out against the innocent Adele - that is beautiful acting. And Eliza – sensible but cold as a fish…

It will be interesting to see the new screen-play this spring. Hopefully it takes up some new angle, which has not been explored before.
But for the philosophical themes about power-resistance, male-female, religion-nature, domination-submission and so on, then I believe no screenadaption will ever make fair to the book. 

[Emil Miller]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS6qyMNqa_w

You can forget the rest.

[MsSilentia]

Thank you.
This was the inspiration for the 1996 version, was it not? Pity there is so little of it on youtube.

[kiki1982]

Oh my God, I can't disagree more.

1944: Mr Rochester looked like he was on drugs or was vampire/Frankenstein. I mean, such over-gothic stuff works in a book, but don't try to do it on film or people will start to laugh at the point where they should be afraid. And Jane, well, Joan Fontain did her best, but as a fifties Jane she was not allowed to be Jane, so Jane was not self-aware enough. Not to mention that she went back to 'the only place people had ever been kind to [her]'... Gateshead . I never knew...

William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg in 1996 could have been a good result with some very good and clever abbridgements, but was messed up by the wrong acting. That kind of acting with lots of silence, lots of symbolism and foremost without passion, works very well in French where it is done normally and has a kind of under the surface tension. But it does not in English. I have never seen such a passionless and disinterested Rochester in my life. He just looked like he didn't care. Not where he made his first proposal, and not where he made his second one. His first scene was absolutely pathetic. Not Hurt and Gainsbourg were the culprits, though, I just think it was the aim of the director. Though the script had a lot of symbolism and was very well written.

2006 was a feminist, 21st century version of the story that had little to do with the real one. It showed a total lack of respect to Victorian culture in general apart fro the clothing, which is a side issue. Admittedly, it won a BAFTA... for the graphics. That says all, I think. That was the only interesting thing about it. It had a little mystery with the red scarf, but in the end, the script writer did not get anything of that book at all, like she has shown in the subsequent fruit of her pen Emma. Rochester was too cute and rude at the point where he should have been still polite, but a little moody. There is big difference. The whole thing after the wedding was just pathetic and untrue. Essentially, Welch had done the story, and nothing more, and with a lot of inappropriate liberty at that. She might as well have done nothing.

I still believe personally, although that is a very very unpopular opinion, that next to the 1982 adaptation, the 1997 adaptation is still the best. Although the film is too short to really make it an excellent one, it is still much better than 2006 will ever be. Yes, Rochester is forceful, yes he is violent (maybe a little too much, although he could be pictured slapping her I think, if driven to total desperation, and that is also in chapter XXVI (?) where he embraces her waist with one arm and says something along the lines of 'I could break her if I wanted as she is like a reed' or something. Pretty scare, if you ask me.), yes he is not aware of the consequencs of his actions for others, but if the book is read properly, it will become apparent that Rochester is at some points seriously deluded and can't see good from evil anymore. He is a brute, locking his wife up, he is a creep wanting to get a woman unwittingly into a bigamous marriage, he is downright disgusting in stringing Ingram along, poor girl, and not to mention stringing Jane along. I mean, I am actually at a loss how it is possible that people make excuses for him. If there was any man we knew now, doing the same things, he would not be very popular at all. Cheating on your wife is one thing, but locking her up in permanent darkness was even a horrible thing to do then. His circumstances are not an excuse for anything he does.
Jane is not, as any modern woman reader might believe, a self-aware girl with both feet in the world. She has never, ever, ever, been outside of Gateshead in her life before she goes to Lowood. Because of her childish naïvety she thinks it will no doubt be better there, but she finds it not to be. Still she learns to live with it thanks to Ellen Burns. At the point where she goes to Thornfield, she is eighteen, never went out of Lowood in those 10 years, or longer, obviously malnurished, so pale, scantly dressed and everything. She would be a strong characer, yes, but not like in the 2006 adaptation at all. That is a total misconseption. She is extremely confident, Rochester finds... for a girl who has coe out of the hole where she has been in for the last 10 years. y no means as confident as Ingram, for example, who is actually a lot more stupid than Jane is, but has had a more confidence nurturing existence (possibly too much of it). I found that, both in looks, and in demeanour, Morton did a much better job in doing Jane. She had already done costume drama before and had a very good script. Jane is outspoken, but she must not be made overly confident as she can't have been. She had seen nothing of the world, nothing of life, in order to feel confident and then she is swept away by Rochester who can of course do anything and she will believe him.

And no, Hinds did not read the novel, Morton did though, but Hinds also said that reading the novel in itself if you are doing a costume drama or whatever, is not a priority, because 'you can only get out of a script what is in it.' In that, neither Welch's Jane Eyre, nor Emma really offered anything deeper than what happened and some hesitating stabs in the dark that sometimes didn't even add up to readers in the public. The lead actress of Emma even had something to say about it, 'You cannot always do your own thing, because the director has a clear view.' (or something of the sort) Garai has a degree in English Literature in the meantime, and I doubt whether at that point she liked her own work really, based on that quote. But enough about that. The script Hinds and Morton had for their Jane Eyre did what it had to do: it did cut in the story but it did not cut in the characters' characters at all. In a very few clever scenes, the script writer managed to put everything that had to be there. And maybe not a lot of symbolism, but in order to have a basic understanding, you can be confident that that film will supply you with it. Which the 2006 adaptation will certainly not.
And I do think that Rochester actually learns, also in this adaptation. Although it had to be short, it does convey what was in the novel to a great extent without having to spend another half hour over it. Rochester may come across as proud. That is what he is. He is not pleased for Jane to see him in that helpless state at first (yes still thinking about himself), because he thinks his game is up anyway, she might as well go away and not have the chance to gloat. He is a lot less rich, is no longer appealing, is no longer 'able' as they said in those days, in short he is a wreck. His outer appearance is a wreck. He only does not realise that it is not because he used to think that was the most important thing, that that is the most important to Jane. As she is 'small and plain', she might as well not care about it, because she can't change her own looks either. And, at any rate, he had never really been handsome, only rich (in the words of Fairfax). In his mind, she has come to tell him that she is marrying another. He fusses over her in his heart, he is happy that she is there (he is up at 6-7 to ask whether she is really there, whether her room was dry (obviously the roof is leaking), whether she has everything she needs etc), but at the same time does not dare to show that weakness to her (although she has heard it when she comes down the stairs in the morning), because he is afraid of being rejected, scaring her away. It is very ambiguous: obviously, he would love her to go because his pride is hurt at her seeing him so helpless, but at the same time, he would desperately like her to stay because he loves her dearly. Rochester, in the 1997 adaptation, does not embrace her like he does in the book when he first realises she is there, but he is visibly terribly pleased, though checks himself quite quickly, like he does in the book more slowly. He urges her to go away because 'it will be lighter on the heart as go away you shall' (in the books he says 'oh, but you must marry one day Jane'.). She will not. At this point, the adaptation does cut the whole thing short, it is a bit of a shame, none of that subtle pulling-pushing motion, but it does what it says on the tin, though. He is humbled, he does love her, in that weak way, not in that aggressive, arrogant manner of before. He weeps, leans on her, has no desire to kiss her like he did before, he just wants to be with her, fire (passion) and water (emotions) have joined each other. That embrace at the end of the adaptation says as much as the whole chapter in the novel. He crumbles as man and needs Jane. The only thing that is absent, is the praying and God-thing. In the whole adaptation there is no trace of not praying, nor is there at the end, how that cry of his, which Jane heard in Morton, was connected with his prayer and how he has now acknowledged that it was his own doing that everything was lost and that the fire of Thornfield, his blindness, his crippled hand, was punishment for his bad behaviour/morals. But I think that a proper watcher can discern that. At least that aspect cannot be called any worse than other adaptations which usually also avoid the issue, because they prefer to keep Bertha's treatment a good one (which it was definitely not), and prefer to avoid any issue involving God altogether.
As the adaptation closes, Rochester is seen strolling along the river with a child in his arms while Jane tells of 10 years of marriage. The other child walks along as well (it isn't Adèle, I suppose), and he teases Jane by tickling her and making her believe that there is a creepy crawly on her back. Ok, it is not like it is in the book, how he regained his eyesight when she was writing a letter, but there are very few adaptations that do that last bit, because it requires more film, even more, and is frankly told in one sentence. But, still we see a Rochester who has regained confidence, joy for life, has done his male duty in producing children, loves them (unlike how he loved Adèle), and loves his wife. It is in shrill contrast with their first walk together where he told her about Adèle and how she came to be. His manner of walking is totally different. In the first walk he strides and talks about himself, in the second he just enjoys, does not lead the way, but waits for her and his daughter.

The 1983 adaptaton was the book in action. It was good, but it was typical BBC studio drama. In other terms, I did find that Dalton's sometimes theatrical way of delivering his lines, was not realy suited to this stuff. It is good for James Bond, a Julius Ceasar/Mark Anthony and likewise, but not for a Rochester. When he proposes for the first time, makes you rather laugh and cringe than say 'yes'. I just... found him not believable in some instances. Jane was a very good Jane, and good script for her (although, it was almost word for word, so they couldn't really do a lot of bad to Jane), but I think the actress was much too old to play her. She did her best, that I grant her, and was helped by her lines and her voice (sounded very outspoken, but also a bit shy, just the good balance), but her face was just not believable for a girl of 18-19.

Although adaptations are largely about interpretation, I think that most modern adaptations are based on Jane as being outspoken and do not consider that in a 19th century light at all. Rochester is toned dow so that he is cute and no longer a creep. Although I do love him (as he is), he needs to be much more arrogant and despicable than they usually make him. Like Byron himself in fact. Incredibly despicable. The only people who do not think so are the Armenians. Because of toning that down, his change becomes bland and sugary. He is no longer a different man, he just merel regrets his faults. That is no good. It will be interesting to see the new adaptation, and the question is how much the script writer will have been influenced by the feminist papers that have been written on the work.

I rest my case .

[MsSilentia]

True Rochester is a crap in many ways but I doubt even a very inexperienced girl in Victorian era would fall in love with somebody just because he is a crap... There must be something to tempt her. That is one thing I miss in the 1997 adaption. There she seems to fall in love with his brutality!

But I wonder about interpreting Jane Eyre as without self confidence. The girl who has the nerve to advertize for a new situation in Victorian England must have some confidence. To argue with your employer almost from the start in a quite flirtatious way does also show some confidence I believe. To intimate to his face that Rochester does wrong to Adele, which she does in the novel also seems to require some confidence.
Not to speak about how she actually declares herself before Edward Rochester, not once but twice, when she thinks he is going to marry Blanche Ingram. And she argues with him on religious and philosophical issues, let be that he does not seem to listen very much.
If anything, Jane in the 2006 adaption seems to have less of the confidence to start with than in the novel. At least she seems more afraid of displeasing and Rochester has to make a more visible effort to have her trust him.
There is another difference too from the novel in the way some of the house guests treat her and maybe that is most untrue to Victorian era. But I don't know. There is something about being polite towards your host and I suppose that was a standard in Victorian England too. And even in the novel there is some difference among the house guests in the case.

Yes, Rochester in 2006 is a little too "cute" for the role but that is a deceptive cuteness. He is still a manipulating fox and as for his behavior towards Blanche Ingram, well that is worse than in the novel.
No, I do not believe Edward Rochester would be a man to choose today but that is another issue. We do not have to be thankful to find a man who is able to treat us as intelligent creatures or declare that he wants us for what we are. We do not even have to find ways to "handle" a husband. Thank female rights for that.
We do not even have to be grateful for meeting people who can see beyond social barriers.
First time I read the novel I thought her rather weak in forgiving his trick but then I did not know what a haul it was in the time to find a man like that.

About feminism, well it is Jane Eyre who declares that also women have need of action, of a field for their efforts and so on. And also Jane who argues with herself, deciding that if nobody else cares for her she still cares for herself. And Jane who will not subdue to a marriage without love.

But yes, let him hit her in the next interpretation, let him even threaten to rape her, which he does in the novel but if you then say that you love him, well then I believe you would do with some help... you cannot make a good ending if you do not take that part away. It is not about being true or not to the novel. It is just impossible. In the novel it makes some sense since Brontë had to bring across the desire in a way that was acceptable in the time and we shall just be thankful that the standards for what is acceptable have changed.
But don't you see that Edward Rochester in the 2006 adaption does the same thing in another way? I know that seduction scene is very controversial but beneath the tenderness there is a very obvious aggressiveness. He does not need to be forceful. He knows exactly what he wants and is determined to make use of the chock she is in and the fact that none was there to collect her when her world collapsed. He counts wrong, though, just as he does in the novel. I thought that scene strangely abusive in spite of the fact that he did not visibly abuse her.

I do not know what Brontë meant with Bertha. But even if Jane reproaches his way of speaking about her, Brontë still makes a very cruel and presumptuous portrait of her. That makes me believe that we are not supposed to pity her too much. That is one part that gives me trouble.

However, nobody in flawless...

[kiki1982]

True Rochester is a crap in many ways but I doubt even a very inexperienced girl in Victorian era would fall in love with somebody just because he is a crap... There must be something to tempt her. That is one thing I miss in the 1997 adaption. There she seems to fall in love with his brutality!

There is a lot to tempt her. He is definitely a charming man, albeit only on the surface. There is big difference between what he seems to be (an affluent charming bachelor in search of a wife) and what he is (a married man who would like to forget that, and who has a slightly violent streak).

But I wonder about interpreting Jane Eyre as without self confidence. The girl who has the nerve to advertize for a new situation in Victorian England must have some confidence. To argue with your employer almost from the start in a quite flirtatious way does also show some confidence I believe. To intimate to his face that Rochester does wrong to Adele, which she does in the novel also seems to require some confidence.
Not to speak about how she actually declares herself before Edward Rochester, not once but twice, when she thinks he is going to marry Blanche Ingram. And she argues with him on religious and philosophical issues, let be that he does not seem to listen very much.

I did not say she does not have any self-confidence whatsoever, but I think that self-confidence is severely overrated by feminists. Advertising for positions if you did not have any relatives or acquaintances was quite normal. Things worked the same as they do now: you want to move up in the world, you change jobs. Where Jane was, at Lowood, she wasn't going to get any further than what she was doing. The highest position she could possibly reach was the one of Miss Temple and she was still terrorised by Mr Brocklehurst. As she wanted to get further in life, she had to advertise. If you wanted to get into service, you either advertised yourself or reacted to an advertisement. That was the way things worked. It did not require a whole lot of extreme self-confidence, it took the same kind of self-confidence as the one we need now to react to a job advertisement in the paper or on the internet. Even if we did consider it horrible to land in a bad job for several months, sense of time was a lot slower back then and they probably did not think too much of that.
Yes, she 'argued' with her employer, but not in a flirtatious way at all. If anything, he started to flirt, not she. She doesn't know what to think of it (as we would) in the beginning. At the point where he says, 'You examine me, Miss Eyre. You think me handsome?' (clearly expecting a 'yes' and trying to embarrass her). And she says, 'No, Sir.' She realises she has made one of the hugest mistakes she could make. Pissing off your boss was not the way forward. He could have thrown her out immediately, desolate, and without references, as such ruining her career as a governess which was the only way to go for her. So she starts to weaken her own statement. But he continues pushing her. At any rate, he is definitely flirting from day one because from day one, he is in love with her. She is not with him, her feelings grow over time. It is only when he leaves after the fire in his bed that she realises that she misses him and consequently that he means a lot more to her than she thought he did.
It is mainly he who leads the way in philosophical and religious discussion. He likes to talk, is an intelligent man, and has no intelligent company. He finds that company in her. Though, in the beginning she joins in hesitantly, as she knows her place: she is 'only' a governess', as such personnel, not someone who should speak unless she is spoken to, if she is asked or if there is something with the children. As such, she is allowed to inform Rochester about the fact that he buys too many presents for his daughter, certainly if he has made the way free for any conversation. He has won her confidence, and so the relationship carries on much looser than it would have carried on otherwise. That is not to say that she hardly tells anything about herself, about her own feelings. She only tells him when he asks
At the point where she declares her love for him, her jealousy of Blanche and her contempt for convenience-marriages, she has been driven to it by Rochester himself and that was his cunning design. There are two possible causes for this. Either, in a negative way, he wanted to drive her to that extreme because he wanted to be sure that she loved him so she would stay if he told her in 'one year and a day' of 'marriage' that he already had a wife. Or in a positive way, he wanted to make sure she loved him, not like Céline who also said so, but in the end turned out to be only words. Still, either way, it was an incredibly cold way to do things. He not only forces her to watch and suffer silently while witnessing his courtship of Ingram, but he does that in the knowledge that she cannot refuse his summons as he is her boss, and he drives her further by clearly caring about her privately. His plan is a bit ruined at the point where Jane's aunt is taken ill, but he sticks the knife deeper when he just ignores her for a whole month after she has returned and then tells her to pack her bags to Ireland where he will not see her again at all ever because he never goes that way. And then the silly thing about the cord. It is a romantic thing to say, certainly, but whether he meant it or not, it is still employed to get her to crack. Even if he did feel for her (which is clear), he still wants her to crack. A good man who is not deluded would never drive the love of his life to tears.

If anything, Jane in the 2006 adaption seems to have less of the confidence to start with than in the novel. At least she seems more afraid of displeasing and Rochester has to make a more visible effort to have her trust him.
There is another difference too from the novel in the way some of the house guests treat her and maybe that is most untrue to Victorian era. But I don't know. There is something about being polite towards your host and I suppose that was a standard in Victorian England too. And even in the novel there is some difference among the house guests in the case.

That is what I liked in the 1997 adaptation. In the novel there seems to be instant trust, instant connection, so there was in 1997. In other adaptations, tehre is always a growth in a typically romantic way. In the novel there is not. Despite the boss-servant relationship. Still there is an ambiguity in that relationship too, and she reminds him of it in their first conversations too. That is also present in 1997, with some clever merging due to lack of time.
As governesses were personnel, they were seen by the houseguests as inferior to them. Still, by the personnel itself, they were seen as superior, so they had a very ambiguous and difficult position being despised on all sides. It is also not a coincidence that Rochester, at the point where his guests are there, does not speak a word to Jane at all in the room. He does not even look at her. He knows she is there, but he does not look. When his wife stabs Mason, he waits until everyone is asleep again and then comes to ask for her help. He could not be seen with her in a more personal way at all. So having her sit with his guests and asking her opinion was just that bit too far. It also ruined his 'torture' of her in the window seat, as he was acknowledging her in this case.

No, I do not believe Edward Rochester would be a man to choose today but that is another issue. We do not have to be thankful to find a man who is able to treat us as intelligent creatures or declare that he wants us for what we are. We do not even have to find ways to "handle" a husband. Thank female rights for that.
We do not even have to be grateful for meeting people who can see beyond social barriers.
First time I read the novel I thought her rather weak in forgiving his trick but then I did not know what a haul it was in the time to find a man like that.

Every relatinship, then and now, was and is about reaching a balance. No, the demanding bit is not finding a husband who acknowledges us as an intelligent creature, but one who suits us. In that, Jane Eyre is not original. Jane Austen, Scott, Charlotte Brontë herself explored that issue. Brontë herself had several proposals because she was so well read and interesting. Men fell in love with her there and then (one after one weekend!). She never accepted them and in the end happily married the assistent curate of her father. True, some men went for the 'pretty doll' on their arm, but that was acknowledged by everyone to be a bad idea, as Brontë expresses herself in the marriage of Georgiana Reed, as Austen satirised them.
We still do have to 'handle' a husband. Era does not change tactics. When one marries or goes to live together, one needs to find a balance. Part of that balance is a woman who educates her husband so that he suits her routine. She tells him to put his socks in the washing basket, to put down the toilet seat. I think any woman recognises that approach of 'training'. It is not malicious, it is called balance. It starts with 'suiting', but it ends with adaptation. Two sides of course.
There are still people who do not see beyond social barriers. I would say the rich classes still do not consider it proper for their children to marry 'beneath' themselves. The time when a prince of England for example can marry someone from the working classes is still far off, if that will come at all. If the working classes would approve that at all, actually, because that would break through the romantic image they have of it.
It is true that there would not have been so many men who would have given in to the love they felt for a 'common' girl. Still, his type (Byronic Hero) is not at all a realistic one and he is supposed to be moody, unpleasant, but irresistible and mainly defying social convention for the heck of it. Without any purpose really, just to be different. In that, Jane Eyre deals with the Byronic Hero in a manner which is unconventional: he repents, unlike most who just go to their own death still doing what a Byronic Hero does. In that, Jane does not forgive him for his unconventional thinking, but for the fact he has repented. They suit each other, but he is now outside society, being blind and mamed. Social convention doesn't matter anymore. Whatever he thinks of it.

About feminism, well it is Jane Eyre who declares that also women have need of action, of a field for their efforts and so on. And also Jane who argues with herself, deciding that if nobody else cares for her she still cares for herself. And Jane who will not subdue to a marriage without love.

Those are a very few statements that have been ripped out of context. The first statement was made in a state of desperation and to a man whom she thought was trying to make her his mistress. The second could be read as she saying that he is throwing away his soul and she will not. Indeed, he has been following the wrong path for 15 years (almost literally being in hell) and she will continue to follow the right one, which she feels is right. She will not yield to mistresshood, because that is the way down. Once she gives in to that, she is at his mercy. If he is tired of her, she will not be able to get any work, nor a good husband. And no, no marriage without love, but as I said, that question had been the subject of lots of books even by non-feminists (like Scott).

But yes, let him hit her in the next interpretation, let him even threaten to rape her, which he does in the novel but if you then say that you love him, well then I believe you would do with some help... you cannot make a good ending if you do not take that part away. It is not about being true or not to the novel. It is just impossible. In the novel it makes some sense since Brontë had to bring across the desire in a way that was acceptable in the time and we shall just be thankful that the standards for what is acceptable have changed.

I did not say I loved him in that state... I said, I love that character. The greatness of his change when Jane returns is made by his despicableness in the beginning. Because of that contrast, his change is mindboggling. He turns into this semi-angel because he was a semi-develish creature. I don't mean that he should slap her, that he should rape her, I only said that he is capable of that if driven too far. He is a vulnerable man who wants to make out that he is not, putting up a façade. No woman would willingly return to a man who went too far, though it needs to be possible for that character to be considered as being able to go too far. That is where most adaptations go wrong. he is not cunning enough, not two-faced enough, not despicable enough. From tremendous, he becomes bland. From 3 dimensional, he becomes one-dimensional. He is just a person who went astray and who regrets and then, luckily, find back his great love. That was not the point.

But don't you see that Edward Rochester in the 2006 adaption does the same thing in another way? I know that seduction scene is very controversial but beneath the tenderness there is a very obvious aggressiveness. He does not need to be forceful. He knows exactly what he wants and is determined to make use of the chock she is in and the fact that none was there to collect her when her world collapsed. He counts wrong, though, just as he does in the novel. I thought that scene strangely abusive in spite of the fact that he did not visibly abuse her.

While you are right in that it was shocking, it was untrue to the spirit of the novel on two fronts, beside the historical context (which should be one of the main concerns in period drama at any rate). It was not untrue to his character (that was a start), but it blatantly ignored Jane's intended character! Firstly, she would never have let him into her room as that was extreely improper (she locked the door in the novel). Not at any time during the story he comes into her room, also being a gentleman. Rochester is not devoid of manners, he is devoid of normal consideration. Secondly, in the novel she refuses to kiss him. Why? Because '[he is] a married man'. And then the whole discussion about what marriage is and what the duties of marital partners are, about morals, really. That was one of the scenes in the novel which offered an insight in both characters and just that was what Welch chose to disregard. From that discussion you could gather what Rochester's views on marriage were and how deluded he was. Also Jane's fears and principles were clear. Ignoring that, pretty much ignoreed the greatest piece of the novel.

I do not know what Brontë meant with Bertha. But even if Jane reproaches his way of speaking about her, Brontë still makes a very cruel and presumptuous portrait of her. That makes me believe that we are not supposed to pity her too much. That is one part that gives me trouble.

Her treatment was considered cruel even in those days. No-one will believe it now because some bad images from before then have stuck in the common mind, but it was not done anymore, locking people up in that way. Yes, she attacks people, but the question is why, though. It was believed that restraint was counterproductive to calmness. A a result of restraint, patients would become more aggressive; doctors tried to calm them so that they became less agressive. Whether the 'treatments' (purging was one f.e.) were very effective is the question. It is now belieeved that patients were probably calmer because they didn't have the energy to be aggressive. But that was not what they thought back then. Non-restraint was considered the way forward and articles were published in, for example, The Lancet (still a leading medical journal). Cleanliness, fresh air and useful activity were considered absolute musts. And here we have someone who has no fresh air (no window), no possibility to go outside, no useful employment, no daylight,... What are we supposed to think if we know that? Was not the treatment of Bertha rather a symptom of Rochester's principles and cruetly than it was a natural way of dealing with lunatics? Also Brontë's concept of Truth versus Reality is an argument for that.

[MsSilentia]

Dear me.
I believe I must apologize for such a long post but most of the text is quotes from the book.

You see lots of things about the 1997 Rochester to tempt her. Well I just do not agree. I cannot find anything at all to tempt her. In my view he is just a brute. But let be that we just see this differently. And I am not that impressed at the end about his asking a servant if her room is dry. Jane in the novel seems to have more self-worth than to be satisfied by so little.

And the idea that he must be able to hit her seems very strange to me. How can you know what a person is able to do? There is no way to know that. You can only know what he has already done.


You said my first statement upon feminism was ripped out from its place and was about something else.
No it is not. It is from this:

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
That is Jane Eyre, not me.


The early flirtation is not only from him. At least not what I would call flirtatious.

At the first interview at Thornfield he alludes to fairies. Instead of being cautious, she picks up his line:
“The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.”
At the next interview there is the famous conversation which opens:

You examine me Miss Eyre. Do you find me handsome?
She says no and maybe that is a blunder but it ends up this way:

He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen.
“Now, ma’am, am I a fool?”
“Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist.”

That is quite cheeky. It does not indicate her being afraid of him…
And she goes on teasing him thru the story. It is part of his fascination about her. The Jane in the 1997 adaption is far too insipid.


Then his bedroom after the fire. That is the moment when it begins to sparkle between them – except in 1997 where he is just terrible and she runs away, scared and humiliated.
But in the book it ends thus:

I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned.

She cannot miss him yet since she does not even know he is leaving. She believes he will send for her the next evening.


And then the idea of Bertha:

In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.
“Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!” said Mr. Rochester. “How are you? and how is your charge to-day?”
“We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,” replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob: “rather snappish, but not ‘rageous.”
A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favorable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.
“Ah! Sir, she sees you!” exclaimed Grace: “you’d better not stay.”
“Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.”
“Take care then, sir!—for God’s sake, take care!”
The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognized well that purple face,—those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
“Keep out of the way,” said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: “she has no knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard.”
“One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft.”
“We had better leave her,” whispered Mason.
“Go to the devil!” was his brother-in-law’s recommendation.
“‘Ware!” cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equaling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges.

These are not Rochester’s words but Jane’s.
It is a terrible way of portraying a person. If Brontë wanted us to be upset about her treatment, then why did she give such a cruel portrait of her? Sorry, I would like to believe Brontë to criticize the confinement and ill-treatment but I cannot buy it. This is not the way to describe a person with whom you want the readers to feel compassion.


Surely there are still people who cannot see beyond social barriers but they are not the norm anymore. That is a great difference.

You say we still have to handle a husband. I just do not agree if you by that mean the same thing as in Jane Eyre:

He fretted, pished, and pshawed. “Very good,” I thought; “you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage.”
From less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation; then, after he had retired, in dudgeon, quite to the other end of the room, I got up, and saying, “I wish you good-night, sir,” in my natural and wonted respectful manner, I slipped out by the side-door and got away.
The system thus entered on, I pursued during the whole season of probation; and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure, rather cross and crusty; but on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained, and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less.
In other people’s presence I was, as formerly, deferential and quiet; any other line of conduct being uncalled for: it was only in the evening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and “darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were “provoking puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favors to anything more tender. Mrs. Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on my account vanished; therefore I was certain I did well.
Meantime, Mr. Rochester affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened awful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming.
I laughed in my sleeve at his menaces.
“I can keep you in reasonable check now,” I reflected; “and I don’t doubt to be able to do it hereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be devised.”

I think this is somewhat different from asking your mate to put down the toilet seat… at least I would just ask him to do it, not using sophisticated strategies for it. Today, if she wanted to keep the physical distance until after the wedding she would just say something like: “Please, the wedding ceremony is important to me. I will not play prematurely at the boarders with you.”


About the bedroom scene in the 2006.
Of course she would not let him into her bedroom. Brontë wanted the book to be published
But I am not sure Rochester is such a gentleman. Remember he comes outside her door three times in the night after the proposal, to hear if she is safe during the storm. I believe it was somebody on this forum (I am not sure though) who said that maybe he was hoping she would open the door…
I do not find the bedroom scene very chocking, though. I found the threats in the original scene much more chocking. But he was pushing her just as hard in both scenes.

There is one main reason why I think this is not that far from Brontë’s intentions. She cannot have intended Jane Eyre to be a virtuous saint.
See this:
(It is her reflections during her way back to Thornfield after StJohn’s proposal.)

“Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labor—you had better go no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.”
The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me—the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them!
At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened. Another field crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard walls—the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid.
“My first view of it shall be in front,” I determined, “where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out my master’s very window: perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain. And if I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me

The nearer she comes to Thornfield the more eager will she be and the less does she care about Bertha. I find it rather interesting that many readers can wear such huge blinders. Jane is not a virtuous saint. She just does not want to be a married man’s victim. When she has her liberty, gained thru the inheritance, she seems quite able to defy moral standards.

I know some people like to interpret it as her planning to live as his friend, maybe waiting for Bertha to die (that is a good Christian standpoint) but is there anything in the text to indicate that? At least I have not seen it.


And yes she is quite outspoken. The way she confronts StJohn about his feelings towards Rosamund is just one example for that. Another is her two declarations before Rochester when she believes he will marry Blanche Ingram. And the way she speaks about Broocklehurst at the first interview with Rochester. She is hardly so very naive either. I believe there is a huge misunderstanding behind every idea that orphanage children should know less about the deceitful world then family-darlings. Not now and not then. Those girls came to Loowood at eight at the earliest and doubt not they knew a lot about the dark sides of the world to share among them.

But of course she is naïve in her way of just accepting him having such dangerous secrets. Naïve – or just in her first love? That can make us very stupid I think.

[kiki1982]

Oh, it’s alright, such a long post. We like discussing stuff here, and discussing takes time and letters . Sorry for my long replies as well, but I like discussing stuff.  It doesn’t do much good for your name though. This is also very long...

You see lots of things about the 1997 Rochester to tempt her. Well I just do not agree. I cannot find anything at all to tempt her. In my view he is just a brute. But let be that we just see this differently. And I am not that impressed at the end about his asking a servant if her room is dry. Jane in the novel seems to have more self-worth than to be satisfied by so little.

I see a man who is arrogant, yes, and in the beginning somewhat strangely unpleasant, but also oozing a strange charm that is irresistible, fascinating and engaging. One longs to know more about him. I also find he comes across as incredibly lonely, but masking it at the same time.

When Rochester falls off his horse, both adaptations put in the slightly troubling supernatural thing, but I think 1997 does that better with a slow-motion. Though that depends on your taste, I guess. What the 2006 adaptation does not, is making Rochester look like a poor distressed maiden who has sprained her ankle. An article on Victorian Web argued that the scene was inspired by the classic maiden having sprained her ankle, being helped by the gentleman. An often occurring motive in early 19th century lit. One of which is in Sense and Sensibility. There are some instances in Jane Eyre which reverse Jane and Rochester’s sexes theme-wise (Sleeping Beauty for example), but this is the most notable one. It is both ridiculous and pathetic for Rochester to be helpless. Of course he himself cannot help that his horse got scared by Jane in the fog and that he has fallen with it or slid on the ice, but he needs to be helped by Jane, which is also a symbolic occurrence. I find the 2006 version of the incident a bit under-acted like 1996. Rochester, instead of totally falling with horse and everything and thus making one hell of a furious entrance, is still standing up, much too composed and independent to be really in need of assistance (which he is symbolically;. the scene actually kind of sums up the whole Rochester plot). Hinds looks much funnier in his pathetic helplessness and is also more believable in calling Jane a witch because of losing his face only. What I also found a bit odd was that Jane does not reply at first to anything Rochester says in 2006. I mean, here she is, before a man obviously wealthy and she does not even take the trouble to reply politely. Surely she was taught manners by Mr Brocklehurst. Morton is much more believable In her distress, both because of shock and because of Rochester’s leg (a broken leg was potentially something that could cripple you or even make you ill if it got infected). She becomes stern, yes, but not to the point of rudeness. And it is her resilience that surprises and fascinates Rochester at first. She is a woman, supposed to be easily hysteric, and here he meets one who has everything in hand and it is he who is discomposed… the man, what an affront. Hence the swearing. The one ‘damn it’ it 2006 was much too underdone for a Rochester who is very prone to his outer appearance. Hinds shouting three times ‘blast’ at least and lying in the water much less composed is a much better approach to his ridicule.

When looking back at Jane and Rochester’s first two conversations, again, 2006 Rochester comes across as much too rude to be of the gentleman class. 1997 Rochester never becomes rude and retains his high class manners despite being moody. Admittedly Jane says that ‘[he] ask[s] by way of command’, still he should not talk as if giving orders to a dog. In 2006 he is also incredibly rude to Adèle, which, regarding him buying her a present, is a bit puzzling. If he really didn’t want her there (which I would think concerning his manner and speech), it is puzzling why she is summoned at all. Admittedly, Rochester in the novel does not ever show any real affection to Adèle himself, but being symbolised in the dog, he does. As such, 1997 Rochester who does care for the child and talks to her is much closer to the truth than 2006 Rochester who practically barks at her as to anyone else. If anything, I would call 2006 Rochester a brute and downright unpleasant. I cannot even consider him interesting, rather repulsive and ungrateful. He is not a man I would be interested to spend the afternoon with. That is not a Byronic Hero who should be fascinating and irresistible. What is more, while Welch did lock some insects up in boxes (no doubt symbolic for Bertha), she did forget the biggest symbolic thing in the novel: the locked up books in the library. If the library is seen as Rochester himself, the locked up books behind glass doors can be seen as his character which is seen on the outside like the backs of the books, but cannot be read. Jane knows how he is, but she doesn’t know the reasons behind that. Only a small section of those books can be read, chosen by Rochester. Indeed, he has decided which particular part of his character is to be seen and which one isn’t (the greatest troubling part). That is clearly not the purpose of the library in Welch’s version. Admittedly, there is no library in 1997, but at least they did not get it so severely wrong. 2006 makes the library out to be a Collector-Bertha-Jane moment (also the fire bird of the biology class scene is one example of that). While that is sinister, it does not do justice to Rochester at all as he is not plainly evil in that respect, but has problems with his past.

During that same conversation in 2006, Adèle poses for him and asks him what he thinks of her and whether he thinks her beautiful, he gets angry and tells Jane to take her to bed. The question is why. Naturally, based on the rest of the conversation where he professed that ‘if [one does] not love another soul, [one] can never be disappointed’, he is still feeling the pain and humiliation of what Céline did to him. We can see Céline in Adèle easily. But I don’t think that is right. In the novel it rather seems that he willingly keeps the child with him and enjoys her company because she looks like ‘a miniature of Céline Varens’ in a frock he has purposely bought her in Paris. He observes her with his back to the fire and although he professes ‘not [to be] fond of the prattle of children’, because ‘[he has] no pleasant associations connected with their lisp’, he has perfect freedom not to see her at all and only provide her with an education (as that was his duty towards an illegitimate child), yet he does not and keeps her there voluntarily. As such 2006 Rochester is totally misconstrued as scorning Adèle for what her mother did (also concluded by Jane during the biology class). Rochester is rather still stuck in love with Céline and as such dresses her daughter up as a miniature of her although he professes his doubts about him being her father. There again, he misrepresents the truth.

I also find that, between their first conversation and their second where he orders her to talk, there is much too much of a difference in his demeanour to be believable. As there is no narrator, it is as if this second conversation takes place the day after. Yet Rochester is a different man. He seems to have converted to being less moody suddenly. In 1997 there is a much slower progress, possibly down to the narrations in between and the shot of Rochester walking along the hall and looking up towards Jane (admittedly a bit cheap); Jane also looking through the window at him. The scene of their second conversation in 1997 is also less of a beginning-end scene than 2006, which adaptation suffered from that extensively (also the first and second proposal). In 1997 the viewer barges into a conversation, so accepts the possibility of Rochester having changed a bit. In 2006, it is downright strange that Rochester purposely comes to look for Jane In the library and orders her to talk to him in the middle of the day seemingly, although allegedly Adèle is in bed... Also his sudden zeal for social activity I find odd, as Jane in the novel tells of him as a loner, often sitting in his library with his head lying on his hands when he has summoned her to read to him. As if crumbling under his thoughts. 2006 Rochester is, to me, the quintessential man in love, not Rochester.

There is also a dramatic difference between the two adaptations in terms of the images made of him in his first shots which gives necessarily a different impression. The first meeting in 1997, for example, Rochester starts sitting in his armchair, facing away from the room, hypnotised by the fire essentially, but foremost it is impossible for him to look anywhere else apart from in front of him due to the shape of his chair, which has, to me a symbolic meaning: Rochester, as a character, only looks to his goal, not to the side, not to the consequences, only to his goal and he is ruled by incredible passion. What he wants is right. Needless to say that that is not true. Still, he passionately believes it. And in that, he makes himself incredibly lonely in life and mind, which he tries to mask by an over-confident outside. At the same time, he is facing away from the viewer who knows he is there (because he’s talking), but cannot see him. In 1997 that masked loneliness filters through on several occasions. They often put him alone, facing away from Jane, though talking to her, staring into the distance, etc. I think the strength of that adaptation is not the words, but the actions of the characters. In 2006, Rochester is facing the fire as well at his first meeting, but we, as a viewer, can see him. That is the wrong symbolic message as the viewer does not know him, should be deceived like Jane, should not be able to penetrate.

The whole 2006 adaptation is also ruined by the continuous mysterious theme and the red scarf In the tower. There is certainly a gothic element in the novel, but it comes in waves like it does in life: it is present and then goes away to stay away for some time to be allowed to be forgotten, occurring suddenly again to remind Rochester and the reader of it. At least that was my impression. Here, Rochester’s ability at masking his secrets is taken away by the obligatory sinister music which draws your attention to that secret. It should be a total surprise, as in 1997, not a considered possibility that is proven to be right in the end.

After the conversation about Céline at the river, which is possibly a shot taking the role of his river metaphor, Jane looks into the mirror. I am not sure what is meant by that. Surely not that she is evaluating her own beauty? In the novel she only does that when Ingram is around and feels strangely jealous, wondering why that is.

When the guests are there, the book The Beast Within is mentioned in the adaptation, one of the guests has lost it. It seems to allude to a book from 1981 (!) which was essentially about someone who is locked up by another on false pretences and who, as a result, becomes kind of more beast than man. The creature escapes, but rapes a woman who then bares a son who, in turn, becomes strange as well. He kills someone, but tries to flee with his girlfriend. Having become totally insane because of her house being the house where his father was locked up, he is not incarcerated into an institution, but In the cellar of his parents who hope he will recover at some point. While that is an honourable allusion (at least it addresses Rochester’s cruelty), it is not carried on into the image that Bertha gives when she is discovered. She is well cared for and looks presentable, which her original did not. Beside that, the allusion is profoundly anachronistic and as such has no place in a period drama, nor is Rochester’s character so bad (he does not lock Bertha up without reason, though is too cruel to her even considering the times). Furthermore, it is wrongly extended to Rochester who is not in such a pitiable position: he has never been forced by anyone else to be cruel and cold like the character The Beast Within is about. He has chosen his life’s course himself. As such, his assertion that Thornfield is a dungeon can either be seen metaphorically (he is locked up in his own lies and life’s course) or as a direct reference to him locking Bertha up. He himself is not a bad man as stated by Jane, only corrupted.

The proposal scene is a bit weird and suffered, as stated above, from a clear beginning and end. While I have to concede to Ruth Wilson doing definitely her best, Rochester is too one-dimensional. The whole purpose of his speeches ‘God pardon me! [A]nd man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her.’; ‘It will atone—it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world’s judgment—I wash my hands thereof. For man’s opinion—I defy it.’; the whole purpose of the wind wafting through the laurel walk like in the story of Creation; the whole purpose of the moon-motive; the whole purpose of the weather suddenly changing and a huge storm during that night, is self-doubt and God’s anger. For the last weeks he has been cheating Jane and Ingram with a purpose, the last months he has been courting Jane or at least has been showing an interest more than was proper (in the words of Fairfax at least), despite knowing he cannot marry, and it all culminates in this cruel scene on Midsummer’s Eve where he can no longer resist (symbolised in the novel by the cigar). He doubts himself, but at the point where he declares that she has to go to Ireland (which isn’t true in all probability), where she confesses not to want to go to Ireland because it is so far from him and starts to cry, at that moment he cannot turn back and put things back to how they were. It is a point of no return like Midsummer’s Eve marks the day on which the light will only fade. He has chosen that way and must continue on that destructive course. As such, the moon motive is important as it highlights continuous doubt on his part while he tries to mask it by (over-)confidence. If there is any feeling on Stephens’s face in 2006, it is not doubt, but embarrassment at Jane’s speech. He doesn’t know where to look. Admittedly, it may be a bit distressing for someone to see someone else whom he loves in tears, but in the novel there is no trace of real compassion on his side. He could have walked towards her and comforted her, but he does not, lets her speak and leads her to desperation, then to tell her, ‘I have no bride.’ That is not the behaviour of a loving and caring man, but the manners of a cunning person who is merely trying to achieve his aim. Admittedly, he does eventually embrace her, but at first even against her will. In 1997 there is clear doubt on Rochester’s face for a very brief moment. He is seemingly composed (though a bit nervous) telling her about Ireland, knowing full well it hurts her like hell, but is a bit surprised at first at her reaction. He looks like ‘waiting’ for her to finish, but the next shot is one which has a brief wave of doubt on his face. He has now gone too far and his passion is too great to resist, but he still hesitates as the moment of truth is coming closer. 2006 does not have that doubt, only embarrassment, although Rochester professes doubt in ‘Man, meddle not with me’. His character is not consistent with itself.

At the point where the wedding is thwarted by Mason and Briggs, 1997 Rochester displays rage at his thwarted happiness which he believes himself entitled to. Even the remaining wedding ring is trampled on (incidentally his). 2006 Rochester seems much too composed to really believe that he is genuinely entitled to another wife and the rest of the world is wrong. He says his father was greedy, which is profoundly anachronistic as Rochester knows very well that, as the second son of the family he was entitled to no inheritance at all. He also says he was sent to the Caribbean because his father knew his preference for darker women. That is a plain misconception of the marriage that was arranged by his father in the novel. The marriage was a foregone conclusion as the bride was waiting (maybe on false pretences). The only thing that Rochester could have done better was investigated and informed his father of the true state of his mother- and brother-in-law (the idiot boy). He says he was tricked into marrying Bertha by Mason and his father. That is also a misconception. While there are logical indications towards trickery on Bertha’s father’s side (Rochester’s father would never have willingly associated himself and his line with a mad person/family), Rochester is to be blamed himself. His father could only write to his old acquaintance and take his word for it. Rochester was there In the flesh. He took the decision. Ultimately, he was allowed to decline and his father would have understood, despite the 30,000 pounds, if there were serious grounds like mental instability, then thought to be hereditary. That is also the reason why Rochester’s marriage was never published in the newspapers: because of the embarrassment of his daughter-in-law. It is totally irrational for Rochester as a man of his time to argue that his father was greedy because of the inheritance situation and then to claim that he was punished for his wickedness. As some viewers do not know the situation (which still prevails in some rich families now), they take Rochester seriously and consequently pity him more than he should be pitied. In the novel he is a King Lear who is to blame for his own misfortunes and who blames everyone but himself. Rochester even professes complete indifference about the death of his brother and father in the novel, he moves onto the wealth he has got because of that, does not dwell at all on them. That is rather cold and desolate. Yet they have done nothing wrong for the Victorian mind. And thus Rochester comes across as someone who distorts the truth and who can’t be trusted (which is why Jane leaves), not as one who can freely be pitied (as he does not want to hear reason, ironically, only his own which is faulty). Again, 2006 Rochester becomes one-dimensional and more romantic than he is.

Because of toning down Rochester’s delusion, his second proposal of 2006 Is much less passionate and much less powerful than 1997. In 2006, we see a man who is definitely pleased and surprised that Jane is back, who doubts a bit whether he should ask again, who is made jealous by Jane’s teasing, but no more than that. This is not a man who has had 15 years of true unhappiness, loneliness and desolateness; he is not a man who is waiting for his dying day impatiently because he considers life as a void and every minute of it to be one more of misery. All the feelings that should be there are present, but it is not enough. He is merely unhappy, not desperate. He is merely happy, not delirious. Then to me, Hinds is much more believable as a man who after 15 long years of true misery and loneliness, thwarted his own happiness, knows it and did not believe it was ever going to come back, but is tremendously relieved that his Maker has had mercy and sent Jane back to him.

What is more is that in 2006 Rochester still sees despite professing that ‘it is not because [he is] blind that [he does] not need [candles].’ One either sees or one does not. At any rate, Rochester could see, but only dark and light. As such, he does not see the difference between Jane and Mary as they both undoubtedly have a female silhouette. It is surprising that he would not see the difference between George and a woman! Though his blindness is much more than merely what it says. Water and fire make Air, or the Divine, the constant in oneself, resulting from God, in Greek philosophy. It is the level he reached when praying and calling Jane, it enabled him to reach her soul with his cry. Light is needed to see virtue, light is needed to see Beauty, the constant version of what he was hypnotised with before, but also Love, not love. Thus, what Jane brings him are the means of completion. Indeed, he will only see a luminous cloud, but after two years of ‘[seeing] books through [her]’ (wisdom according to Swift), he sees partially again. By asking for candles which he cannot see every night, it might be concluded that he desperately wants to see, but he does not quite succeed until Jane is there. Indeed, her name is pronounced ‘air’ by Adèle. Making Rochester only partially blind is not an option. Despite Rochester not getting any candles in 1997, his words ‘Dear God, am I going mad’ and ‘Heaven, let me wake’ are a clearer sign of having changed than Toby Stephens displayed. That pride of Rochester before is still there (he does say that he abhors the constant attendance of servants in the novel), hence ‘I don’t want a companion’. 2006 does not mention that part. Admittedly he does say, ‘I want a wife […]. If I can’t have that I’d rather die.’ But that is a very weak version of what it says in the novel.

And the idea that he must be able to hit her seems very strange to me. How can you know what a person is able to do? There is no way to know that. You can only know what he has already done.

As I said, for me, Rochester should be able to be pictured as being able to do that. It is not really hitting Jane, it is being capable of it. In chapter XXVI, Jane is clearly scared of him and he shows definite violent tendencies. Jane says, ‘His fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace […] And he shook me with the force of his hold. […] [H]e released me from his clutch.’ (Seems that the shaking in the 1997 adaptation was not that unrealistic after all. I must say, I hadn’t noticed it, until now.) She compares him to a predator with clutches, a furnace, herself necessarily to a prey and some wood about to be burnt in the furnace. That seems quite powerful to me. But, his speech about the reed Is particularly troubling: ‘Never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand! I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit—with will and energy, and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame.’ It seems he cannot bear the thought of Jane winning this, but more troubling is the fact that he actually imagines killing her, or at least taking possession of her against her will; say, rape. He will not, of course, but he gets the image into his head. I find that incredibly troubling. Where 2006 does the abuse on the bed, do the scene above with a lot of passion and Rochester really gets scary. 1983 underdid it a bit. Maybe 1997 underdid that too, as he comes across as rather desperate and a little violent (which is definitely not out of place), but rather more desperate than violent. In the novel it seems to be worse even. Rochester at that moment is not a Darcy in anguish, not a pile of misery, he is just plain dangerous.

I am not sure what to think about the flashbacks in the last episode of 2006. While it is clear that the first one is a product of Jane’s imagination (we have seen Jane and Rochester go up the stairs with other people and we know what happened then), we are not sure what happened later. It is possible that the scene on the bed did take place. That totally goes against everything Jane is about. In the novel she does not even want to kiss him out of principle. Let alone he would have let him into her bedroom. When Rochester is talking of him and Jane as twins who are intertwined and can hear each other across continents, it can be called romantic, but it is again a misinterpretation of the situation and the cry later. After all, it is briefly mentioned in the novel that, after Jane has left, he grows wild and goes out in the grounds at night calling Jane’s name. Still, it is clear that Jane does not hear any cries then. If they are twins that can hear each other across continents, then it is clear that she should have heard tens of cries before the year is out. However, it is only when he has been praying for a while and then, ultimately, asks God to take him from this world so he may rejoin his Jane again, that she hears him cry out. It is a special moment, similar to the moment Mason cries out in chapter XX. The cry is on another level than mere intertwining, it is on a level which is higher than the here and now, on the level of the Divine as said above. Before his prayer, Rochester cannot get to that level, after it, he can because he has acknowledged that he needs his Maker (as he says) for attaining happiness. It is when he shows that humility; when he shows that even his life is of less worth to him than Jane, that he can be rejoined with her. By making out that Jane and Rochester are like the Eshton twins, it really tones down the whole story to a sugary romance. One could argue that he is so presumptuous so as to suppose that, but the Eshton girls professed the same and Rochester doesn’t come across on that bed as being particularly haughty, but rather serious. Also Jane doesn’t seem to object too much. I think that is the greatest mistake. Chapter XXVI really does honour to Jane, yet in this feminist adaptation, there is no real Jane to be seen in that part…

After she has returned in the novel Rochester cannot be considered violent anymore, he is not convinced of his own opinions anymore, he is not going to do anything nasty anymore, even if driven to desperation. He would just quietly waste away. Rochester I gets angry when he doesn’t get his way, and increasingly aggressive when desperate. Rochester II cannot get angry so easily, and certainly not aggressive due to his sight, but I think he has found a way to deal with disappointment. Rochester I cannot face disappointment, because it is connected with his indomitable pride. If he is disappointed, his pride is hurt and consequently his ego. As a result, he cannot deal with it. Rochester II has been forced to deal with disappointment and is now taking precautions, because it will hurt less than if he were to hope. I think that is the big difference between the two.

I concede that the statement about women may be a bit controversial, but we must bear in mind that Jane is a lot less content in the beginning than she is at the end. I mean, she eventually does choose a secluded life only with Rochester, which is essentially no different from the secluded life at Thornfield, apart for the one person she can talk to… all day. She can now ‘sacrifice expectation for content’, as she says in chapter XXXVII. Where she was not satisfied In the beginning, she has found contentment; she has learned to deal with those emotions at the end. As the Stoics claimed the key to contentment is not doing what your heart desires (we can see that wrong insight evoked in Rochester), but reflecting on what happens to you, on your lot and accepting that as part of a grand plan or something like that. As Nature is acting on itself and by itself, you as a person who are in the world, is acted upon. As such, Jane feels that she is in a secluded spot at first which is quite boring (we can certainly imagine), she longs for a more exciting existence, with more people to talk to, no doubt with more to say , but she fails to see the grand plan that Nature has in store for her: she will meet her husband, her cousins she doesn’t know she has, happiness In short. After her return, she willingly chooses to live a secluded life, seeing her cousins once a year, and only with her husband for company. Because of Logic, reflection and concentration, she is able to see that that is the best option for her; that people in a town would not make her happy. So, in the end, she will be happy with ‘making puddings and knitting stockings, playing on the piano and embroidering bags’. Well, not only that, but the same principle. So it is the question whether the quote really says something about Jane’s (and Brontë’s) feelings or whether it belongs to the Bildungsroman Jane Eyre which is a process of development, not static.

At the first interview at Thornfield he alludes to fairies. Instead of being cautious, she picks up his line:
“The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.”

I don’t see how that is flirtatious, actually. He says she bewitched his horse and she throws it back saying that there are no such things as fairies, essentially that he just fell, and that was it. Also symbolically, he is again blaming her for something that occurred, not the right person.

She says no and maybe that is a blunder but it ends up this way:

He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen.
“Now, ma’am, am I a fool?”
“Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist.”

That is quite cheeky. It does not indicate her being afraid of him…

I never said she had to be really scared of him all the time. If she teases him, it is because she gains confidence in the fact that he will not dismiss her because he starts the process himself. She is not really outspoken from the start. His pride is a little hurt by her ‘no’, which it is also in 1997, only made shorter. There, Jane also tries to modify her reply, but he says that at least ‘it was an honest [one]’, though the conversation continues as he still wants to know whether ‘[his] forehead does not please [her], [his] eyes are too close together, or his ears are too large’. In the end she says that ‘appearance is of little consequence, it is the person within that is the attraction.’ And then he sees the light and understands that it is ‘[his] character that [she] find[s] unattractive.’ And she replies, ‘What I meant to say was,.. certain facets of your character are… somewhat unpleasant.’ This is also pretty cheeky, to tell your boss, who is being friendly with you, that his character is ‘somewhat unpleasant’, but more than that, it is an analysis of that part of the conversation in the novel which is essentially about physiognomy and phrenology. She is not asking without any aim at all whether he is a philanthropist, she does it with a purpose. In that, she uses wit, which was highly favoured and could go a lot further than normal speech in saying things, even offensive things. Something which admittedly, the 1997 adaptation did not employ because it was too difficult, but which the 2006 adaptation equally left out despite having more than time enough.

Where he lifts the hair off his forehead, it uncovers ‘a solid enough mass of intellectual organs’ (as she says in the film ‘a fine forehead’, in other words he is no fool as he indicates himself), ‘but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen.’ In phrenological terms (which Charlotte Brontë was interested in to a great extent), it means there is an issue, not with his intelligence, but with empathy (benevolence in phrenology), the faculty that enables one to imagine other people’s feelings in a certain situation. So she asks whether ‘[he is] a philanthropist’, knowing full well that he will not care for the bettering of mankind, as the faculty is severely damaged or not there at all. He would not consider philanthropy as he does not see any cause to be concerned with the rest of human kind, certainly has no love for them and is not going to do anything for a better society. His features show a combination of a man who is obstinate, determined and firm, but has great imagination, a great reverence for beauty, and as a result is prone to mistakes which he will follow to the bitter end because he believes them to be right and true where they are not. Essentially, saying that ‘some facets of [his] character are… somewhat unpleasant’ would do the trick. I wouldn’t call that insipid really.

Then his bedroom after the fire. That is the moment when it begins to sparkle between them – except in 1997 where he is just terrible and she runs away, scared and humiliated.

I don’t know about humiliated, but there is certainly an eerie, almost ensnaring atmosphere behind his words. It is very well visible in the 1983 adaptation with Dalton. That scene could be interpreted in a way that is romantic, but also in a kind of devilish way. I mean, there they are, she in nothing but her nightdress and shawl and he also in his night gear and wet into the bargain. I always think about him being totally wet, lying in bed, and getting into a panic because she wants to fetch a candle. I always imagine that he knows, if he is wet through (which he is) that, due to there being no underwear in that day and age, everything being visible through the wet fabric. No good for a Victorian man . So he puts his dressing gown on with great haste. But, Jane is definitely unsettled as she says, ‘Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look’ and ‘But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient.’ She wants to go, but he does not want to release her so to speak and she needs to find an excuse. It is puzzling that she absolutely wants to get away, if he is declaring his love for her, yet there is a strange fire (obviously the fire in the bed was symbolic), which she is not comfortable with (she was quenching it) and which she wants to run away from. I believe the 1997 film has a bit after that where she can’t sleep or something. The film is no longer on YouTube, so I can’t really verify, but I seem to think there was. Though, I don’t know if Jane is supposed to know that she loves Rochester yet. It is true that maybe the reader knows, If he has been paying attention and remembers the metaphor of Rochester about his ‘grande passion’ for Céline, but feelings of passion arise firstly without the person knowing what they are. It is only after some time that one realises what they are about. As such, she cannot sleep, but it is only when he is no longer there when she misses him and certainly when she is delighted at him coming back to be then miserable at the sound of Ingram that she realises what is up and deals with it in a Stoic way.
In 2006, the fire in the bedroom was more spectacular, and admittedly good… until the romantic thing came into play. She is not supposed to be rejoicing at her hand being touched by him, she is not supposed to be happy at that, there is not supposed to be an almost kiss (clearly the images were suggesting that idea), she is only supposed to feel unsettled and should not understand why until the name Ingram crops up.

I know that the description of Bertha is in Jane’s words, but that, in my mind is not an argument. Firstly there is a discrepancy between Jane’s description, written down by Brontë, and Brontë’s actual opinion of her own words. Brontë was heavily criticised for her portrayal of Bertha, which indicates a totally different opinion of lunatics in the public than what is considered to be true now. In her defence, she said ‘[she] wanted to make horror too predominant.’ That is puzzling. Surely, if that image of Bertha was not even according to Brontë’s own opinion, there was a purpose to it being so bad? Why did she put it in her own novel if she did not see things that way? And why was horror so important? I think the answer to that question lies in her ideas about reality and Truth. (Wheat) Brontë seems to have believed the principles of Aristotle in that reality is the mere fact, state of things and that Truth is the harmony between the feelings of the heart and the perceptions of the brain of the artist, in short how the artist perceives what he sees, experiences etc. He expresses that in his work. If Brontë wrote Jane Eyre, she wrote down her Truth, what she thought, but beyond that, there is a clear discrepancy between Rochester and Jane’s perceptions of Bertha, his state of matrimony and the like. When Brontë was criticised for Bertha, she also said that her actions were ‘natural’, not real nor true, which means that Bertha performed certain actions, but that they were not according to her creator’s wishes, nor faithful to reality, nor faithful to Brontë’s perception of lunatics. Bertha acts by nature, but it is Rochester who has to deal with them. Bertha’s confinement, and the state of it, is perceived differently by Jane and Rochester. Jane is clearly appalled at the reality of it, as was the public, and urges him about responsibilities, pities her, he on the other hand says he hates Bertha. Not, as we may presume because she is mad and consequently is of no use (not even for child bearing while time ticks away), just because. It is he as the husband, who has decided to lock her up and who has power over her confinement. Yet he allows this figure to be locked up in the permanent dusk, without fresh air, etc. The public was appalled. If Brontë said she ‘wanted to make horror too predominant’ then why? Surely she would not call something normal (as that is what that kind of confinement is now considered to have been at the time Brontë wrote her novel) a ‘horror’? To me, the answer lies in the idea of Bertha rather as a plot device than a character. All through the Thornfield section of the novel, she determines the plot. Every full moon, as it turns out, she strikes. It is she who will eventually decide that Rochester may marry again, by jumping from the roof. Everything hangs on her. She also has the name of a Germanic goddess of Fate. If she is seen as a plot device, the different perceptions of Jane and Rochester as to her condition, not her madness but whether she is entitled to pity or not, are an evocation of Jane and Rochester’s separated Truths. As such, it would not matter what Bertha actually does, but how Rochester deals with it. As a lunatic, Bertha is going to show natural behaviour which will affect Rochester as Nature affects him (Stoïcism), but he may deal with it as he likes.He can fight it, which is no use, or he can accept it and reflect on the purpose of it, which he will eventually do. It may seem strange, but it could be argued that beyond the grand Truth of Brontë there are two separate ones, as if Rochester and Jane were real people who perceive real matter in different ways. Indeed, the principles, perceptions, and ideas about reality that Jane has will lead her to independence, money, so much desired family and love. Rochester’s will lead to destruction, loss, unhappiness, etc. It is only when he will face up to his duty, risk his life to save his wife and then repent that he will have happiness in his life. Rochester, in his pride and deluded manner, cannot have been an expression of Brontë’s artistic Truth as she changes him towards the end. As such, the reality of Bertha’s confinement, her natural actions and how he deals with them (differently to Mason) could be seen as the ‘horror’ Brontë intended in order to condition the reader for Rochester’s tale of woe in the chapter after. Like the viewer is prepared for the ‘hardships’ of King Lear. If that is true, then Rochester, like Jane, needs to embrace the Stoic principles in order to gain contentment, which he will.

By making Bertha come across as more sane and having Rochester be rather kind, it really ruins the bad impression we should have of him. Even if viewers now believe that lunatics were commonly just locked up in Brontë’s time (which is not true), his behaviour should certainly not be made any better. As Jane said, it is not Bertha’s fault. She is not to blame for her behaviour, but Rochester has the freedom to do as he pleases. He has both the money and the mental capacity to deal with it honourably (there were already better places in the 18th century), yet willingly chooses not to. By not taking that aspect into account, really his whole sparkling character, which is so realistic, is a bit ruined.

[MsSilentia]

It would be a good thing if others are not scared from participating because of these long posts but I cannot keep them shorter. There is too much to be said



About Rochester falling with his horse:
Whatever you might think about required politeness, Jane’s answer in the 2006 adaption is almost exactly the same as in the novel:

“I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.”
That is her second line, in the 2006 as in the novel. The first is the question if he needs help.

Of course I recognize the playfulness in repeatedly turning the gender table thru the novel. It is funny in many ways but in the end I believe the greatness in the novel is that Brontë manages to do that without ridiculing him (or Jane) There is a lot of humor in it but it feels quite good-natured in spite of being written in Victorian England.

But this is what I meant about Sandy Welch leaving out the philosophy. She goes for the psychology instead and I think she does that quite nicely.



About the library and study scenes:
I do not believe in the insects representing Bertha. It seems to be more of showing his interest in scientific, which he comes to share with Jane. About the looked in books, well don’t you overload that? Some bookcases still have locks and books were expensive in the time. There is never anything about Adéle being in bed. She has her nurse to watch her besides Jane.

About him changing his mood so fast:
Well, maybe he is not in pain anymore

About The beast within:
Well there is one book from late 19th century and one from 1982. There might be more of them for all I know.
This one is obviously about a werewolf. Nowhere in the conversation about the book does the Eshton girl mention anybody being locked up.

“He spends his nights raging about like an animal and in the day he goes about his business”

About the calling across the country:
The fact that Jane did not hear him before he had repented has a simple explanation. I searched the text and you misremember on this point:

The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage—quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it—she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.”

“What! did he not leave England?”

“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.”

And that is all. I also tried Rochester’s own account for his life after she left but he never mentions calling out for her before the night when she heard him.

Then why right then? Well, she does not give credit to neither the Lord nor any devilish design. She claims nature itself “was roused, and did—no miracle—but her best”. So, Brontë’s intention in this is obviously a kind of paganism. Jane was about to cross nature’s own order in accepting StJohn and nature rose.

About the feminist declaration:
Well it would have been a good explanation of yours if it had been the nineteen years old Jane who said this to Rochester or Diana or maybe contemplated it by herself at Loowood or Thornfield but it is not.

I felt I had to limit the quote, but this is the matured Jane, who has been married to Rochester for ten years and is now writing her autobiography. The quote is her reflection on what the readers might think about her younger self as she describes her. It is her way of defending the young Jane’s restlessness, saying that a woman needs space to grow in just like a man needs it. The fact that she herself is now leading a quiet life does not negate the declaration. You cannot always have everything you dream about since life has a tendency to get in the way.

But yes, she let go of a life in action and still she might have chosen it, had she accepted StJohn’s proposal. She would not do that, though. But Rochester recovers partial sight and the matured Jane does still make use of her faculties. She writes this auto-biography. Whether she does anything else, she never tells. It is just everybody’s guess.

Town-life is a natural part of the young Jane’s wishes, like almost every other teenager in every other time and place I guess. But town-life is not in the declaration.

The narrator does often let her younger self think and speak uncommented and then you cannot know when reading it what the matured narrator thinks about it. You will have to see how she acts in a later state to know. But this is not the case in said declaration.

Sometimes the narrator does also make very clear distinction between what she thought when it happened and what she thinks now. Like this:

My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol.

And later about StJohn:

A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him—I could not resist him.

Here it is the matured Jane who looks back upon the young one and is not very proud of her.

About him not seing the difference between George and Jane in the 2006 adaption:

Can you tell when there is a good fire?”
“Yes; with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze.”
“And you see the candles?”
“Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.”
“Can you see me?”
“No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.”

He obviously could not see the shape of a woman in the novel either, at least not indoors in the evening.

About “the men in green” etc:
Well if you cannot see the flirtation, or at least playfulness, in her picking up his line, “speaking as seriously as he” about pure nonsense, then I have no way to make you see it. It is a pity, though, since much of the conversation in the novel is a kind of friendly intellectual wrestling between her and him. The 1997 Jane seems to be afraid of him, answering him only because he demands it. There it is one of his ways of forcing her into submission. Disrespectfully, really. But I cannot see that in the novel, even if she would have a reason to be careful considering he was her employer. She stimulates him by gainsaying, arguing, teasing and just pushing his arguments aside.
Neither the 1997 adaption nor the 2006 one is totally true to the line, not like the 1983. Still I recognize much more of the original “dance-figures” in the 2006.

Then about Adéle:
I really see it strictly opposite from you. Rochester in the novel as well as in the 2006 adaption is very capricious towards Adéle. Sometimes he is rough and sometimes he will take his time with her. In the carriage he even uses her as a screen in addressing Jane.

(By the way, that is another difference from 1997. Rochester will not have Adéle in the carriage. He does not want her to be in the way. Jane, on the other hand, wants Adéle to be in the way like a kind of chaperon. And Jane has her way in the end. In the book because Rochester wishes to please her when she seems mortified, in the 2006 adaption because he wants to please her when she obviously is testing his declaration that “I am the servant and you the mistress”. In the 1997 adaption, she does not even try to have a will of her own in the case.)

But back to Adéle. Rochester, both in the book and in the 2006 adaption, obviously likes Adéle, but he will not really admit it. She reminds him of Celine and that is a trouble, especially when she does all her childish posing.

Adéle in the 2006 is somewhat older than in the book, just like in the 1997, but the way they make use of that is very different.

In the 2006, the older Adéle is able to play the childishly adapted “vamping” part from the novel which they have to give up in most adaptions. I believe (hope) it would be considered unethical to ask a ten year old girl to play that part.

Back to the novel; Rochester sees her mother in her and finds that very disturbing. In the 2006 adaption he seems to see not only her mother but also Bertha (and maybe all posing, seductive women he has ever bedded). Since Adéle is older in this adaption, he protects himself from her in a more ruff way feeling her to be more “dangerous” to him. (No, it is no “dirty old man”-theme in either the novel nor in the 2006 adaption, that is in another adaption.) But besides what is referable to her age, and the wider associations, I can actually see the similarity, point by point, between the book and the 2006 adaption. It is very close. He even gives her a dress which he does not like to see her pose in.
The real difference between the book and that adaption is that Jane tells the readers that Rochester could be rough, scornful and capricious towards Adéle. She does not actually show very much of it. Having no narrator in the 2006 adaption, they have to invent the words, looks and situations.

Then the 1997 adaption: (sigh, it creeps me out even to write about it)
I called Rochester in that adaption a brute. There is one more epithet for him that came into my mind while seeing the 1997 adaption and that began by the first scene with him and Adéle together. That epithet is creepy. Maybe I am extra sensitive, working daily with children, but I could hardly stand watching it. I could not see a loving father, eager to see his daughter again. Neither could I see a benevolent elderly man, cheering his young ward. No, what I saw was a libertine, who had a young naïve girl in his power. I felt that Jane ought to run away in that moment, crying by powerlessness. I felt that powerlessness so painful that I almost turned off the play. I know there are women who actually can fall in love with such men. It is tragic, and turning Jane Eyre into such a woman is to turn her into a tragic character. You may argue as you wish but I feel sick just to think about that scene.

He is just as creepy in the bedroom-after-fire scene. In the novel I recognize a man who is totally messed up. His wife has just tried to kill him and he is boiling over with an emotional chaos. In that scene there is a kind of pleading in his reluctance to let her go. He can hardly force himself to it. It is a pledge for comfort, sanity, normality and maybe you can wake me up from this crazy nightmare.

I could recognize that in every other adaption, except in the 1997. There he just seems to find an opportunity, too good to let go, and gets very aggressive and demanding in his way of ordering her to stay when she obviously wants to leave. In the end she has to run away.
You do not think her humiliated, sitting on her bed afterwards. Well I could see her scared, humiliated and even trapped. If she would have anywhere else to go after that night, I believe (or hope) that she would have left Thornfield the very next morning. There is not a whit of mutuality in the 1997 after-fire scene, only of raw hierarchic power.

Otherwise I think the fire scene itself in the 2006 a little unrealistic. All that fire, all that fire fighting, and afterwards they are both panting of adrenaline and effort, and yet no smoke and no coughing In the 1996 they handled it nicely by letting him have two rooms for an apartment and so let the firefighting, smoke and coughing be in one room and the thickly erotic moment afterwards in the other.

About the proposal in the 2006 adaption:
Yes, Rochester in the 2006 adaption lets her speak a lot without stopping her. Maybe that is to torture her even if I am not sure of that. It is called respectful to let somebody have her say.

But all the same:
In the novel you cannot see for how long he lets her do that but at least he gives her uninterrupted time for this line

“I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:—I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,—momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,—with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.”

And even for this: (some lines later)

“I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!”

They have shortened the conversation but the “dance-figures” are still almost identical and he does not let her speak more in a line in the 2006 adaption than in the original.

About him holding her forcefully in the proposal scene:
Even if I think the rape threat in the separation scene much worse than this, you might still be right about the forcefulness in holding her against her will in the proposal scene.
But he does that in the novel as well:

“Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.”

Well, I think this is the most important parts right now
Have a good night!

[MsSilentia]

About the treatment of Bertha:
Well I will not claim to know the particularities of how insane people were treated in the time even if I take a little lighter of what I have seen you write about it in different posts here. I know there has “always”, that is as long as insanity has been considered something medical and not a divine punishment or demoniac possession, been a very great cleft between the way public authorities have claimed to look upon it and what has been the actual common practice. It still is. It is sad but difficult to avoid since mentally ill persons seldom have a voice of their own.

But, besides that, it would be very stupid of me to claim to know how the rhetoric or the common practice was. My disbelief in this is not about common practice. It is still about the clothed human hyena, rising on its hind legs. If Brontë regretted this afterwards, credit to her for that, but it was still what she wrote in the novel and we cannot interpret an artistic work (or any other work by the way) from what the creator learned after it was finished.
Good night

[MsSilentia]

[Ah, you meant his asking if Adéle is in bed the same evening as he proposes? I thought of the interview in the library.
But the later one is in the in the summer!]

Sorry, I must have added the above in pure intellectual disorder

Not the evening he proposes but the evening she returns from Gateshead of course

[MsSilentia]

Hi Kiki;

I have been waiting for your answer but I am beginning to understand that you expected me to answer about the philosophical issues in your post. I have not done that since I honestly have regarded it mostly as unintelligible gibberish. Sorry, but there it is. I have read thru your posts again and understood what I found wrong with them and why I found them unintelligible from start.
There is a lot of philosophy about Jane Eyre, no doubt, and the novel might be interpreted in many different ways. Still I wonder about your way of interpreting.

When interpreting a text from a philosophical view, you have the plain text and then the different references that make the text say something besides the most obvious. That is simple. But when you interpret a text from the philosophical view, you still have to ground in the original text. A philosophical interpretation that is not in tune with the actual text cannot be right.

If, for example, the text shows an obvious erotic appeal but the philosophical issue makes that impossible, then it is the erotic’s in the actual text that are real and the philosophical issue must be misunderstood. If you have to deny the obvious in the text to make the philosophy work, then you are not discussing the real text but an imaginary text.
If you mean that a description in the actual text about a person must be overlooked to give way to the philosophical interpretation of the text, then, once again, you are not discussing the real text but an imaginary text.
If the narrator makes a political statement and that is not in tune with your philosophical statement, then you have to accept the text as it is. If you have to find strange ways of explaining away the actual text, then again, you are not discussing the real text but an imaginary text.

The feminist statement in Jane Eyre is real and if you have to explain that away, then you are not discussing Jane Eyre anymore but an imaginary text that is at least not Jane Eyre. The erotic appeal between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester is also real. Brontë describes Jane’ excitement after the bedroom fire. To claim that Jane is not meant to enjoy his touching her hand and all those sweet lines seems very strange when Brontë is actually telling the reader that she was thus excited afterwards. Once again, you do not seem to analyze the real text in Jane Eyre but an imaginary text.

If it is necessary to claim that Rochester has been calling for her for a long time and not been heard to prove your philosophical or religious interpretation about the text but the actual text does not support that – then again are you not analyzing the real text but an imaginary text.

If Bertha is described as a ghostly animal and you have to claim that is to be overlooked to suite your philosophical analyze, then again it is not Jane Eyre you are analyzing but an imaginary text.

If you mean that Jane has no erotic interest in Edward Rochester when he is thus dangerous in the separation scene, then again it is not the real Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë and published 1847, you are analyzing but something else. Brontë is describing Jane’s feelings in that scene in a way that makes the whole scene very strange. You have to understand that something is going on beneath the surface in that scene. It is not nice. I do not like that either. But I have to accept that this is what Brontë is writing and since nothing in it seems to be sarcastic, then it must be real. You can try to understand what is actually going on or leave it as unintelligible. But you cannot overlook it to prove your point about the text. Again, if you do, then you are not discussing Jane Eyre but an imaginary text.

I can go on over and over about your ways of interpreting the text. But I think I have got the main point clear enough. You cannot claim that Brontë had certain meanings about the text if you have to overlook the actual text to make that work, no matter how many references around the literature you can find. To interpret a book you must ground in the letters written in that book.

There is still a lot of playing with the standards of male-female, domination-submission, religion-nature and so on in Jane Eyre and all is not clear and much is dubious, but still you have to ground in the text. If the actual text is not in tune with the philosophy, then the text is real and the philosophy must be “over interpreted”.

And seeing it from that point, Rochester is obviously somewhat predatory, but still he is also a man in love. He is very manipulating but whether he is self-righteous or self-contemptuous, desperate or morally indifferent, whether his narcissism is human or fiendish, that is not so very clear. I know what I think. If I thought him to be a “semi-devil” becoming a “semi-angel”, then I would have no interest in him whatsoever. Why should I? Then he would have nothing to do with real human beings and the whole story would be as indifferent to me as the very cheapest black-and-white propaganda text.

If Jane is actually running back to what she believes is a married man, then you have to accept that. It says something about her, like it or not. In real life we might do things we actually do not believe in. Chance is a great actor in a human life. But in a novel the author decides over the storyline and nothing happens that the author does not decide to happen.

You write about stoicism. Well, the only stoic person in the whole novel dies in Loowood at an age of twelve and before dying she says to Jane:
““I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.”
Thus for the stoicism. It is a philosophy for death, not for life and still Jane chooses life over and over again.

I will stop for now. I think it a bit overdone to fill the screen adaptions with philosophy. Philosophy is a literary issue while movies are visual. Of course I know there are movies about philosophy. I am Swedish. I know movies like Dogville. But such movies are seldom pure movies. They are more kind of filmed theater and theater might be very philosophical.

[kiki1982]

No, wasn't waiting for anything actually, but I just did not have the time to write anything with knitting and too many interesting things on TV this week (I mean, BBC-interesting ). I should really continue...

[kiki1982]

So, to continue…

It is not because something is unintelligible to you, that is unintelligible to anyone and should be called ‘gibberish’. If you do not understand the philosophy of the Greeks, and Aristotle’s philosophy on art, then read about it instead of calling it ‘gibberish’. That article was based on an article written by a scholar on Brontë’s philosophy of art, so it was not ‘ignoring the text’. But enough of that. I have my grounds and sources to claim what I write.

It is not an imaginary text, it is the text. I am not a fan of feminist criticism as it mainly disregards the historical context of a work in favour of the agenda of the critic. I think that is profoundly wrong. I have never ever interpreted this text outside the historical context of it, except for one paper about Nietzsche which seemed to still be relevant, and one about the Bluebeard-allusion which also seemed very relevant and backed up by the similarity between the burning castle in Ivanhoe and Thornfield, based on Brontë’s extreme liking of Scott and his influence on her writings.
Jane Eyre has often been called a ‘Bildungsroman’. If there is no development in Jane’s approach to life, then there is no Bildungsroman, she would never come of age. It is not solely discovering love that is important In life, but dealing with life’s issues. Sexual and erotic passion is one thing, but it is not the only one. As it is, there is clearly a change in her perception as to her life’s course and what she wants. Supported by the quote from chapter XXXVII, she clearly has dealt with her desire to have a life with more excitement or social contact. One may call it Stoïc or one may call it something different, there is a sense, in both characters even, of acceptance and change in approach to suffering as coming from one’s own perception rather than from an outer source. Particularly Rochester’s speech in the last chapter about dispensation should be sufficient to see that. In chapter XXVII and the former ones, he still demands happiness and actively seeks it, even claims it, whereas when Jane returns, he does not demand anything, but says that he ‘will abide by [her] decision’, despite the reader and his servant John knowing that it is only her he wants. Is that not a change?

And why would Stoïcism be a philosophy for death? That is not what it is about. Stoïcism is a philosophy which gives guidelines towards dealing with life and life’s issues. It does not argue to be passionless. That is what is commonly thought, but that is not what it is. It argues that the cause of one’s sufferings is not the outside influence per se as suffering in itself is subjective and not objective, but that the cause of suffering lies within oneself as we can want to try to control what is incontrollable (what fate sends on our course). Or, we can do the wrong things and cause ourselves to suffer. Similarly, when Jane rebels against the regime at Lowood and Gateshead, she can try, but outer circumstances are not going to change as it is fate that has brought her there. The only thing that will happen if she does not conform or if she rebels in her mind, is that she will suffer because she can’t settle her mind. As such, even before she dies, Helen Burns has accepted that certain parts of her (her reading and distracted nature) cause her to get punished, which she accepts as just because she should not be distracted. She does not rebel against the teacher because the teacher is just, which Jane does not understand. Helen also accepts her death as sent by fate and so must Jane. Helen is not going to come back. As such, Jane must accept that her marriage to Mr Rochester is not possible or she will suffer. A Quaker-approach would say she would have to follow Truth found within herself. So she goes, finding her cousins. She has forgiven Rochester for his treacherous conduct as she sees why he did it, but urges him to reflect on his views, as they are not right (True, we might say): ‘I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil’ (ch XXVII). And, later, again, in his speech about dispensation, he will admit that he was wrong and that Jane was snatched from him because he would have sullied her. His sufferings, he admits, were the result of his own conduct. How is that not acceptance and reflection? In chapter XXVII, Jane, though, is further in the process and thanks to Helen who showed her the way, can deal better with her grief than Rochester with his. She takes it as a pre-concluded fact that she must go. Going in itself is not the issue; she feels pain, but that is part of the process. Later, she does not regret that she left, even found it the best way, but, ironically, regrets what Rochester must be doing now… That does not mean she does not long for him, far from, but she is aware that ‘be[ing] a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England’ is better than ‘be[ing] a slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next’. She is not suffering per se, rather having lapses of weeping and reflection. How is that not Stoïc? It seems to me that Rochester is rather the one truly suffering at that point. He has people search for Jane, refuses to accept that she has left, he walks in his grounds whole nights as if looking for something he has lost, he grows wild, he becomes a ‘hermit’ etc. It is only when he has accepted that she is dead, when he has reflected on his conduct, that she will come back to him, and still he will not demand her, but only be happy that she is there (for now). That is clearly a change in approach.

I do not deny that some of Jane’s speeches are controversial statements, but to merely see them as only that, is a bit closed-minded and does not do credit to Brontë’s intellect.

If you claim that Jane only enjoys him touching her hand after the scene in chapter XV, then you are clearly mistaken. If you watch the 1983 adaptation, which is pretty much the book in action without much ado, there is a clearly negative, almost ensnaring, silence in that action. If there was none of that, what do the wild seas mean, in connection with the metaphor Rochester used the very same day? The metaphor implied that passion takes one by surprise, that it Is not at one’s command and that one is strung along by it, but that one has to get over it or otherwise it will destroy you. Dealing with it, is what Jane is doing or is going to be doing before the guests arrive: she will look in the mirror and make a portrait of Blanche Ingram to reflect on her own plainness and status in society. And indeed, mere passion without reaching the other side in the craggy pass, is dangerous, which Rochester’s course of life illustrates and which other Byronic Heroes also face (mot notably Heathlcliff and Byron’s Manfred). How Jane deals with her passion, because she did feel that for him when she saw her wedding collapse, is not giving in to it (like Rochester), but suppressing it despite her own heart as it is morally not permitted. She cannot find it in her heart to be with a man who is already married though she loves him dearly and forgives him for his treacherous actions, she does not see an illicit relationship as just. He has a wife, has a duty to care for her (which he does not, by no means), and she will not be his mistress because she would be degrading herself. Mind, not even necessarily for Victorian society only, but merely for herself, like she says, in the Quaker spirit (also a philosophy often credited when it comes to this novel and as to approach clearly in accordance with Greek philosophy). She must follow her inclination to what is just, despite what she may feel on the surface. There is only one right way and thus, she must, whether she feels passion or not. That she goes back to Rochester, not knowing whether he is still married or not, is irrelevant. She is by no means going there with the thought of becoming his mistress; she does not even entertain the concept. At that moment, any petty thoughts of that nature are really out of the question. She is going there to help him as she feels he is in need of her and to get to know what is the right course to take for her as to St John’s proposal of marriage (again, Quarkerism). That is something totally different than running to him to become his mistress after all. If she can’t degrade herself to being his mistress a first time and sees it as a matter of course that she must leave, then she won’t be able to become his mistress a year later. It is as simple as that. If he was still married, be sure she would have stayed because he needed her help, but celibate. The point is not that she ‘wants’ him, the point is that she wants to be with him, in spirit, not carnally, so to say. And that is what Rochester has realised for himself as well. Before, being with a woman for him equalled sex as it was an important part of his life. His women had to beautiful, not interesting, or that at least got second place on his list. He grows more and more disillusioned with the world, as he can’t find anyone who fits his criteria. When he can’t marry Jane for real, he will pass her off as his wife, thus actually making her his mistress; that is clear to him. Now, he has realised what is important, he has realised that in fact the sex and beauty-part is not that, it is speaking with her that is his main concern. As such, even their marriage is irrelevant if it were not a union with her. His speech, ‘never mind fine clothes and jewels. All that is not worth a fillip,’ is a symptom of that. Where he insisted on a lace veil and wedding dress from London before (think about how much the transportation must have cost, all the way up there), he now relinquishes all that. Indeed, material things are of no consequence to him anymore. Also him ‘long[ing] for [her] both in spirit and flesh’ is a profound statement too as he admits longing to be with her, even in death as he believes she is dead. Based on that, he cannot long for her truly bodily in a sensual way as one cannot long for a person in that way when he/she is dead, he may dream of her being there, that is also in the flesh. He asks his Maker to die so he can be with her. That denotes a deeper way of longing on his part than he was ever capable of before. That is not imaginary. The light in this concept is also important, as the Quakers see the experience of God as ‘the light’. So, the continuous carrying and lighting of candles, and Jane bringing them in at the end of the story almost, could be an indication for that approach as well. Also the Greeks thought virtue a light through which the divine in us could be seen. There is definitely a lot of candles being carried around in the story, particularly in Thornfield; It is often dark and cold (also often considered symbolically and Dante and Milton’s hell were icy as well), where in the other two sections it is not really mentioned such a lot.

It seems that I do have a great imagination to claim that Rochester called Jane’s name in the grounds… It is possible that I saw that in an adaptation, though. Still, it does not take away the argument that that occurrence is very real and that it is literally impossible if not read in a profoundly symbolic or philosophical way. If God is in all of us, as the Greeks and Quakers believe(d), then, at the point where they experience God, so to say, it is logic that they would be able to ‘speak’ to one another if they reach God’s level in themselves. Anything less would be dramatically illogical as there is no way one can talk over a distance of several miles to another. That is not imaginary either, and certainly not explaining away, rather just explaining a very puzzling part in a text. Paganism in this context is a big word. It is possible, but it is not because Brontë lets Jane speak about nature, that she cannot mean anything else but paganism. I wouldn’t call it wrong, but I would put reservations with that as Brontë herself was part of a clerical family. It is possible to lose one’s faith altogether, but then marrying a curate yourself, is not really good if you do not believe in the job your husband does. It takes dedication. And it is known that she went to church. When speaking about her sister she said that Emily acted odd because she saw Christians as the poorest wretches… Indeed, Emily had started on another belief, not away from Christianity, but had started to want to see God as a unity of both nature and God, as in Rousseau. She did not believe anymore that it was only good to try to live by the rules and that then you were a good believer. She believed in a deeper way. Brontë found that odd. Still, there were books on philosophy in their book collection, by Epictetus and Rousseau who based his philosophy on the former. As such, some of it can have brushed off on Brontë, thus using it in her character for Jane. Writing Nature with a capital also means something. Rousseau is often mistaken for paganism too, even in his own age. Nonetheless, he was a Christian.

Of course Jane has erotic interest in Rochester! I can’t see where you decided that I thought that was not the case. The fact remains, though, that, despite the erotic interest she has In him and which she has to fight to a certain extent, she is afraid of him, clearly. Already before her marriage, comparing him to a sultan with concubines and slaves. She writes to her uncle in Madeira with that inclination (‘if something happens at all’). She feels unease, although she does not know why and what for. Still, even though there is erotic interest, it is clear that that erotic interest may still be there in the end (no doubt), but that it is not the main concern of a marriage. Again, Quakerism backs that up, stating that a marriage is something that can be passionate, but that it should be based on wider judgment than that alone, hence the ‘clearing committee’. Rochester, at first, does not have that judgment. Jane does not know what (love-)passion is until she meets Rochester. She realises that, for her, a marriage with St John wouldn’t be good, because he has no passion for her, but (a little) for another woman and is prepared to relinquish the latter because of practical concerns. That said, however, she does say, ‘I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result.’ That is not mere passion, but unity, even of character. In that, passion has taken a secondary role as part of her and his life, but not something that is their main concern. They are one and that is the purpose of a marriage, not passion by itself, as, again, Rochester’s course of life illustrated.

It is the general idea of the Byronic Hero that he is profoundly puzzling, profoundly narcissistic (like Byron himself), profoundly unconventional (as such out of society), that he has a dirty past which he would like to conceal, that he is moody because of that past, that he is not handsome, really has no concern for anyone else and that he is irresistible because of all that. That is part of his charm. Anything short of profoundly bad behaviour, total disregard for others, narcissism and dangerous conduct is doing the character short. It is not because Rochester seems to make sense that he does, and that’s the clever thing. King Lear also seems a sad old man, until you start to think about the cause of his misfortunes. The only one who can be blamed is… right, himself. And so it is with Rochester. Why do you think Brontë deliberately puts Lear’s words in Rochester’s mouth, links him with Paradise Lost, makes him misquote biblical passages repeatedly? Surely not because he is supposed to be honest? Why do you think she makes him misrepresent the motives of his father for his arranged marriage? Surely not because he is an honest and pitiable character? Contemporary readers may not know all that, but it does not change Rochester’s character. He is not pitiable, or at least he does not deserve pity on the basis of ‘poor him, I wouldn’t like to be him, he deserves better’; he deserves pity based on his delusion, like Jane expresses, nothing more. If it takes violence (which he admits to in chapter XXXVII too, ‘if [I] was violent in [my] desperation’.), then so be it, but viewers’ or readers’ perceptions should not change.

I think an all-important facet of this delusion and tendency to lie about or misrepresent facts, is Bertha’s confinement. Mia Iwama from Brown University, on the Victorian Web, also concludes that ‘ultimately, investigation into the condition of mental institutions at the time of the publication of Jane Eyre reveals that although poor and abusive conditions and overcrowding were prevalent in Victorian era mental asylums, there also existed a surprising level of awareness of the plight of the mentally ill and a widespread desire to improve the conditions of asylums and the treatments they offered to those who were incapable of functioning in regular society due to mental illness. […] the issue of mental illness is handled with an impressive degree of respect, sensitivity, and understanding. As the Commissioners Report authors declare, "We sympathize with the lower animals and protect them from cruelty, whilst we suffer every species of barbarity to be heaped with impunity on our afflicted brethren" (191). They hope to[o] that improved conditions and understanding will "suffice to provide the means of comfort, freedom, and happiness to the many afflicted and worse than slave-bound of our fellow countrymen" (192).’ And she concludes about Rochester: ‘This evidence leads one to question with much greater scrutiny Mr. Rochester's character, for his treatment of Bertha Mason is unpardonable.’ Unpardonable because ‘he allows Bertha, whose family has a history of mental illness, to be locked up like a prisoner in a cheerless, windowless room, wearing dirty and ragged clothing and subject to the abuse of Grace Poole, who binds her to a chair to subdue her. There is no evidence any real attempts have been made in the past to address her situation by medical professionals and try to lessen the suffering she inevitably experiences.’ Although, I think she draws the wrong eventual conclusion in that she scrutinises the author for it. Brontë was also part of the public. If the general public was appalled by what they read (which the criticism denotes) and if they did not see lunatics as beasts anymore (the reports) or punished by God (which they once were), then she must either have been living in a hole with no information on the rest of the world whatsoever, which is not true, or she did it deliberately. Which, again, she shows in making Jane take the voice of the public when she says, ‘[Sir], you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel--she cannot help being mad.’ And then Rochester comes out with even worse: that he does not hate Bertha because she is mad, but just because he hates her and that he would never treat his Jane like that even if she were mad. If hate moves him to that and if he knows how to care properly for someone, then he is cruel, deliberately. The point is that he has the power to change her circumstances, but that he deliberately does not. That is a deluded person, incapable of empathy, and dangerous for that. He also takes as a reference Grimsby Retreat. There was only one Retreat, connected with mental illness, ever and that was one run by the Quakers at York where Brontë regularly went, and which pioneered the humane treatment of lunatics in the world. It is still run there, in the same place. If he takes that as a reference, he clearly misrepresents the facts as the Retreat would never have dreamt of doing what Rochester allows with any lunatic, however violent. Rochester had both the power and the money, but does not care.

19th century literature about love in particular cannot be confused with contemporary stuff. Love is a power for change, unrealistic and as such very obvious. The semi-fiend and semi-angel idea is not at all too far-fetched if seen from that point of view. It is wonderful, in fact, and does more credit to Jane as a character than it would do if Rochester merely regretted and that was it. What is her purpose then? Surely, she must be an extraordinary woman to deserve such change? Surely his love must be immense if through that, he has started to question himself?

About the Bertha-Jane connection in 2006. There is definitely a connection going on, admitted to by Ruth Wilson herself, and it shows: both characters have a red scarf, Rochester and his fire bird metaphor with its red feathers (red again).

I found the library profoundly unrealistic as it showed things lying around. Things would not have been lying around in a household like Thornfield because the house had to be presentable to any possible guests when Rochester deemed himself worthy of turning up at all. If his personnel left things lying around like the maps that are on the table with the magnifying glass for allegedly a whole year (!), they would have become dusty and not presentable, they would have discoloured. Normally, a house was ‘shut up’ when the family left for the season, i.e. all furniture was covered up with sheets and the curtains and shutters closed so as to preserve the colours of the interior. Mrs Fairfax does say, however, that she keeps it ready, because Rochester is unpredictable, but she would have cleared up the place definitely. Of course it is showing his interest, but they could have done it in another way which was not so blatantly unrealistic. The books locked up in their glass cases speak an atmosphere of distrust. Only the most necessary books are free to be read, not the rest, as if they are too valuable to be read, it is a bit weird… You are expecting an educated person, the governess, and you give her nothing more to read but children’s books or books fit for teaching alone? Does she not deserve anything more, or do you worry about what she is going to read in those books? The library has a symbolic meaning in the novel, not because of the books alone, but because most of the important scenes take place in the room. The library, in a household of that time, had a bigger function as it has now, more a central role than merely storing books, as it was smaller than the drawing room, and better isolated in winter due to all the books against the walls. It was also a place for men to repair to after dinner if there were large parties. So, the library, both as a central room and ‘male’ bastion, has a central role in the story, both literally and figuratively.

The book The Beast Within of the late 19th century you speak about is the one by Zola, now sold under its own title La Bête Humaine, from 1890. It still stays an anachronism. If there is one absolute no-no in costume drama, it must be allusions that were not around in the time of your costume drama! Certainly books are ridiculous as they cannot be read before they were written. But beside that, the plot has absolutely nothing to do in theme with Jane Eyre at all. Based on the ‘prequel’ series later broadcasted, Wide Sargasso Sea, it would seem that Rochester locked Bertha up only for her loose morals. We may conclude then, that the BBC stood behind the idea of a Rochester who was a nasty man and locked Bertha up not because she was mad, but in a Collector kind of way in order to preserve her, like the insects are preserved in the boxes In the library. At any rate, the 1982-novel seems an allusion that is worthy of using if you have a certain thought you want to carry on, Zola’s work is really of no concern theme-wise. I would think that Sandy Welch still knows how to write a drama despite blatant anachronisms. The whole aim of quoting the title or a verse/sentence/phrase of a work in a drama or novel, is drawing the attention to its plot or theme. Of course characters are not going to converse about that particular book or the plot of it, what they think about it and so on, but the fact remains that such things are used in particular ways by writers as to what they intend their readers to ‘get’. Lost In Austen for example, does that too (most notably with Lied der Freiheit/Song of Freedom by Mozart), and P&P 1995 does that as well with Voi Che Sapete by Mozart to hint about Darcy’s feelings. A writer normally makes use thematically of his allusions. That said, though, Welch did not in her look on Emma which was dismal, so possibly she did mean Zola’s novel, which would be even worse.

I never said that screen adaptations must be overly philosophical, but script writers can at least try not to be inconsistent with what lies behind the surface. I have seen a lot of French adaptations of novels and they always manage to reflect the truth despite cutting in the story dramatically, despite not exploring deeper content and so on. The Anglo-Saxon world does not seem to take a story as a collection of thoughts, but rather a collection of facts and thus changeable. One can change the action in a story, but not the content.

[MsSilentia]

Sorry, I did not mean that Grecian philosophy was gibberish. I would not be qualified for such a statement. What I meant was how you used the text in Jane Eyre. You do not ground in the text in Jane Eyre but in a lot of other works instead. The real text in the novel Jane Eyre seems to be the least important part in you analysis.
And I might have been slovenly about stoicism. I did not mean what stoicism is but how stoicism was used in the novel. Had Jane been stoic about her treatment in Gateshead, then the abuse would have continued. It was first when she rebelled that she was sent away. To school which made her able to take some control about her own life. Does she ever regret that outcome from her fighting back when John Reed abused her? Does she ever show any regret about standing up for herself when Rochester says he will send her to Ireland? Does she ever claim that she should not have gone back to what she believed was a married man? Did she feel punished for it? No, she was rewarded for the decision. She admired and loved Helen Burns, but she would not try her way in life. I do not see how you ground any claim that she does. Ground it in the actual text, that is. Of course you can ground it in other works but Brontë did not write those.

I will keep to the text if I shall analyze it.


Who said the erotic interest should be the only interest between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester? There are lots of other and earlier things like his way of showing interest in her thoughts and feelings, confiding in her, bringing in the outer world into her confined life and so on. And of course the romantic part of him, showing in his speech, though not in his practice. But the erotic interest awakens for the first time in the after-fire scene, at least from Jane’s point. It is important because Jane keeps claiming her own erotic feelings to be natural and desirable in a time where women were supposed not to have erotic feelings or, at least, to suppress them. His touching her hand is not the only sweet thing after the bedroom fire but it is part of it. You cannot overlook it if you wish to stick to the text. At least you should not mix the sweet moment after the bedroom fire and Jane’s excitement afterwards with the 1997 picture of Jane running away from a creepy and aggressive brute trying to use his power as her master.


Yes, she will try to kill her own love. She tries to do that twice. First time when she hears about Blanche Ingram and secondly when she finds out about Bertha. But she fails. Not even the portraits can save her from desiring Blanche’s suitor, even if they help her to be prepared for the emotional catastrophe.

When she lives as a village school teacher her days and evenings are calm and useful but in the nights:
I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy—dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him—the hope of passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and fire.

And then awakes in despair. She will not be successful in “plucking out her right eye and cutting of her right hand” or “transfixing her own heart” as she decided to do after the failed wedding.

This is the development in the novel, or at least a part of it! In the end she goes back to a married man. You say it is impossible that she should go back to live with him unmarried but you have only your own preconceived ideas to support that. Development can go in many directions. It is not up to you to decide what development is. In real life it is decided by life itself. In an artistic work it is up to the creator.
The plain text is very open about what she feels and she never ever intimates any idea of just being his platonic friend.
Of course this idea was not a literary issue in the time. But Jane Eyre was not in line with the time. In Jane Eyre, Brontë is balancing all the time on the edge of what is literary acceptable.Jane Eyre was thought morally dangerous in her own time and that was not because of her piety, stoicism or platonic virtue!

If she was preparing for a life as his platonic friend, then why did she say to herself that “if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labour—you had better go no farther,”

These are her thoughts when she has reached the inn. It makes no sense whatsoever if she will only be his platonic friend. But she must continue, cannot stay away, and then she grows more and more eager to see him the closer she comes. Bertha is quite forgotten.
Then the decency (and the publishibility) is saved by finding out about the real state of things.



I can see you still try to explain away the feminist declaration. She never says that she has changed her mind about it. Were in the feminist declaration is there anything against matrimony with a blind man? Or against living in the country? I repeat, and everyone who is interested can read it in the text, that the matured Jane, who has been married with Rochester for ten years, addresses the readers directly with that declaration when she writes her autobiography. Any other idea is like Rochester’s calling out for her for months before she actually hears him – not in the text.

And, by the way, I believe you should think twice before trying to make a religious symbol out of the lack of electric light in the early nineteenth century Candles were staple commodities in the time.



Rochester does really think himself punished by God. That is true. For Rochester, the redemption is in line with his thoughts about himself. I could fill this text with his lines of self-contempt. You are wrong if you think that Edward Rochester does not know or admit that he has himself to blame for the marriage with Bertha.

There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!—an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have—But let me remember to whom I am speaking.”

According to his own first declaration before Jane he is a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life.

He wants to change his life. He is “paving hell with energy”

And so on. His self-contempt seems to be his main “quality”. No matter if it is about Bertha or Celine Varence or his ways with other women.
He also scorns himself for: like other defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances, obviously alluding to his father’s and brother’s part in the marriage with Bertha.

And he does not believe he can help himself. He wants Jane to save him, although he knows he does wrong to her. He keeps on telling himself that his love and constancy will atone for the treachery.

Still (from the wedding) I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes. [-] I wanted to see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting.

This is not a description of arrogance. It is about defiance. Or maybe it is only desperation.


But it is true he is not at all self-aware. He does not understand that he is part of the problem when he wants Jane to be next in line, after his other mistresses. Jane can see where it would lead and maybe that is the most painful insight of it all, that he would not be equal to his own ideas.

Jane also reproaches his way of speaking about Berta, but she never questions the confinement. She reproaches him for hating her, not for treating her ill.

“Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a upas-tree: that demon’s vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I’ll shut up Thornfield Hall: I’ll nail up the front door and board the lower windows: I’ll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with my wife, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on—”
“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel—she cannot help being mad.”
“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?”
“I do indeed, sir.”
“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me

Jane does not believe him and that is probably very wise. But she never, in words or in thoughts, ever questions the confinement. Not when she first finds out about it and never after that. Not even on her way back to Thornfield in the end. There is never one single syllable on questioning the confinement itself, never one single syllable of regret for that poor confined woman he has in his power. Her perception on Bertha is the clothed human hyena, rising on its hind legs. There is no use overlooking that description as if Brontë could not have written it since she was too enlightened. It is an unquestionable fact that she did write it!



Back to the 2006 adaption. Yes, of course you can critizise it on a lot of spots. I do not care about “The beast within”, because I believe it is just a coincident that such a book is mentioned while two later books with that title actually do exist. That is why I wrote that there were two of them and could be more for all I know. Or it is just an invention. But to believe Sandy Welch would actually use a book of too late date is just ridiculous. And, then, with a theme in the book mentioned that has nothing to do with the themes in those novels…that if anything should make clear it is not meant to be one of those.

Of course you can critizise the idea that those maps lay open for dust and daylight. But compared to what they did to Jane Eyre in the 1997 adaption it is nothing. You cannot claim those open maps changes the meaning of the story They are just something that trigs her curiosity about the master of the house.



Who said Edward Rochester does not change? Only in the 1997 adaption does he not learn anything. I stick to that. But learning does not necessarily mean turning from a semi-devil to a semi-angel. He stays a comprehensible human being all the time. At least I had no difficulty in comprehending him. He is not the nicest of human beings but he is quite comprehensible from a human point of view. I did always think the loosing of his left hand and eye (why the left though? It ought to be the right) was an allusion to the Mountain Sermon (I presume it is called that in English too) though he has not the strength to do it himself. He has to lose the means of rushing on like he did before. The divine way of taking the bottle from an alcoholic seems very harsh…

In the 2006 adaption he is just as humbly glad to meet her again as in the novel. He is just as aware of his own” infirmities”, that he is mutilated and hideous to look at. The moment in the adaption when he turns away in shame of his own imagined appearance sums up several smaller intimations in the novel. Pity they would not make him as “hideous” as he ought to be. I am sure they would have handled it.
And he is just as jealous, and just as scared to lose her again.



About Brontë’s own religiosity – we know absolutely nothing of that! Brontë was a daughter of a clergyman, so what? She went to church? Well I know several people who would show up in church at certain occasions although they are not religious at all, at least according to their own words. And that is today, in a society where there follows absolutely no social cost to never show up in the church at all. Living in a rural Victorian society I bet it was wise to go to church. She married a clergyman! And? I suppose she married a man – not an office. I will not claim she was not religious. I will stick only to her own text and if you wish to claim her religious, then show it in her own written texts! Thinking her sister’s ideas odd does not say anything about her own thoughts in the matter. There are many ways of thinking about religion. To think one interpretation odd will still give a lot of space for your own thoughts.

I would say from mere statistics she was probably religious in some way since most people were even though no statistician would ever accept that way of using statistics to prove something about an individual. We do not know what she believed in. We do not know whether she had any faith at all and if she had we still do not know whether it was weak or strong, whether it was “pure” or mixed up with other ideas.

I could say something, though, from her own written text. In the novel Villette, there is a great theme about religious tolerance. Lucy Snow is a Presbyterian and thinks Catholicism is a strategy to control people’s minds, impeding them from growing up to self relying individuals. Monsieur Paul Emanuel is a devoted Catholic and believes Presbyterianism satanic. None will change mind upon that thru the whole novel but still they learn to respect each other’s religious practice. It will not stop them from getting engaged against the will of his kindred and religious master. So why should Brontë not marry a clergyman?


But, in the novel Jane Eyre, if we should stick to that, Brontë seems to have a serious issue with the church. She mentions priests who are good men by the way but the two priests we are actually to know in that novel are Mr Brocklehurst and StJohn Rivers.


Of course you could define belief in Nature’s own power as not paganism but that is merely a play with words. I do not believe you will find any references to what is Nature’s own active interference with people’s lives in the Bible, nor in any sermon book used in the time, so wherever you find them, they will come from other sources.

You try to make it a sign of them reaching God’s level when calling to each other across the country. It might seem a little blasphemed to me, but since I am not religious I do not really have any right to make such a judgment. But read Jane’s own words on the matter:
The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.

“awful and inexplicable” “deeper shades of supernatural” Were do you find God’s level in that?



So Ruth Wilson “admitted” a connection between Jane and Bertha I wonder who would not see it – the red scarf became a bit too obvious… but it is visual and that makes good movie.

There is an obvious connection in the novel. Bertha tries to burn Edward Rochester in his bed and Jane saves him. Between them is Edward Rochester himself, with all his self-contempt, his trashed sexuality, his dream of something better and his inability to deal with the situation. Being a romantic he makes a guardian angel out of Jane. And he wants her – just like any man would want her in those circumstances. Just like any human being would want the fresh and unspoiled when the innermost strings of life grows too soiled.

Then Bertha, who stabs her brother and Jane tending him.

“She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason.
I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said—
“Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don’t repeat it.”

And Bertha, who scares the hell out of Jane before the wedding.

As a symbol there might be Bertha who represents the confined female wrath and desires, but that is only an interpretation. It might, but does not have to, be Brontë’s intention. But a screen-adaption might be in its own right to find new angles.

In the 2006 they have made more of that connection. Jane, watching Edward’s doings with Blanche Ingram. Then Bertha, watching Edward’s doings with Blanche and Jane.
Young Jane, shut up in a haunted room with red tapestries. Then, grown up, finding Bertha confined in another room with red tapestries. Only now they are worn and decayed.
And, of course, the magnificent moment, with Jane and Bertha measuring each others across the room, not as sane and insane in that moment, but as two rivals, or, if you like, as the wife and the “puta”. And Jane has to deal with that afterwards. There is no escape from it. To me she seems stronger in the adaption then she ever was in the novel. But that is a modern angle. Today, at least in the social concept I live in, strength is not to never fall but to rice again. In the Victorian era, though, a woman who fell would have no second chance. But a man would, and Edward Rochester will not perish like his female likes. See your earlier point about turning the gender table!



The separation scene:
I fully admit that I appreciate Sandy Welch’s courage in challenging the common ideas about Jane Eyre in that scene. The original scene is a strange and quite gruesome mixture of desire, aggressiveness, despair and a hard will-fight. But it actually starts with her just as vulnerable as in this adaption. Rochester is waiting outside her door and when she faints he carries her away. She knows not where he is bringing her and obviously has no will-power to even care. If he had brought her back to her bed-room in that moment, she would have been just as vulnerable as in the 2006 version. But that would have been to cross the literary line 1847. Instead he carries her to the library. I do not claim Brontë ever thought of the bedroom idea. I presume it was too far from literary convention to ever appear before her. But to claim Brontë’s Jane would never have allowed it is questionable.


Back to the novel:
When Rochester accuses Jane of leaving him to die cursed, then of course she says the line I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil’ What else should she say? “Go to hell if you like it is not my business”? Or something like that? Of course she wished him well.

But she does not leave him in order to save him but to save herself whatever it will cost him. “while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him.”

And later: Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love” That is from her escape.

Why she later changes her mind is an issue to discuss. But you need huge blinders not to see that she does. StJohn does obviously have a part in it. The inheritance, which many people seem to wish to neglect, will also change her options. The fortune really seems to have very little purpose besides that. Jane has already proved she can do without it. But it makes her able to please herself in a way she never could before.



The reason she writes to her uncle in Madeira before the wedding is that she does not like the thought of being dressed, fed and boarded by him without anything to add by herself. It would, indeed, be a relief,” I thought, “if I had ever so small an independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell my uncle John I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had but a prospect of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now.”
This is not distrust towards Rochester. It is about female pride and self-worth.


And about the carnal side of love. See what Jane says to Edward Rochester in the end:
“Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.”

This is the text. She never gives up her sexuality as a part of herself, just as she never repudiates the feminist declaration.

And about him:
“The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be married instantly.”
He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.
“We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the licence to get—then we marry.”

I cannot see Rochester has changed very much in that aspect either…