Three great love stories that started it all…

Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights are three of the greatest novels in English literature. Now joining them is Pride, Prejudice and Popcorn, a decidedly different take on these classics. You will laugh with delight as you learn:

The importance of thoroughly investigating your employers before accepting a job at their isolated, creepy house (Jane Eyre)

The sad fact that not every bad boy has a heart of gold (Wuthering Heights)

How to make a proper proposal—and how not to. Hint: don’t insult your beloved while attempting to talk her into marriage! (Pride and Prejudice

Join blogger and romance aficionado Carrie Sessarego (smartbitchestrashybooks.com) as she takes us to the movies with Jane and Liz and Cathy. In her own unique, hilarious style she discusses the books and the various movie and TV adaptations. Your living room will be graced by heartthrobs like Timothy Dalton (twice!), Colin Firth (he shows up twice, too!), Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy.

Whether you are in the mood for serious academic discussion or lighthearted snark, whether you prefer Regency romance or Gothic passion, and whether you prefer your love stories on the screen or on the page, this book has something for you.

Pride, Prejudice and Popcorn
Carrie Sessarego

Mills & Boon E POP!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication

To three generations of inspiring women: Phoebe, Mary and Linden. And to Glen, who always said I could.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Jane Eyre: In Which Self-Respect Conquers All

Jane Eyre: The Book

The Big Picture

The Adaptations

The Final Scorecard

Part II: Pride and Prejudice: In Which Two People Learn Not to Trust Their First Impressions—and Society Is Much Pleased With the Result

Pride and Prejudice: The Book

The Big Picture

The Adaptations

The Final Scorecard

Part III: Wuthering Heights: Oh, There’s a Romance—but It’s not the One You’re Thinking Of

Wuthering Heights: The Book

The Big Picture

The Adaptations

The Final Scorecard

Part IV: They All Lived Happily Ever After (Unless They Were in Wuthering Heights): Final Comparisons and Conclusions

Part V: Special Features

Behind the Scenes with Charlotte Brontë

Behind the Scenes with Jane Austen

Behind the Scenes with Emily Brontë

Trivia

Playlist—Unofficial Music Connections

Part VI: Roll Credits

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

Great books are notable for the fact that your relationships with them as a reader change over time. My relationships with Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights have changed dramatically as I’ve viewed the books through different philosophies and life experiences. They’ve also changed as I’ve watched film adaptations of the books. Some of these adaptations were marvelous, and some were dreadful, but all of them taught me something important about the books.

My relationship with Jane Eyre started when I was about ten years old. I had an aunt (a kind one, who in no way resembled Mrs. Reed) who had a lot of books. I used to crawl between the back of an easy chair and the floor-length window curtains and read. I read adult books because that’s what this aunt had on her shelves. So Jane and I became friends when I opened a book that had interesting pictures, only to discover another girl in the book’s pages, one who was about my size, and who was, likewise, hiding at the window with a book that was difficult to read but had good illustrations.

Jane and I grew up together, and as I became older, I became more interested in the romance. As a young woman, I tried to decide whether or not Rochester was a worthy hero, and I admired Jane for her determination to be free and respected. My relationship with Jane (the book) has become more analytical and critical as I’ve gotten older. I see it through a lens of class, gender, religion and my own more mature view of human relationships. My relationship with Jane (the character) remains fiercely loyal. My relationship with Jane, the book, and Jane, the character, began as a profoundly personal one, and it has stayed that way through thirty years of annual readings. Watching film adaptations of Jane has only reinforced this, even as it has highlighted things that I often overlooked—Jane’s longing to be part of a family, for instance, and how very, very cruel the manipulations of Rochester are. My ire is relentless against any adaptation that fails to address the power of Jane’s spirit and her refusal to settle for anything that undoes her self-respect. My admiration for any adaptation that gets it right is boundless!

My relationship with Pride and Prejudice began in high school when I had to read it for English class. Dear readers, it pains me to tell you that my plaintive complaint to my teacher was, “This book is boring! Nothing happens!” I perked up quite a bit when Lydia ran off with Wickham, but I must admit that Pride and Prejudice seemed dry to me for many years after. Like Charlotte Brontë, I felt that it was passionless and constrained:

I had not seen “Pride and Prejudice,” till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses (Juliet Barker, “Letter from Charlotte Brontë to G. H. Lewis” In The Brontës, Wild Genius on the Moors [New York: Pegasus Books, 2012], 724–725)

What kept me interested in Pride and Prejudice was the passion of its fans. Much of my reading and writing involves fantasy and science fiction, and as a passionate fan of these genres, I am never more at home than I am when attending a Renaissance Faire or a science-fiction convention. Likewise, the serious Jane Austen fans, with their Regency Ball reenactments, fit right in to the idea that you can love something so passionately that you want to recreate it as closely as possible, as frequently as possible, with like-minded people. This kept me going back to the book, and every time I read it I liked it a little more, but I still didn’t really get what all these people were so excited about.

For me, it was the film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice that opened up the book to me. My husband and I were watching one of the adaptations (I think Colin Firth had just come out of the lake) when he (my husband, not Colin Firth, although it’s easy to confuse them) said, “You know, this is just like science fiction. There’s an alien society, and it operates under a rigid social code, with a rigid hierarchy—one that we don’t fully understand. And they speak in this alien language, and everything is in code, so you have to work really hard to understand what’s going on.”

Triumph! Suddenly, I understood Pride and Prejudice! There was passion, and happiness, and despair, and all the other things that I had been missing, but it’s all in code, under the surface. As I watched actors use their bodies and faces to communicate, the words took on new meanings. Even when actors varied wildly in their interpretations of the text, it still helped me pick apart what was really being thought and communicated (usually not the same thing). I am now an ardent fan of Pride and Prejudice—I’m just sorry that it took me so long to get there.

Finally we come to my nemesis, Wuthering Heights. Prior to working on this project, I would have told you that I loathe Wuthering Heights. I didn’t merely dislike it—I hated it. Every time I would have to mention Wuthering Heights I would start channeling Madeline Kahn in Clue, “I hated her so much, I just…Flames. Flames, on the side of my face….” The one good thing I had to say about Wuthering Heights was that for something to raise my ire so completely it sure must have hit a nerve.

I think my problem with Wuthering Heights was that it has this cultural legacy as a romantic love story. When I read it again for this project, I tried to read it as though I had no preconceptions. And that’s when I discovered that it’s not a love story between Cathy and Heathcliff. It’s a horror story. But it’s also a story in which a secondary couple’s love heals everything, so it ends up being a romance after all, just not with the couple that we all think of when we think about Wuthering Heights. I’ve become a bit of a crazed evangelist about this interpretation. It’s become so obvious to me that I want to stand around on street corners wearing those big sandwich signs. Only, instead of saying “The End Is Near,” my sign would say, “Heathcliff and Cathy are horrible people who do not know the meaning of real love! But the social themes in Wuthering Heights are very important! So you should read this book, even though it will destroy your very soul!” (That’s a lot to fit on one sign, so I’ve tabled my literary-street-sign-activism project for the time being.)

Frankly, I’m not thrilled with the result of any of the Wuthering Heights adaptations. But my understanding of the book got better as I realized why I was so annoyed at the things they left out. Adaptations have a tendency to soften Cathy’s behavior so she is more of a sympathetic victim, and diminish the role of Cathy’s daughter and of Hareton. This helped me understand that the fact that Cathy has temper tantrums in the book is important. The fact that Heathcliff beats Isabella is important. The fact that Hareton and Cathy 2.0 think of each other’s well-being is important. If you emphasize the idea of Heathcliff and Cathy as a tragic romantic couple, you are missing the point of the story entirely, and, of course, most adaptations go for the romantic-couple angle.

I have become an ardent defender of Wuthering Heights, but not as a romance (or rather, not as a romance between Heathcliff and Cathy). I’ve become fascinated with how many topics the book takes on—class, gender, patriarchy, familial relationships, money, race, education, isolation and the legacy of child abuse from one generation to the next. Above all, by reading and watching and rereading the story of Hareton and Young Cathy again, I’ve grown to believe that this book is not even a tragedy. There’s a very redemptive story to be found here, about what happens when you choose to be as happy as you can, as fully realized a person as you can be, within even the most constrained circumstances, and when you are able to think about the needs of another person over your own.

I love all three of these books in many different ways, and I’m grateful to all the film adaptations that have opened up new aspects of them for me (yes, even the MTV version of Wuthering Heights). I hope readers of this work will enjoy the adaptations, and, above all, enjoy the original books!

What You’ll Find in This Book

In this book, I use film adaptations of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights as a way to better understand the original books. So this book is not so much intended to be a set of reviews but rather a discussion about some of the different ways people have tried to interpret the novels and how those interpretations can illuminate our reading of them.

This book is not a comprehensive guide to the books’ TV and film adaptations, but I’ve tried to provide a sampling from different time periods and of different styles. All of the adaptations described in this book are currently fairly easy to find (I used Amazon.com, Netflix, and my beloved local library). I limited my reviews to TV and film adaptations as opposed to print adaptations and plays purely to limit the scope of this book.

So here’s what you’ll find in each of the main parts of this book:

• The Book. If you haven’t read Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, go do that right away! Take your time! But even if you’ve read them, you might have forgotten about Jane’s obnoxious foster sisters, or just how many balls Lizzy attended, or that time that Heathcliff murdered a nest of baby birds because he was mad at Cathy (Gah! I hate him so much!). So this synopsis is intended to refresh your memory and tease out some of the important moments and themes of the books.

• The Big Picture: I’m not a purist when it comes to adaptations. Want to have Lizzy climb through a magic portal into a modern-day person’s bathroom or express herself by way of vlog? I’m cool with that. But I want adaptations to stay true to certain key themes and messages in the original books. In this section, I list what I consider those key points to be. A filmmaker can make those points in all kinds of ways, but I do not consider an adaptation to be successful unless it has covered these points.

• The Adaptations: And we’re off to the movies! Popcorn…check! Brownies…check! Wine and/or hot cocoa depending on your personal preference…check! Let’s do this!

• The Final Scorecard: This section lists some of the high and low points of the adaptations.

Then, following the discussions of the three books and their adaptations, I tie everything together and wrap it all up in the “Final Comparisons and Conclusions” section. Finally, as a bonus, a “Special Features” section is included providing “Behind the Scenes” biographies of Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, and a little bit of context as to how their work was received during their lifetimes. And what’s a “Special Features” section without trivia and a music playlist?

I hope my readers have as much fun reading this book as I did writing it. I wish we were all hanging out in a big living room, eating popcorn together and arguing about whether or not Heathcliff is really a romantic figure. (No! He’s not! Don’t even go there!) But since we can’t hang out in person, I wish you happy reading and happy watching!

Part I: Jane Eyre: In Which Self-Respect Conquers All

Jane Eyre: The Book

Here’s the story of Jane Eyre, as told in the original novel by Charlotte Brontë. Before we begin, have you read the book? No? Go read it. I’ll wait.

Oh, good, you’re back. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Here’s the story:

Chapters I–X: In which Jane survives a miserable childhood and applies for a job.

Once upon a time there was an orphan who was raised by a cruel guardian (Aunt Reed) and tormented by her guardian’s evil children. This child, Jane Eyre, is first seen reading a book and immediately being whacked in the head with said book by her cousin. Thus does Jane instantly win our sympathies, for not only does her cousin try to give her a concussion, but he also loses her place. What an ass.

Jane tackles her cousin, the ass, and is promptly shut up in a room by Aunt Reed. It happens to be the same room in which Jane’s uncle had died, and Jane has a fit brought on by either her imagination or a visit from a ghost. Aunt Reed sends Jane away to Lowood Institution, a charitable school run by the vain and corrupt Mr. Brocklehurst. Some readers find this part of the story to be tiresome, but you can’t skip it, because here Jane finds two important mentors—Helen, a friend who teaches Jane about forgiveness and patience, and Miss Temple, who clears Jane of Mr. Brocklehurst’s accusations (he tells the other girls to shun her because she is a liar). Jane learns many valuable lessons at Lowood:

1. Hypocrisy is a bad thing. It is also a bad thing to either live your life in total self-indulgence or in total self-sacrifice (shown by the needless suffering of the Lowood students and the disgust with which Jane regards Mr. Brocklehurst’s spoiled, overdressed daughters).

2. If you simply rage bitterly all the time, you will destroy yourself. If you practice restraint and forgiveness, you will be more likely to find justice and you will certainly be happier.

3. It is very important to wash your hands frequently and to cover your mouth when you cough.

Alas, it is only my own wishful thinking at work with regard to number three. A typhus epidemic strikes Lowood, and Helen, who has been suffering from consumption all of this time, dies in Jane’s arms. With her final words, Helen reminds Jane of the glories of heaven. In almost every film adaptation, she does this while coughing directly into Jane’s face, as if to bring Jane along as quickly as possible. But Jane is made of tough stuff, and she does not contract typhus or consumption. She graduates from Lowood and works as a teacher there until she grows restless and applies for a position of governess at the remote Thornfield Hall.

Chapters XI–XV: In which Rochester appears.

Jane likes Thornfield well enough, although it is a confusing place, as gothic estates so often are. The first mystery is who everyone is—Mrs. Fairfax, who Jane assumes to be the owner, is in fact the housekeeper, and Adele is not Mrs. Fairfax’s daughter but is rather the ward of Rochester, who is absent. There’s also the mystery of the strange laughter Jane hears at night. Mrs. Fairfax blames this laughter on Grace Poole, a servant who doesn’t seem to do much except drink port.

Eventually Rochester shows up. In true gothic fashion, Jane is walking through the woods in the mist when Rochester almost runs over her (with his horse) and calls her a witch. The next day, Rochester tells Jane to have an after-dinner chat with him, as he is, evidentially, bored. Over the course of the next few weeks, Rochester and Jane have many talks, in which she forces him to use some semblance of decent manners toward her, and he tells her all about his past life of scandal, including the fact that his last mistress claimed that Adele was his daughter, an accusation he does not believe.

Jane and Rochester are drawn even closer when she saves his life. She is awakened by strange laughter, smells smoke, and follows it to Rochester’s room, where his bedclothes have caught on fire. Jane awakens Rochester by throwing water in his face, which leads to the hilarious line, “Is there a flood?” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre [New York: Random House, 1943], 110). They put out the fire and he tells her to stay in his room. He leaves, comes back, and concludes the fire was probably caused by Grace Poole. Jane, ever the voice of reason, points out that maybe the homicidal, cackling, drunken maniac should be ordered to leave, but Rochester says not to worry, everything’s fine. He proceeds to gaze at Jane with such evident adoration that she freaks out, goes back to her room and stays awake all night in a state that will be painfully relatable to any of us who spent junior high school wondering if That Boy liked us, and if so, did he really like us, and if so, did he like us as more than a friend, or what? Alas for Jane, when she wakes up in the morning Rochester has gone to visit friends, at least one of which is gorgeous, single and female. Drat.

Chapters XVI–XXIII: In which Rochester is a total jerk, with happy results…or are they?

Rochester shows up at Thornfield with a group of rich, snobby people, including Blanche Ingram, the book’s Mean Girl. In a particularly cruel twist, Rochester order Jane to attend all the guests’ venomous little get-togethers, so that she can witness every second of flirtation between Blanche and Rochester himself. She’s also treated to rants about how useless and despicable governesses are.

Rochester leaves for a day, and while he’s gone, two strangers arrive. One is Mr. Mason, who claims to be a friend of Rochester’s. The other is a gypsy woman, who insists on telling everyone’s fortune. She tries to get Jane to admit that she (Jane) likes Rochester, but Jane won’t admit a thing. Kudos to Jane—because the gypsy woman turns out to be Rochester in disguise. Rochester is quite smug about his game until Jane mentions that a Mr. Mason has arrived. Rochester is horrified but with a great deal of moral support from Jane, he sallies back to the party looking cheerful as ever.

An aside: Readers, I love this book. I have a copy of it wrapped in plastic in my earthquake/flood/zombie-apocalypse emergency kit in case I have to restart civilization from scratch (I also have The Lord of the Rings and many, many ballpoint pens). But please do not date a guy who stages an elaborate plan to publicly humiliate you and make you jealous. Just don’t.

Later that night, everyone wakes up to the sound of screaming. Rochester sends everyone back to bed but has Jane come with him to a secret room where Mr. Mason is bleeding copiously. Jane has to sit alone with Mason, “sponging” the wound (apparently no one in the Victorian age knew about applying direct pressure) while Rochester fetches a doctor. With the dawn, Mason is smuggled off to the doctor’s place.

Not long afterward, Jane goes to visit Aunt Reed. She’s dying and has asked for Jane. Here we get another lesson about the problem with living life at one extreme or the other: of Aunt Reed’s three children, Eliza is about to become a nun, a path Jane views as something of a waste of Eliza’s formidable intellect; Georgiana is looking for a rich husband and is regarded by Jane as hopelessly frivolous; and John, the cousin who was an ass, is now a dead ass, having wasted his life and his money with gambling and drink. Jane forgives her aunt, and her aunt reveals that Jane has an uncle who had asked about Jane long ago and wanted to adopt her, but Aunt Reed, who hated Jane, told him Jane had died at Lowood. The aunt dies, and Jane goes back to Thornfield. This is such a tangent that many adaptations leave it out, but in addition to being thematically important, it sets up a later plot twist.

Jane tells Rochester that when he marries Blanche, she (Jane, not Blanche) will have to leave. More parties ensue until finally, there is great joy, for Rochester proposes to Jane! He was never going to marry Blanche! He was just trying to make Jane jealous! He adores her! Everyone is happy, except Blanche, who is still looking for a rich husband, and Mrs. Fairfax, who finds the entire situation to be appalling. Of course, before proposing, Rochester has to test Jane by making her jealous one last time and telling her she should stay at Thornfield even after he marries Blanche. It is here that Jane has her greatest, though not happiest, hour:

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 (190)!

Just copying that out makes me so overwrought that I have to go run around the block and then lie down. All of what makes Jane awesome is crystallized in this stunning scene. Sing it, sister.

Chapters XXIV–XXVIII: Disaster!

Rochester turns out to be even more patronizing as a fiancé than he was an employer, and Jane has her hands full trying to keep their relationship grounded as he keeps trying to dress her up like a very rich, fancy doll. Finally the wedding day comes, but who should appear but Mr. Mason, who objects to the wedding on the grounds that Rochester has a mad wife locked in the attic at Thornfield. This does, in fact, turn out to be true (she was the source of the laughter, the fire, and the copious bleeding) so the wedding is off. Rochester claims that he was tricked into marrying the madwoman, whose name is Bertha, and once her madness progressed to an unbearably awful point, he brought her to Thornfield to be cared for as well as possible.

Rochester begs Jane to stay with him. In a heartrending passage, he explains his history with Bertha, and he begs Jane’s forgiveness for keeping Bertha a secret. Then, in a move that is both heartbreaking and incredibly whiny and dick-ish, he tells Jane that she must stay with him, because otherwise, he would be so sad that he would have no choice but to fall into dissolute ways again. Jane is wracked with heartbreak but still sensible enough to point out that neither she nor Rochester is doomed to dissolution; they can both separately endure, and they can choose to live decent lives. Still, Jane is terribly tempted to stay with Rochester, both for her sake and his own. She believes that if she becomes his mistress he will come to despise her, but she also thinks that she should save his life, thinking of her own, “Who in the world cares for you?” At which she answers herself:

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself (239).

Chapters XXIX–XXXV: In which Jane flees Thornfield, becomes rich, acquires relatives and is hit on by a pastor.

Jane wanders the moors and almost starves to death before being taken in by two sisters, Mary and Diana, and their brother, St. John Rivers, a pastor who is planning to go to India as a missionary. Jane gives her name as Jane Eliot, and St. John gives her a job teaching in the village school. This is a long, slow section but here’s what’s important:

1. St. John finds out that Jane Eliot is Jane Eyre, and that Jane Eyre is, in fact, an heiress. Remember that uncle that Aunt Reed mentioned? The one who wanted to adopt Jane? Well, he died and left Jane a huge fortune.

2. The reason St. John knows this is that they are cousins. Jane is, to St. John’s confusion, considerably more overjoyed by learning that she has relatives than by learning that she is rich, and she gives most of the money to her newfound family, although this still leaves a generous amount for herself. She is now financially independent for life.

3. St. John proposes to Jane because he wants a companion to join him when he goes to India, and for propriety’s sake they must be married. When Jane protests that she does not love St. John in a romantic way, nor does he love her, and that being in a marriage of convenience to him in a harsh physical environment would both physically and emotionally destroy her, he pretty much asserts that her life should be sacrificed to God. But Jane has some practice with people telling her not to value her own life or happiness, and she continues to decline St. John’s proposals. After much effort on his part, though, she wavers—until she thinks she hears Rochester calling her name, and she takes off to find him.

Chapters XXXVI–XXXVIII: Reader, I married him.

When Jane gets to Thornfield, it has burned down. She discovers that Bertha escaped the attic again and set fire to the house. Rochester got all the servants out and then tried to save Bertha. She jumped from the roof, died, and launched a thousand feminist essays and works of revisionist fiction (most notably, the excellent but depressing Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, and The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar). Rochester survived the fire but lost one hand and became blind in one eye. Jane finds him and engages in some hilarious repartee as, in an attempt to tease him out of melancholy, she tries making him jealous for a change. They get married, have a baby, find a school for Adele that is close enough to allow for regular visits (boarding schools are the norm at that time, but Jane makes sure that Adele’s school is not Lowood 2.0) and enjoy Jane’s new extended family. The end.

The Big Picture

For any film adaptation to be successful in my eyes, it must touch on the central themes of the book. I don’t care how many details change as long as these things are apparent:

1. Jane maintains her sense of self-respect against all those who disparage her. She clings to a sense that although she should live to a high standard of ethics and of service to others, her own life is important and worthwhile and must not be thrown away. Although the most quoted line in the book is, “Reader, I married him,” the most important line, and the one that has caused the book to be adored for centuries, is “Do you think that 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!”

2. During most of the book, Jane is lonely and frustrated. She longs for both family and adventure, or at least a sense that her life has some importance or meaning. She is quiet and lacks self-confidence, but is smart and funny.

3. Jane has a strong sense of morality and a strong sense of spirituality, which is expressed in both Christian and supernatural terms.

4. There are actual reasons why Rochester is attractive to Jane. Much like my synopsis, many adaptations leap from event to event and skip most of Jane’s conversations with Rochester. Judging from events, Rochester is a shithead. While his shitty qualities cannot be denied, those long passages of conversation reveal two people who like each other’s senses of humor, who respect each other (more or less—Rochester veers from genuinely respecting Jane to thinking she is his “pet lamb”), and who are good companions. Any adaptation should show that Jane and Rochester have great chemistry and that they are great companions for each other. We should root for them because they seem to be kindred spirits, not because they are the only single people for miles around.

5. Despite their chemistry, there are also actual reasons for Jane to stay the hell away from Rochester. In addition to the social gulf between them, there’s the pesky fact that’s he’s often an asshole to her. Jane is completely dependent on him for her livelihood as well, a fact that he exploits every time he orders her to talk to him. She is good and honest and he loves this about her, yet he rewards her for these virtues by playing vicious mind games with her and forcing her to endure public humiliation by his houseguests.

Also, in the book, Rochester is forty years old to Jane’s eighteen (and their romance isn’t a case of outdated values—even Mrs. Fairfax thinks Rochester is too old for Jane).

So why on Earth do we long for Jane to end up with Rochester? Although I consider this book to be an early romance novel, it differs from the genre in one crucial aspect, and that is that the romance is not really the point. We care about Jane. We are Team Jane, all the way, and if being with Rochester will make her happy, by golly, that’s what we want for her. If what she wanted to become a pirate queen, then that’s what we would care about. We just want Jane to be happy.

6. The point of the story is not that Jane gets married. The point is that Jane marries Rochester as his equal. At the end of the book she has not only romantic love but also independent financial security, and family and friends who she respects and who respect her. Additionally, Rochester respects and loves her as a person and not a pet, and she loves him as a husband and not a master.

If Jane had married Rochester at the midpoint of the book, and never found out about the insane wife in the attic, then it would not have been a happy ending even though Jane and Rochester would be together and Jane would have married rich, just like Cinderella. The Rochester she was originally engaged to, the one who tried to dress her up and called her his pet lamb, would not have made Jane happy. Jane has to gain the independence and sense of belonging that she craves, and Rochester has to learn to respect Jane.

The triumph of Charlotte Brontë is that she manages to convince many, probably most, readers that the Rochester we see at the end of the book really will be one with which Jane can have a happy life. Rochester has to change, and so does Jane, but once that happens, he can truly be her life’s companion.

7. Jane Eyre is a gothic story. It’s not as gothic as Wuthering Heights, which out-gothics everything pretty much ever, but Jane is pretty darn gothic. Jane spends a lot of time wandering around creepy halls with a candle. She shares these creepy halls with a mysterious being who cackles evilly and bites people, and who turns out to be an insane woman who is locked in the attic and likes to escape and set fire to people’s beds. Jane is dependent in every possible way on a mysterious and domineering (and sexually attractive) employer. She is so isolated that an escape attempt from the bizarre estate of Thornfield almost causes her to die of starvation as she wanders the blustery moors. No matter how sun-drenched an adaptation of Jane Eyre may be, it should strive to convey that sense of menace, mystery, melodrama and isolation.

Anyone who wishes to adapt the novel has two major challenges. One is that although the novel is not unusually long, there’s an awful lot in it, and some of the stuff that is the least cinematic (long conversations) is the most thematically important. The other is that Jane narrates the novel. Although she speaks fairly little, we hear her thoughts constantly. This is an obvious challenge to a scriptwriter, who has to communicate all Jane’s thoughts to the audience without turning her into a chatterbox.

So, let’s see how well these adaptations do with conveying the central themes of this complex book.

The Adaptations

The Classic Movie Adaptations

Movie adaptations of Jane Eyre, both classic and modern, usually benefit from generous budgets and good production values but struggle with length. Because they have to tell the whole story in approximately two hours, they tend to leave out anything that doesn’t involve the love story. This works up to a point, but it’s unsatisfying when you get to the end of the movie and realize that Jane has basically the same relationship dynamic with Rochester that she had during their first engagement.

Jane Eyre, 1934—The One With Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce (½)

This movie doesn’t have much in common with Jane Eyre, but it’s wonderfully entertaining in its unabashed cheesiness. This is the first movie adaptation of Jane Eyre with sound, and you can tell they were excited about it, because not only does Jane play the piano, but she also sings a song, and poor crazy Bertha screams her head off all the time.

They didn’t mess around in the 1930s, so we get to zip right through this story, leaving crucial plotlines in the dust. Jane is a sassy kid who becomes a sassy adult. She’s blonde and beautiful and has ringlets and giant ruffles on her dresses. Rochester is nice from the start—at least until he makes Jane try on earrings. He makes Jane pick out the furnishings for his soon-to-be-wife’s room, and jewelry for his soon-to-be-wife, all the while claiming that the soon-to-be wife is Blanche until suddenly he’s telling Jane that actually he’s going to marry her now. Jerk.

Jane has a small inheritance and Rochester is eagerly awaiting an annulment from poor Bertha, which really removes all the actual conflicts, doesn’t it? I mean, except for the lying, but then you have to wonder why on earth the lying would even come up. Why wouldn’t Rochester just say, “Hey Jane, would you marry me as soon as my annulment arrives in the mail? Also, have some jewelry!” Rochester is already polite and Jane is already a confident and outgoing independent person, so that removes all the actual character growth. This is possibly the most pointless adaptation of all time, although it must be admitted that the stars are very pretty to look at in that 1930s-movie-star way.

I’m listing these adaptations in chronological order, but this was actually one of the last ones I had actually watched. So by the time I watched this, I had seen a lot of Jane Eyre. This adaptation is a mess, but it includes a grown-up Jane calling Mr. Brocklehurst a crocodile, and it’s only an hour long. An hour! I know somewhere out there some English Literature majors are toiling through their Jane Eyre thesis. This movie was made for you, and only for you. Gather your fellow students together, make lots of popcorn, and throw it at the screen every time Jane seems inappropriately cheerful. Everyone else, stay away!

Jane Eyre, 1943—The One with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine (★★★)

The great thing about this adaptation is that someone finally noticed that Jane Eyre is a really creepy story. A defenseless, penniless, naive young woman is essentially trapped in a totally isolated house, with no cell phone or electric lighting, and someone keeps trying to get into her room at night and starting fires and chewing on people. This is scary stuff, and the movie goes all-out with the gothic. The moors have never been so misty nor Thornfield so ominous.

Obviously no force on Earth can make Joan Fontaine look “plain and little,” and they don’t even try—she even sleeps in full makeup and perfect hair. But she’s very expressive, which is the most important element an actress can bring to Jane, since Jane doesn’t often speak her mind. Meanwhile, Orson Welles is a force of nature as Rochester. He’s rude, he stalks around wearing a billowing cape, he’s not particularly good-looking (as suits the part), but he’s charismatic as all get-out. He spends a great deal of time delivering dialogue while looking straight into Jane’s eyes, and let me tell you, when Orson Welles looks at you intently, by golly, it makes an impression. He’s beyond intimidating—he’s scary. Yet he’s also a tragic, magnificent, sinisterly sexy character. He keeps the story eerie while also making it plausible that Jane is drawn to him.

The supporting cast (Agnes Moorehead as Aunt Reed! Elizabeth Taylor as Helen!) is wonderful, as is the cinematography and the music by Bernard Herrmann (who also wrote an opera based on Wuthering Heights). Many of these people worked with Alfred Hitchcock, most notably Joan Fontaine, who starred in Rebecca and Suspicion, and Bernard Herrmann, who composed the score for Psycho. The whole movie has a Hitchcock feel to it. The only problem is that it doesn’t feel like Jane Eyre, and that’s because so many plotlines are cut that the message of the movie become this: be a moral person and everything will work out. Not a bad message, and certainly one Jane would approve of, but all that great stuff about self-respect and autonomy is lost. At the end, Jane finds Rochester where he is living in the burned ruins of Thornfield (as one does), and instead of the banter that establishes her as his intellectual and financial equal, she tearfully begs him to let her stay. Jane is still his “little friend.” The only things that have changed are that the house has been forcibly redecorated and Rochester is now single.

Jane Eyre, 1970—The One with George C. Scott and Susannah York (★★)

You can tell that this movie was made in the 1970s, because while every adaptation seems driven to cast a gorgeous actress as “plain” Jane, at least they usually have the sense to wash off the actress’s makeup (Joan Fontaine, from the above-mentioned 1943 version, aside). Not so here: Susannah York plays Jane as a tall, statuesque, glamorous woman, with red hair in a fancy hairdo and full makeup. Meanwhile, George C. Scott doesn’t even attempt a British accent. So, although they both act up a storm, their efforts are unintentionally and consistently hilarious. I actually liked both performances—if I thought of them as completely different characters. George C. Scott is quite funny, and Susannah York exudes sheer class, so it’s an enjoyable movie to watch once you release any memory of the book.

There is one thing that this movie gets just right. I think that filmmakers have a hard time showing the audience why Jane shouldn’t stay with Rochester after she discovers that he has a secret wife. In this version, Jane lays it all out in a wonderful speech. She specifies that she wants a relationship with him in which she is equal and respected. As his mistress, she has no legal or social or economic power. She would be socially and legally disposable. Susannah York really rocks this speech, and pairs the fiery discourse with a moment of great tenderness and great determination.

Incidentally, I don’t talk much about how these adaptations deal with Jane’s childhood, but this one really brings on the sadism. These adaptations have a hard time figuring how to fit Jane’s childhood into the narrative, knowing that the viewer wants to get to the grown-up romance. Some of them deal with this by making the child abuse in the original book, which is extensive, even more extravagantly over-the-top just to make sure that we get the point—Jane’s childhood sucked. So, in this version, it is Jane who has her hair cut instead of Helen, and instead of Helen’s stoic response, Jane begs and screams and sobs through the ordeal (contrast this scene with the one in our next adaptation, from 1996, which also diverges from the book but in an empowering manner). Helen is basically murdered by having to stand in the rain, in a bit clearly influenced by Helen and Jane’s rainy punishment in the preceding version from 1943. I find the sadism in both this version and the 1943 version to be ugly, emotionally manipulative and desensitizing.

Modern Movie Adaptations

Jane Eyre, 1996—The One with William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg (★★)

This film takes all kinds of liberties with Jane’s childhood and yet does the best portrayal of her childhood that I’ve yet seen by conveying the spirit of it, if not the details. For one thing, Miss Temple is shown to be the strong mentor that she is in the book. For another, Helen manages to be a moral guide without being hopelessly treacly. In the book, there’s a scene in which Mr. Brocklehurst orders Helen’s hair to be cut. The movie takes this scene and elaborates it into something more Hollywood-y, but it works, because it shows that Jane is a passionate and loyal friend without the preachy dialogue of the book. This is especially notable in comparison to the 1970 version, in which Jane has her hair cut instead of Helen, and she wails and begs for mercy. That version shows Jane purely as a victim, whereas this version shows both her victimization and her refusal to be broken by it. I must say that this scene was quite a kick-ass moment for young Anna Paquin, who plays Jane as a child.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is one of my favorite Janes—up to a point. I love that she has a truly odd little face. It’s beautiful in its own way, but she has a strange jaw and imperfect teeth, and it’s easy to see why she’d be described as plain or as elfin or unearthly. I love her quiet intensity and the fact that she truly seems young. However, the book’s Jane is capable of some laughter and mischief, especially toward the end of the book, and I would have liked to have seen that in the movie. Part of the joy of the story is seeing Jane come into her own, and Gainsbourg’s Jane never does.

William Hurt is a terrible Rochester but a very good William Hurt—that is to say, pensive, intelligent and bland. His Rochester is polite from the first meeting and always seems like he wants to take a nap. I am sad to report that he and Charlotte have no chemistry whatsoever. St. John, on the other hand, is so delightful that I’m at a loss as to why Jane doesn’t just marry him. Another side character who shines is Bertha, who conveys vast amounts of suffering and emotion without uttering a single line.

Jane Eyre, 1997—The One with Ciarán Hinds and Samantha Morton (½)

What in the name of all that is holy is this? Did a producer sleep with Cthulhu and pop this out like some sort of Elder God baby? Ethics compels me to tell you that this is only a partial review, because at about the halfway point I turned the gibbering monstrosity off and fled, screaming, “My eyes! My eyes!” Poor Samantha Morton struggles gamely along as Jane, but Ciarán Hinds, who by all accounts is normally a terrific actor, seems to have contacted some particularly horrid form of rabies as Rochester. He yells, he screeches, his eyes bulge, he drools over Jane’s hand, “So little…so [drool] delicate.” It’s at this point that I fled the scene. Rochester is supposed to be way too old for Jane and he’s a manipulative, secretive jerk, but he isn’t supposed to be a rage-aholic shrieking pedophile.

Here’s what I do think is good about this particular adaptation: it forces you to look at just how dark Jane Eyre is. First of all, the opening sequence, in which Jane is trapped in the room where her uncle had previously dies, is creepy as hell. Secondly, I guess somebody had to take on the job of reminding us that Rochester really is an incredible asshole to this young woman, who has no money, nowhere to go and no helpful knowledge about the world beyond. Rochester isn’t a sexy heartthrob—he’s a wreck of an older man who takes advantage of Jane’s good nature and dependent condition, and Hinds shows this.

In terms of the rest of the movie, it looks like it was shot on a very small budget. The production values are quite poor, and the movie is so dumbed down with helpful exposition rendered in voice-over, that for a while I assumed that it was made for schools as a study aid as opposed to an actual movie for regular viewers. It moves at lighting speed—seriously, Jane’s entire childhood is over with in about ten minutes. The entire movie is only 108 minutes long. This is the CliffsNotes version of Jane Eyre, with much helpful narration from Jane to help us along. For instance, as Jane is being carried away from Helen’s corpse, she says, in voice-over, “I missed Helen so much. No one could take her place. I remained at Lowood for a further eight years. Six as a pupil, two as a teacher. But I was desperate for change.” And…she’s off to Thornfield. The maxim is that in art, one should show, not tell. And this production is all about telling.

Jane Eyre, 2011—The One With Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska (★★½)

As a fan of pretty much all the actors in this movie, I had high hopes for the 2011 Jane Eyre. I was disappointed to the point of fury. This movie is difficult to follow, stilted and monotonous. Fassbender and Wasikowska are clearly charismatic actors, but everything that makes the Jane and Rochester relationship dynamic has been stripped away by the director. I’m suspecting that the reviewers who liked the movie, and there were many, thought of Jane Eyre as “Wuthering Heights Part II”. Otherwise I can’t see why you’d like a movie in which Jane is given nothing to say but has to spend an extremely long time wandering the moors and whimpering.

There were some good points to the movie. For one thing, Judi Dench is Mrs. Fairfax, and she adds all kinds of layers to a character who is usually portrayed simply as a dotty old lady. I thought the narrative structure had potential, with the movie beginning as St. John’s, where his sisters take Jane in and ask her to explain what happened to her. Unfortunately, it grew difficult to follow, especially for my viewing companion who *gasp* had not read the book. Jamie Bell plays St. John, and he bears absolutely no resemblance to the character of St. John in the book, but I liked him. He is very cute and awkward and dorky. If you simply accept that he is a completely different character who has the same name and serves the same narrative purpose, all is well. It adds some suspense that his character is at least relatable, because it creates the possibility that Jane might actually want to marry him or at least keep him as a pet (although she doesn’t).

Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska are both powerful actors who seem to be suffering from terrible direction. Fassbender is a great brooder, but he simply has nothing to do. He has no opportunities to show Rochester’s wit or menace or charm—he just broods, while looking sexy. Also, he cries a lot. The only notable thing about his role is that he’s the only Rochester I’ve seen who actually wears a nightshirt to bed. Mia has this wonderful calm, clear, penetrating gaze that is pure Jane, but she doesn’t have anything to do, either, except alternately weep and look calmly at things. When they are together, the couple stares at each other longingly, and speaks in low, repressed voices. Mia’s one great moment is when she discovers that St. John and the sisters are her cousins, and she lights up with joy. It’s the only moment in the movie where she seems fully awake.

A huge amount of the story is cut, most notably all the conversations that Jane and Rochester have that build their relationship, and most of Jane’s important lines about herself. Instead, there are long sequences of poor Mia wandering the moors, whimpering with hunger and despair. Granted, the cinematography is gorgeous. If you have to film someone wandering the moors, cinematographer Adriano Goldman is your guy.

This movie is a great example of a case where the story is filmed very prettily, and yet, all the meaning is leached away. There’s not much contact between Jane and Rochester, so there is no reason to think that they would fall in love—except for the fact that there appear to be only two men in England, and we know Jane will end up with the first one. Jane doesn’t grow very much and there’s no indication of why she is a role model for so many readers, or why the story is important. It’s just another story about a poor girl who marries a rich man and lives happily ever after.

The Miniseries

Jane Eyre, 1973—The One With Michael Jayston and Sorcha Cusack (BBC) (★)

In my notes for this adaptation, I have three words: bland, nice, faithful. Purists will delight in this series because it is faithful to a fault. Nothing is omitted and most of the lines come directly from the book. Jane even delivers quite a bit of her internal thoughts in voice-over, although sometimes the script adds lines to fully explain exactly how Jane feels at any given moment, which is a bit insulting to the viewer.

Readers, it is my painful duty to inform you that I failed as your reviewer. I watched the first two-thirds of the series and then gave up. It’s not because it’s awful, it’s simply boring. If I put all these adaptations on a spectrum, the Colin Clive/Virginia Bruce adaption would show just how thoroughly you can destroy your adaptation by changing too much of the source material, and this adaptation would illustrate the grave dangers of failing to change anything at all. Jane Eyre is a splendid book, but you can’t just throw the lines on the screen and call it a miniseries. It is deadly lifeless and dull, even as it is clearly made with a deep love for the text.

It doesn’t help that Cusack and Jayston seem like very nice but not terribly compelling people. Cusack is a lovely woman, and she sure seems like a nice person, but she lacks passion and drama. Jayston, likewise, seems smart, funny and nice. And the thing is, these characters aren’t “nice.” Jane is “good,” but she’s not simply nice—she has many layers. Rochester is certainly not “nice”—he’s sexy, menacing, kind, patronizing and mysterious by turns. I hate to criticize this series, because it truly seems that everyone who worked on it loved the book, but it is totally lacking in a sense of mystery or drama or passion. It does have a huge fan base among purists, though, and it is certainly very complete in its delivery of the book’s content.

Jane Eyre, 1983—The One with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke (BBC) (★★★★)

This miniseries is the real deal. My personal favorite is the Ruth Wilson/Toby Stephens version (see the miniseries review that follows), but let’s face it, it’s Jane Eyre–lite. If that version is candy, then this version, with Timothy Dalton growling (growling!) with irritation, is like a really wonderful, nourishing loaf of bread warm from the oven.

I had grave doubts about being able to believe in Timothy Dalton as Rochester because he’s permanently marked in my brain as several hammy and delightful science-fiction/fantasy characters. Well, never underestimate Timothy Dalton, because as Rochester, he strikes just the right balance between subtlety and grandiosity, and tenderness and crankiness. He has a wicked temper and an even more wicked, and clever, sense of humor. He gets so cranky that he growls. Mysteriously, he sleeps fully dressed, including pants and vest, and yet he manages to make the one undone button of his shirt convey a greater sense of nudity than, well, actual nudity. Unlike other Rochesters, who tend to sport a post-fire eye patch and a hand bandage, he actually loses his hand and eye to the fire, and he’s real pissed about it. There’s no hiding how cruel he is to Jane and yet there’s also no denying how magnetic his personality is. It’s certainly not mysterious that Jane would be hopelessly attracted to him.

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