Where Jane Eyre still is the big topic

As promised on Monday, Juliet Barker writes her opinion on the new Jane Eyre. Surprising or not, she liked this new adaptation:

Here we go again, I thought, as I watched a red sari-clad girl wandering across a desert in the opening sequence of the new BBC 1 adaptation of Jane Eyre.
Some egotistical director has decided to drag the nineteenth century orphan heroine of Charlotte Brontë's novel kicking and screaming into the modern world and make her 'relevant' to today's audience.
You don't need to do this, I lectured the screen. Why can't you just do a faithful adaptation that will let the characters and the story speak for themselves? Brontë knew what she was doing and that is why her novel remains one of the bestsellers of all time.
As it turned out, I was wrong.
The desert wanderer was indeed the young Jane, but she had only been transported from Yorkshire in her imagination by the book she was reading. (Pedants like me would point out that it was the wrong book and the wrong climate, but it was a striking televisual image).
Thereafter we were on safer ground as the wonderful Georgie Henley, fresh from starring as Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, perfectly captured Jane's stubborn, passionate nature and her refusal to allow anyone, or anything, to destroy her independent spirit.
Sadly, we saw all too little of her. In a way which, rather irreverently, brought to mind the Reduced Shakespeare Company, Jane's childhood and the privations of her miserable years at Lowood Institution were briskly despatched in the first 15 minutes of this hour-long episode, even though they take up a fifth of the novel and are pivotal in establishing Jane's character and setting up the story.[...]
He [Toby Stephens as Rochester] can turn on the brooding presence, sneer and curl his lip like the best of villains, but he never descends to melodrama.
And although his Rochester is rude, sarcastic, sometimes even cruel in his treatment of others, we are never left in doubt that beneath his unpleasant veneer, there is a sensitive and suffering soul.
Ruth Wilson is a newcomer but her quietly confident performance as the adult Jane is the perfect counterbalance to Rochester's fireworks.
So in the end this Jane Eyre did turn out to be a reasonably faithful adaptation of the book, as well as a compelling piece of television.
But isn't it odd that, even in the twenty-first century, no director is brave enough to do what Charlotte Brontë did so long ago and cast two plain people as the hero and heroine?

That last question has been repeatedly posed lately.

Marcel Berlins from The Guardian comments on Jane Eyre in passing too:

Marcel watched BBC1's Jane Eyre: "Eyre is just right, but Rochester is too nice and romantic far too early."

Incidentally, you can click here if you are interested in knowing what Ruth Wilson is doing next.

Bethany Gill - who played cousing Eliza - also speaks to her local newspaper about her work in this production.

"I went for the part of little Jane Eyre first and was shortlisted, but didn't get it because I was too tall and too old," she said.
"I was really, really, really, excited. I was not expecting it. I went for the audition and thought I had no chance."

Now, a couple of Wuthering Heights mentions:

PinkNews comments on the release of the first single of the last CD of the Puppini Sisters, their cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights (check this old post for more information).

In Spain, the ADN newspaper publishes a survey concening the books that you should read before you are eighteen years old: Wuthering Heights is one of the chosen ones (by writers Espido Freire and Jorge de Cominges).

And finally, as some sort of unrelated footnote, an interview with Maggie O'Farrell, whose latest book - The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - was recently compared to Jane Eyre, talks to The Guardian about what she was reading while she was in the process of writing this book:

I ask her which authors she read while writing the book, and she mentions Margaret Atwood, the Brontes and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

We encourage you to read this book. Not to find whether it's similar to Jane Eyre or not - which it probably isn't - but because it's a truly compelling novel which screams some previously shushed truths.

Categories: Jane_Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, In_the_News, Brontëites, Books