How Jane Eyre Works

Many reviews today.

The Financial Times reviews several books. How novels work by John Mullan among them.

Mullan is equally good on the subject of paragraphs, and the spaces in between one line and another - which, as many writers would agree, is where the really important stuff happens. But where else can you read about blank spaces? And for those of us who studied literature chronologically, it’s weirdly gratifying to have Mullan draw parallels between Bronte’s Jane Eyre and [Martin] Amis’s Money. At last we can consider our bookshelves as cohesive entities. (Susan Elderkin)

Meanwhile, The Seattle Times reviews Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman a book that...

... pays conscious homage, with its identity-melding passions, to Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights." (Michael Upchurch)

Changing literary genders, Central Cortex reviews the Acting Company's performance of Jane Eyre at Burlington, VT.

The play was staged in a spartan, but dynamic way, with cast members circling around each other moving chairs and rotating the central prop, a seven foot high box with one open side, a door, and a small window. The interior of this "room" was painted red and served as a sort of symbol of Jane's heart, where all the passion is kept confined. This passion was embodied by another actress, a sort of psychic twin of Jane, who was relegated to the box early on by the repressive cruelty of her aunt Mrs. Reed, and who in the course of the play transitioned into the madwoman in the attic, Bertha. Two of the most effective moments in the play used this twin figure. The first was Jane and Rochester's first kiss, when the twin sprang joyously from the door of the box with a sigh of release. The second was the famous suicide/fire scene in which Bertha climbed up a cleverly constructed staircase of chairs to the top of the box holding an alarmingly realistic torch, and, her voiced echoed by Rochester's, cried out, "Jane! Jane!" summoning the wayward governess back from her near-marriage to a missionary -- just in time!

I was very impressed with the way this play illuminated Jane's psyche and drew parallels between her rebelliousness and the "madness" of Bertha while at the same time preserving the romantic storyline.

On another news, The Times interviews Pam Ferris, who is about to go on stage in London with the play The Entertainer. She doesn't talk about Jane Eyre 2006, though.

Categories: Books, In the News, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights