Enter the beautiful governess

The Baltimore Sun carries an article about the ongoing Brontë Apparent exhibition at the George Peabody Library in Baltimore:

The bride is about a foot tall, has a long, flowing mane the color of cornsilk and wears a placid smile. She is made of porcelain and is draped head to toe in a lace wedding dress and sweeping veil.
The name of the doll on display at the Peabody Library is not Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella but Jane Eyre.
If that strikes you as odd - as stupendously, absurdly, bizarrely misconceived - chances are that you've actually read Charlotte Bronte's classic novel. (...)
"These objects may have lost their direct relation to the book, but I don't think they should be discarded or written off," says Barbara Heritage, one of the two curators of Eyre Apparent, an intriguing exhibition running through October.h
"That's one of the points this exhibition makes. These items tell us something about the context in which the novel is being read, and how that has changed over the decades. Jane Eyre has become many things to many people."
Heritage and the exhibit's other curator, John Buchtel, meticulously gathered about 110 objects and put them on display, ranging from a line of Jane Eyre glassware issued by the Seneca Glass Co., to a set of Jane Eyre playing cards to a commemorative stamp.
There's a comic book version, as well as a rendition by Maurice Sagoff, who distilled the plot into 30 short lines of verse with impressive brevity. An example:

My love behaved
A bit erratic:
Our nuptial day
Brought truth dramatic!
He had a wife,
Mad, in an attic.

There's even an easy-reading version of Jane for elementary-school pupils that considerately defines that puzzling term, "bigamy."
"This exhibit is an attempt to answer the question: What happens to a novel when it becomes a classic?" says Buchtel, the Peabody's curator of rare books. (...)
But, how to explain the novel's enduring appeal?
Buchtel points out that Frankenstein's monster, another famous figure from about the same era, has not been subjected to similar transformations.
"Everyone agrees on what Mary Shelley's monster looks like," he says, "but not Jane. How does someone so popular remain so mysterious?"
Part of Jane's popularity is precisely her mutability, her status as Everywoman. Each girl who feels unappreciated by adults, every lovestruck teen, every skirt-suited young professional embarking on a forbidding first job, can imagine that the humble governess, in some small measure, resembles herself.
But perhaps what is most extraordinary about Jane Eyre is the unbridled intensity of the narrative.
"I've always been extremely drawn by the direct address to the reader," Heritage says. "Charlotte Bronte constantly keeps bringing us into the present tense. Nothing about her voice is detached."
To enter Jane's world is to be absconded with, instantly appropriated. It is as if Jane, in billowing cape, has grabbed hold of your hand and is striding briskly ahead, saying "come along" when you tarry, while a strong wind pushes at your back. (...)
"The exhibit is a series of observations about cultural change."
Consider, for instance, the poster from a 1934 film adaptation of Jane Eyre. The movie starred Virginia Bruce - a blonde so stunning that the plot actually was rewritten to pay homage to her golden glow.
At one point, a female rival says snidely: "Enter the beautiful governess."
We might cherish the Jane in the novel because she is plain and unprepossessing, but that's not necessarily who we want to see on the big screen.
"Audiences have a hard time buying into actresses who aren't beautiful," Heritage says.
Or for that matter, dolls. (Mary McCauley)

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, In the News, Jane Eyre