Jane Eyre: the bullied girl of ghastly circumstance

Chicago Sun Times gives 4 stars to The Joffrey Ballet's take on Jane Eyre with Cathy Marston's choreography.

On a dreamy, half-lit canvas at the Auditorium Theatre, the bullied girl of ghastly circumstance becomes the subject of an achingly intense and lyrical love story. There are nightmarish demons and brilliant special effects, too, as one might expect from a situation that twice goes up in flames.
Set designer Patrick Kinmouth collaborated with Marston on a scenario that picks up with the Brontë story as Jane flees from some vague demonic terror (male dancers in a locust-like horde, who return to bedevil her from time to time). The young woman collapses, delirious, and her story then unravels as a memory tale, beginning with her delivery as a newly orphaned girl to reluctant relatives now stuck with her and her upbringing.
The 12 scenes slide from one to another quickly thanks to a highly successful score that fits the time of the story. The music is a smart mix from Brontë’s era, by Franz Schubert and (Felix’s sister) Fanny Mendelssohn, cleverly stitched together and embellished by Philip Feeney, and performed by music director Scott Speck and the Chicago Philharmonic with particularly soulful contributions from winds and piano. [...]
Amanda Assucena and Greig Matthews, splendid as the 19-year-old Jane and Rochester, were engrossing to watch as they grew closer, first stiffly as acquaintances with the traditional balance of power assumed, then tentatively, as the situation evolved, into new minefields of interest, jealousy and suspicion. Their powerful pas de deux at the end of the first act released, at least temporarily, a flood of inner conflict in the wake of a mysterious disaster that pointed to even more trouble ahead.
Much of the interaction between these two was expressive of the push and pull of private thoughts, with striking, often quirky gestures that linger in the memory. The so-called D-Men, a corps of male dancers representing Jane’s recurring demons with a slithering vocabulary of insidious sideways moves, were unforgettable. (Nancy Malitz)

Chicago Tribune gives it 3 stars.

As Jane, danced Wednesday by Amanda Assucena, fights off the D-Men, a men’s corps representing Jane’s thoughts and inner demons, she collapses in exhaustion. St. John Rivers (Edson Barbosa) rescues her, and carries her home to recover with his sisters. Perched on a raised platform upstage, Jane has a sort of fever dream, a flashback, and the story of Jane’s childhood unfolds before her: her parents’ death, a brief tenure living with her contemptuous aunt and cousins, and the tragic death of her best friend while stationed at Lowood, a draconian reformatory school.
It is a breakout moment for Yumi Kanazawa as Young Jane, who came to Joffrey in 2016 and, until now, has spent most of her time in the ensemble. Kanazawa thoroughly captures the depth of her character. Young Jane is a child wise beyond her years, continually forced to grapple with when to assert herself, and when to obey.
Yet she’s still a child, even as Assucena takes over the plot for Kanazawa as the 19-year-old who leaves her post as a teacher at Lowood to serve as governess at Thornfield Hall. It’s the 1840s, after all, and the conflicting roles of morality, religiosity and passion in Jane’s life are a central theme.
Brontë asks these questions again and again in her great work of literature, predominantly in the soliloquies written as a conversation with the reader. Marston deals with this choreographic challenge — turning inner conflict into dance — through her Greek chorus of men and by establishing gestural motifs for each main character.
Rivers’ body language alludes to his piety and pragmatism. Jane, quite often (maybe too often), presses a palm downward as if to bring about composure, or crosses her forearms around her face. Though Marston borrows a lot from modern dance — fluidity of the torso, copious floor work and a pinch of tanztheater, for example — these motifs harken more to ballet’s conventional use of pantomime than modern dance’s affinity for gesture.
Rochester, danced by Greig Matthews, is as complicated as any of them, his mannerisms at first giving off a pretentious, disinterested vibe. He brushes Jane off with a flit of his fingers, or apathetically juts a pointed foot in the air. It soon becomes clear that Rochester is deeply smitten by Jane, invested in a flirtatious chase for her heart, but obviously conflicted by his “situation” in the attic. [...]
Christine Rocas is simply extraordinary as Bertha Mason, the crazed wife Rochester keeps locked away as he pursues Jane. This is Rocas like we’ve never seen her before; hair messily strewn about, barefoot in a tattered red dress, she dances with menacing reckless abandon. Bertha has a propensity for violence, setting fires to Thornfield Hall and biting Grace Poole, Bertha’s beleaguered attendant fantastically epitomized by Dara Holmes. Rocas’ final solo, amidst the smoke and flames of Thornfield’s final undoing, is a thing of passion, as Rocas gropes at Rochester while simultaneously gauging his eyes out.
For Assucena and Matthews, “Jane Eyre” is a tour de force, but the smaller roles do not escape notice. There’s Rocas, Kanazawa, Barbosa and Holmes. April Daly plays the austere Mrs. Reed, Jane’s aunt, and Cara Marie Gary is the lovingly meddlesome Adele, Jane’s charge. Lucia Connolly is the wacky and devoted housekeeper of Thornfield Hall, Mrs. Fairfax, and Blanche Ingram (Jeraldine Mendoza) is Rochester’s audacious would-be love interest, if he weren’t so infatuated with Jane Eyre. Even Alberto Velazquez as the vicar and Brooke Linford as Helen Burns, Jane’s best friend who perishes from consumption, have moments, not of virtuosity, but as vital figures who serve to advance the story. (Lauren Warnecke)

Book Riot recommends several new 'Must-Read Mystery & Thrillers' including

The Vanished Bride
Ellis has brilliantly reimagined the Brontë sisters as detectors and everything in this novel worked for me. It has a great mystery—a missing woman—and you follow the old school and amateur sleuth way of solving the case. It’s a delight to follow sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, who all have different personalities and bicker but also love and support each other. There is context for how and why these three women were raised to be more independent than their time allowed. The historical bits are interesting without taking away from the focus of the mystery. I can’t recommend this enough for fans of historical mysteries and I love that it works well for Brontë and classic fans—and equally works well if you don’t really care for either because the mystery and characters are so great. It’s just delightful and I’m excited for more to come! (TW domestic violence/addiction/alludes to past statutory rape) (Jamie Canaves)

According to The Epoch Times,

Given a choice, most of us are more inclined to read contemporary fiction than the classics. If we are lucky, our high school and college teachers force us to tackle such works as “Hamlet,” “Jane Eyre,” and “Great Expectations,” but once we leave behind our desks and quizzes, we prefer John Grisham to Leo Tolstoy and Danielle Steel to Jane Austen.
This is unfortunate. (Jeff Minick)

A contributor to Another Mag explains why she prefers Emily to Charlotte Brontë.

I remember reading Jane Eyre as a teenager, at my high-ranking girl’s school which tried to impart feminist principles whenever it could. There’s a moment in the book when she decides to try and impress Mr Rochester, and to do this, she makes a decision to wear a grey dress that day, not a black one. And as students of the text, we were meant to see this as a radical act! At this point, I lost all respect for Jane, and pledged my allegiance instead to Charlotte Brontë’s more daring sister, Emily (her novel Wuthering Heights, as you might know, is mentioned in almost every one of these columns). A contemporary Jane Eyre would have lots of pale linen in her wardrobe and fragrance-free soap in her bathroom, but Emily’s heroine Cathy is all dramatic silks and flower-scented French moisturisers. I know who I’d rather be, and how I’d prefer to feel. (Lucy Kumara Moore)

San Francisco Examiner is reminded of Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights by a technical characteristic of the film The Lighthouse.

In addition to using a constraining, sinister black-and-white, Eggers employs a narrow aspect ratio, closer to a square than a rectangle, similar to the shape in Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff,” David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” and movies made in the early days of cinema. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

Life Teen tells Christian teenagers that they don't 'need romantic love to be happy'.

Another big self-love moment happens when we can accept that a romantic partner is not necessary to validate you as a human being. Like seriously, who said romance was THE thing? Jane Eyre? Norah Ephron? Shakespeare? Sure, these folks wrote compelling stories about romance that have entertained us all. And yes, they capture our imagination and get us thinking about how, well, romantic romance is. (Stephanie Espinoza)

A Spanish article on The Conversation likens the Brexit tale to a Brontë story.

Las relaciones entre el Reino Unido y la Unión Europa durante los últimos meses podrían dar lugar a una novela que encajaría perfectamente en los cánones del género victoriano del amor imposible abocado al fracaso. Una narración al más puro estilo Cumbres Borrascosas o Jane Eyre. Pero lo cierto es que, cuando ya se daba todo por perdido, ante lo que parecía el instante más oscuro, una luz parece vislumbrarse al final del túnel de las negociaciones. (Fernando Lozano Contreras) (Translation)

National Geographic Spain features the Lisa Unger Baskin collection at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University which includes a letter and a sampler by Charlotte Brontë. An article in El Mundo (Spain) likens Ted Hughes to Heathcliff.