Jane Eyre is an Austen heroine who has undergone therapy and developed a healthy anger for the social norms that have forced her into a narrow life

American Kahani has a different view of Jane Eyre in an extract from Desi Girl by Sarah Malik:

I read Austen and Jane Eyre and became mentally colonized by English period literature. “Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Brontë, was my favorite book. She is an Austen heroine who has undergone therapy and developed a healthy anger for the social norms that have forced her into a narrow life unlike what her soul craves.

Jane is acutely aware of the dynamics between herself and Rochester, an older man with wealth and power and her boss. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.” Yass girl, I yelled inwardly. It’s only when a fire has destroyed Rochester’s wealth and body, and Jane becomes an heiress, that the dynamics between them are more equal. It is on these terms she accepts him.

When I reread “Jane Eyre” today, I think of Bertha Mason, the “mad” wife and Jamaican woman of “intemperate” blood, locked in the attic by Rochester. I think of the “Hindoo” heathens Jane wants to convert in India. Jane’s temptation to convert Indians and her unquestioning acceptance of the “crazy” ex-wife being locked away start to sit uneasily as I pick at the legacy of these books in my life.

I so identified with Jane that I had been blind to who I would be to someone like Charlotte Brontë. A brown lady in need of conversion? Was Jane Eyre a white feminist? I wondered. The kind that marched out shrieking about oppressed brown women with a superior air?

Still, “Jane Eyre” remains my favorite book. The complex questions it raises reflect the evolution of my ambiguous relationship with the western “canon” as a person of color, existing both inside and outside it, both as observer and observed. It is the literary tradition I inherited as an English-speaking woman in the west – but not in a deliberate, official way, like the eldest son inheriting his fortune in an Austen book; more in a roundabout accident, like the bastard child of an affair on the continent after a plague wipes out the real heirs.

This kind of culture is consumed by us accidents of immigration and colonization with a double register, a register only people of color know. It’s a sort-and-filter adaptation, in which we become fully suspended in a world completely different from our own but whose internal rhythms and emotional range we can slip into, like western society itself.

We attempt to imbibe as much as we can to identify with the emotional reality of the characters before us. And we do that like a game of dress-ups, moving around in western Judeo-Christian history and literary traditions in disguise, understanding the secrets of the people we watch while divulging none of our own.

The Telegraph reviews the novel My Soul Twin by Nino Haratischvili.

Nino Haratischvili’s previous novel, The Eighth Life, a 900-page extravaganza following one Georgian family from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the present day, became an unlikely international bestseller. Now she has returned with an epic of a different kind: a love story so full of passionate, violent longing that its publishers are comparing it to Wuthering Heights – and, as in Brontë’s novel, the lovers are adopted siblings. (Lucy Scholes)

Screen Rant ranks the '10 Best BBC Adaptations of All Time, According To IMDb' and the list includes

Jane Eyre (2006) - 8.3

Some pieces of classic literature are so beloved that adaptations are under a lot of pressure to impress, and the 2006 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre didn't disappoint. After becoming the governess of Thornfield Hall, young Jane soon finds herself in a whirlwind love affair with her charge's brooding and mysterious caregiver.

Usually labeled with such lofty monikers as "the greatest love story ever told," the novel was extremely familiar to the average classics fan. Despite this, the miniseries found a way to bring the old tale to life in a new way without changing too much of the story, and each scene was taut with passion from beginning to end. (Dalton Norman)

Looper recommends Emily as one of '10 Great Movies Like Enola Holmes 2 Fans Should Watch'.

The Brontë sisters' gothic past

For those needing more of a passionate heroine in period dress, look no further than "Emily," a gothic biographical film about the life of Emily Brontë. 2022's "Emily" is an imaginative, creative retelling of the lives of the Brontë sisters and Emily's possible love affair with William Weightman. This occasionally spooky film taps into the otherworldliness of Emily's "Wuthering Heights," mimicking a few of the book's dark themes.

So far, "Emily" has some pretty impressive reviews, particularly about Emma Mackey, who audiences will recognize from "Sex Education." While writer and director Frances O'Connor took a few historical liberties in the screenplay (William Weightman more likely had a romance with Emily's younger sister, Anne), the dramatic landscape and gothic atmosphere brilliantly recreate Brontë's work. According to Mackey, filming in the Yorkshire moors was haunting. "It's only in being there that you realize what an influence the scenery had on the Brontë girls," she told Vogue UK. "Emily's bedroom looked out over a graveyard. It's really otherworldly. There's nowhere to hide in that sort of landscape. The light is haunting."

Mackey and director O'Connor pointed out that the film isn't a strict biopic but a "testament to the power of creativity" and Emily Brontë's genius. Well, that and a chance to "run around the moors in a corset while screaming her head off," says Mackey. — a dream for many girls. (Rachel Redfern)

Coveteur features founders of Interior Lily Miesmer and Jack Miner.

When the founders Lily Miesmer and Jack Miner of fledgling New York-based label Interior were conceptualizing their Spring ‘23 collection, they found inspiration in Jane Eyre, the novel by Charlotte Brontë. The strong-willed protagonist carried little favor for the creatives, nor did her rugged love interest. Instead, they honed in on the misunderstood woman Mr. Rochester kept locked away in his attic. “We relate to her and how misrepresented she was,” says Miesmer. They obsessed over this idea of deterioration in her mental state—and her night dress.

They personified this idea in a white, almost monastic floor-length shirt dress, “a surrealist nightgown” as Miner calls it. The effect is somewhere between asylum escapee and loyal patron of The Row. The designers further massaged the idea of a shirt dress in said look's runway predecessor by tacking up the hemline and reimagining the construction. “I think for us there's always something a little wrong with everything we make,” says Miesmer. “So if retailers love a cute little poplin dress and if women love that and if I love that as a woman, okay. [...]

For Spring ‘23, the Miesmer and Miner drew upon Martin Scorsese’s The Red Shoes in addition to Brontë's gothic hysteria. [...]

Lounging upon the blanched couches, our conversation pendulates between tangents about gory menstruation and the showing of silly duck memes they send to each other. More often though, the attic studio is a space to channel their own creative Brontë-esque 

madness, whether that entails taking a steel brush to Italian linen mere days before a fashion show or screening a Fellini film for inspiration after admittedly self-prescribing a little too much DayQuil. Luckily, large windows and a skylight keep their hideaway feeling light and bright—and everyone is free to come and go as they please. (Camille Freestone)

The Times explores the will-o'-the-wisp phenomenon in literature:

That was an extraordinary sight because will-o’-the-wisp is rarely seen these days. The phenomenon is seen as small dancing lights flitting or hovering just above marshland, often a bluish colour. Small wonder it caught the imagination of many writers, as Shakespeare described in Henry IV: “. . . an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire”. And in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a will-o’-the-wisp guides Jane to safety when she is lost on the moor: “. . . far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.” (Paul Simons)