‘Listen everybody, I married him. See you at the dance!’

Chichester Observer reviews Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre as seen at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton.

The set looks like a bizarre cross between an adventure playground and a collection of Ikea outtakes. But don’t be put off. Above all, it’s a clearing of the decks – and it works wonderfully well, the perfect platform from which to breathe new life, indeed air, into Jane and her tale of cruelty suffered and redemption gained. The sparseness of the set allows a sharper focus on the story-telling itself, and the cast take us to the heart of Jane’s world in a way that is as compelling as it is skilful. There are still problems with the production. A running time of three hours verges on the self-indulgent, and while the on-stage mini-band delivering a jazzy backing track works surprisingly well, the frequent recourse to song doesn’t. It interrupts – and it slows the pace too much. But at its best, this is a rich and imaginative retelling, thanks to a company of actors truly working together as an ensemble. Nadia Clifford captures beautifully Jane’s suffering, her indignation, her spirit and her inner decency; Tim Delap makes us understand the mistakes Rochester has made and makes us feel for him as he negotiates – often fairly badly – the consequences of those mistakes. Hannah Bristow as tragic Helen Burns and little Adele among others shows supreme versatility. But really it is the way that everyone works together that makes this the piece it is. Drop the songs, lose 20 minutes and a tighter focus will take the production to the next level. (Phil Hewitt)

Life Love Lexie and Cornelius and His Flying Machine: A Steampunk Adventure both post about this production as well.

China Daily is in awe of the exhibition Shakespeare to Sherlock: Treasures of the British Library at the National Library of China, which includes

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
1847
A widely read novel in China, [Alexandra Ault, curator of the exhibition] says the work is generally considered to be the first example of the modern novel, because of its characterization and narrative.
"There is so much depth in terms of the object, the story and the author," she says.
On show at the National Library of China is a fair copy of the book.
"It's the copy that was sent to Brontë's publisher and finally launched her career, and it thus changed the way British read and understand novels," says Ault.
Printers' fingerprints are visible, as well as Brontë's pen name, Currer Bell, which is crossed out. "Brontë felt that the male pseudonym would give her novels more credibility," the display's notes say, revealing the limited social status of women writers at the time. (Mei Jia)

The Herald (Scotland) quotes what poet George Gunn thought of Charlotte Brontë's most famous words:

The poet George Gunn once wrote: “Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre, by declaring ‘Reader, I married him’, is making a mono-cultural assumption as to the individual relationship of the consumer to the work of art. If she were Scottish, she would be more than likely to exclaim: ‘Listen everybody, I married him. See you at the dance!’” (Jamie Chambers)

Newsmax quotes from Shirley in an article about robots doing humans' work in factories.

The plight of the unemployed workers even attracted the attention of Charlotte Brontë, who wrote them into her novel Shirley. “The throes of a sort of moral earthquake,” she noted, “were felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties.” (John Mauldin)

The Guardian reviews Amazon’s series based on Chris Kraus’ 1997 comic novel I Love Dick and is reminded of the Jean Rhys type of heroine.

Another writer from a different era, mid-20th century, comes to mind: Jean Rhys, whose romantic loserdom provided her with endless fodder for her work. [...]
This difficult, unpalatable heroine interests herself, but can she interest the public? Apart from Wide Sargasso Sea, which tells the story of the woman in the attic from Jane Eyre – also a loser but beautiful and, having been labeled as crazy, comfortably locked up rather than running loose – Jean Rhys’ books received little recognition at the time of their publication and are still books “for the few”. (Maxine Swann)

The Kim Newman Web Site reviews Jane Eyre 2011. The Cary Fukunaga film is screened today at the Centre for Assistance and Development of Movie Talents, Hanoi, Vietnam.