Jane Eyre on stage in 1848

History Today features the 1848 stage adaptation of Jane Eyre.

In February 1848, Currer Bell wrote to her publishers in London. The author of Jane Eyre had learned of its production at the Victoria Theatre in Lambeth, commonly known as the Old Vic. Holding strong views on dramatic art – she was unimpressed with William Macready’s ‘artificial’ Macbeth – Charlotte Brontë worried that ‘all would be woefully exaggerated and painfully vulgarised’. What, she asked, would this ‘minor’ house make of her heroine and Mr Rochester? Billed as Jane Eyre; or, The Secrets of Thornfield Manor, the first ever staging of a Brontë novel starred the Victoria’s principal actress and co-manager Eliza Vincent. Playing Rochester was Newton ‘Bravo’ Hicks, an actor of fine physique, commanding voice and ‘agile as a tiger’. [...]

Rochester has a soliloquy as moody as he is in the novel – ‘the wind shakes the gables of these old towers’ – and Thornfield Manor (Hall in the original) is just as gothic; within moments of Jane’s arrival she confesses to a ‘thrill of fear’. But Courtney also continues to invent new working-class characters, such as the chorus-like footman Sam Small. Betty Bunce and Joe Joker also return. Having escaped Lowood’s tyranny at the same time as Jane, Betty has found work in the nearby town of Millcote, neatly offering a chance to make fun of local politics, while Joe is now Rochester’s coachman. These demotic guardian angels will prove crucial to Jane’s future happiness.

In contrast to the visibility of such figures, with the exception of Mr Rochester the more upper-class inhabitants of the novel only exist offstage. Here the well-born are the marginal. At the same time, however, Rochester’s gentlemanly authority wins the instant respect of Joe. In keeping with the original story, the fire that consumes Thornfield is set by Rochester’s wife Bertha (cast as the ‘Maniac’ in the show’s playbills), but it is the courageous servant who rescues the master.

Events then largely follow the plot of the novel until, learning of the fire and Rochester’s blindness, a newly empowered Jane determines to claim her true love. In a final invented scene, designed for a typical display of Vincent pluck, she finds Bertha’s maddened brother trying to kill Rochester. Fending off the would-be assailant, Jane in turn is rescued by Joe. Within the populist ordering of the Vic’s world, Rochester needs the orphaned and the lowly as much as they need him.

Had she made it to the Vic, what would Brontë have witnessed? Certainly the reviews judged it a well-mounted piece with Hicks and Vincent showing taste and feeling. The Morning Advertiser considered it a ‘very judicious mélange’. In the second week of its run it played alongside Romeo and Juliet, so perhaps not the ‘rant and whine’ that Brontë envisaged. Its stageability established, in 1849 a five-act version of Jane Eyre was produced in New York. Dozens more adaptations have of course followed, including this year at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. But in travelling with their local heroine to Thornfield Manor, it was the everyday playgoers of Lambeth who enjoyed the experience first. (Stephen Ridgwell)

Up and Coming Weekly reports that a Regency-era ball and soiree will take place on September 9 at the Skyview on Hay Street in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

For an extra fee, there is also a fortune teller available. Fortune telling was very popular at parties. However, this fortune teller won’t be Mr. Rochester dressing up trying to understand Jane Eyre’s psyche. This is an actual fortune teller who will be set up in the old bank vault inside Skyview. (Hannah Lee)

The Texas Tribune shares an excerpt from Ruth J. Simmons's memoir Up Home.

What I most loved, however, was its small library, where I could borrow books. I imagined this as my own library, where I could have access to books as often as I wished. The period, reading level, or genre did not matter; access to the wealth of words in books such as Little Women and Jane Eyre was almost as important as the stories and characters they offered. I was still on a mission to acquire as many words and meanings as possible. The festooned curtains and furnishings of the red-room described by Jane Eyre set my heart aflutter. If I could describe things with a similar precision, I could express confidently who I was and who I sought to be. I saw a way forward.