Jane Eyre film

[beccaelizabeth]

Today is studying Jane Eyre day. ... the more I study it, the less interesting it gets. The more I read the arguments the less plausible they get. There's some utter bibbeldy gobbledygook said about this book. And it's all on our assigned reading list.

So I got fed up and watched a film version I recorded off the TV the other week. Or started to, at least. I was watching it applying the stuff from Textual Transformations class, fully aware they'd change things and tweak the ideology to suit themselves and all of that. But the specifics really annoyed me.

Starting with the first image of the film: They have a book with 'Jane Eyre' on the cover and they open the book to a printed page and read out stuff from it, but it's not from Jane Eyre. It's just stuff they made up. Which I guess is fair warning for the rest of the film.

I'm watching some black and white version, I don't know when it's from. I've only watched 20 minutes of it so far and Jane Eyre is still a kid. They've condensed the book to fit it in a movie, obviously, but they've somehow managed to pull every single scene we've stopped over to study in detail in class. You know, the important ones. And then they've taken bits from all over the place and smushed them together and made a new story, so even when Jane is saying many of the right words they're not in the right place or plot order so she becomes someone quite different in saying them. Like, she tells Mrs Reed she's a terrible person and no kind of benefactress and she'll tell everyone that when she meets them, but in the film she waits until after she's left for school, after she's out the gate even, and shouts it from afar at the house, rather than saying it to Mrs Reed's face while still living there. Whole different person.

And then there's the characters they've taken out and added in. Basically they've taken out women and added in men. In Jane Eyre. There's only four men worth the mentioning, John Reed, Mr Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester, and Rev St John Rivers. But Jane is positively surrounded by large groups of women all the rest of the time.

At Gateshead there's Mrs Reed and her two daughters, and Bessie and another servant girl. But not in the film, they took out the daughters and added a male servant, simply to be authoritarian and lock Jane up. In the book she's locked up by women servants on the orders of a woman, but in this film she's locked up by a bloke. And not in the red room where Mr Reed died, in a closet full of junk. Given the amount of literary analysis that concentrates on that red room it's a bit startling to have it vanish, but then I can see how a film only concentrating on the events can happily get rid of it. The events they kept from the whole of Gateshead was just Jane is locked up, Jane fights with John (only here in front of his mother rather than surrounded by his sisters, and we don't see that he actually did cut her head open, and no apothecary has to be called for her), then Jane is sent to school.

And then at Lowood it gets even more bizarre, because they silence everyone except Helen Burns, and change her quite completely. And instead of the school being run by women teachers, (which is important because Jane grows up to be one of them,) the school is run directly by Mr Brocklehurst. And there's a Dr Rivers, a medical doctor. He just told child Jane she needs education so she can serve god, so he seems to be St John Rivers smushed into an entirely inappropriate part of Jane's life. But that doubles the number of men in the whole Lowood section, and what a surprise, that story turns into an argue between the two men. Mr Brocklehurst is mean, Dr Rivers tells him to be less mean, women are shushed if they try to talk and sent back to Lowood if they try to leave. That wasn't the story! Women were teaching each other and making do with the scraps the Mr had allowed them and sometimes just giving out extra food because it's right and getting in trouble for it with the Mr, and other times being bullies and taking away food because nobody has enough. It was women living within a system that didn't give them any room to live. And the teachers were living in the exact same conditions as the students.

What they did to the Helen Burns story took away the structural nature of the problems at Lowood. It's supposed to be systemic, the badness at Lowood, the way there's never enough food, and it's always freezing, and there's coughs and illness and a lot of kids die. In the film it was all just Helen. She's the only speaking character there, apart from Jane and the blokes. She has a cough, only. And she dies because she's been sent out in the rain, for being 'vain' by having curls in her hair. That's not her story. Helen was the one who was so Christian she wasn't worried about dying because of the go to heaven part, and she died slowly of that cough, and she wasn't the only one, lots of girls died of ill. In the film they reduce it to a single dramatic incident, where one Mr wants the window open and the other Mr wants it closed. Is missing the point, the whole place was so poorly built and underfunded it wouldn't matter if the windows were closed, it was still freezing and damp. It's taking out the system to make a single incident, and it makes it so nothing changes or gets fixed, instead of having other people notice and take the school away from Mr B and build better then it just stays exactly the same. It doesn't make sense Jane would want to be a teacher at that exact same place, she wanted to be a teacher in a place that made things better. They've also left out Mr B's family, more women, who turn up being all well fed and prettied up, so you can see where the money is going. It takes out economics and blames it all square on weird religion.

Also there was a speech where Jane stood there declaring she'd get trampled or gored or generally tolerate anything to be loved.

In the book Jane decides she'd rather be middle class than be loved. She's given the option of going to stay with her Eyre relations but says they're poor and she doesn't want to be poor.

"No; I should not like to belong to poor people," was my reply.

"Not even if they were kind to you?"

I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.

So then she gets sent to Lowood where there's a shortage of kind even if there's a little education.

I don't reckon she ever said that bit about love. Not anything like it. I ran several search variations.

So the film is doing something very different than the book. Big surprise.

But adapting a book full of women so there's half men? Getting rid of women characters to make room for men characters? Who looks at Jane Eyre and thinks 'I know what this needs, men!'


So now I'm grumpy.


... I'm probably going to watch the rest of the film though.


After the commercial break we finally meed grown up Jane. Mr Brocklehurst and a bunch of men are sitting around a table. Mr B is still in charge of the school. He tells the men if they hire Jane they won't have to pay her as much as an outside teacher.

So in a stroke the film reduced Jane's educational achievements to the parsimony of men. Bugger that.

They've completely erased the character Jane wanted to grow up to be like, the teacher she wanted to be.

... and Jane just turned down the job. What? She was a school teacher for years before she went to be a governess. Why undo that?

And she's telling off Mr B for being harsh and Mr B is telling her off back. Actually now he's completely dissing her. Why put that in? That never happened, she grew up with all the women teachers around and decided she wanted 'a new servitude', to go be a governess somewhere. It wasn't that she didn't want to be at Lowood the whole time.

Now he's stealing her mail??? WTF?
'If you persist in your folly, this haven will never again be open to you'. Er, no.
But she gets the letter by going looking for it, which is like having to steal back her own letter.
Why make that bit dramatic?

It's totally making it a women vs men battle though. But then a men vs men battle on top of it.



So now she arrives at Thornfield.

So far there's a girl servant and Mrs Fairfax and Adele.
Mr Edward Rochester has been mentioned a lot by everyone. He's the only conversational topic.
I wonder if that's true in the book? I'm sort of tuned in to Bechdel fail in films more. So when she's shown to her room near-Mr-Edward and Adele talks about her Mama died so-Mr-Rochester, and then Adele is all Mr-Rochester-sits-here-being-grumpy. And then Mr Rochester arrives. Very compact.

Mr Rochester is a jerk.
And they're keeping a lot more of his words.
Still making stuff up in the 'printed page' sections. Boo.

Now Jane is telling us him being a jerk is a mask, and under that he's a kindly tortured soul. :eyeroll:

Now Grace Poole is introduced, but not with the LAUGH from in the book. Just Mrs Fairfax talking to her in the corridor.
Now Mrs Fairfax is telling Jane Mr R has family troubles and that's why he so seldom comes to Thornfield.
I know film wants to get along quickly but it don't half tell us what to think.

Use of wind machine on Mr Rochester to make him look... I don't know, probably they were going for some romantic and natural thing, but it mostly makes him look messy.

Mr R referring to himself as a bachelor would be a flat out lie. Huh. Didn't notice that first time reading.

Mise en scene tricks, Mr Rochester always has a bigger chair, all throne looking.

I'm comparing the scene I'm watching to the book, keyword to look up "india-rubber ball". They're keeping Mr Rochester's words yet I feel like he's totally steamrollering Jane, not an impression I ever got in the book. She's sitting there like a passive lump, not responding. By checking against the book I consciously realised that a lot of what I remember Jane saying she's actually only thinking, or she's telling us the readers as Jane the narrator. The film gives us no such privileged access. We're not her best friend, she's not chatting confidentially to us, she's not telling us anything about herself. All the cold/ice references to Jane suddenly make a lot more sense, since she's a frozen over stillness, an iceberg with the most of it not showing.

It's also making it deeply BORING to watch. She's not a person, without that narrator strand, she's just an image sitting there. Mr Rochester is as vibrant as ever. So now without adding any men it's turning into a story all about a man!

It got down to "Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary" more or less following what he was saying, now its zoomed off, with Jane trying to leave to see to Adele and Rochester stopping her. Then matching, down to Adele coming in, but they have her speak English, since it's a rude habit in books to assume multilingual readers. So it skips to 'charmed the gold out of my breeches' and send Adele away, but call Jane back.

Then Jane says "Whatever your past misfortune, you have no right to revenge yourself on a child."

Huh, talking back Jane. Interesting.

Then the scheme skips back up the page to 'a good man, one of the better kind'. Then down again to 'grass green' and leaving him with flower Adele.
Interesting. Why the change?

It leaves out

My Spring is gone, however, but it has left me that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would fain be rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang; having found that it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure, I have but half a liking to the blossom, especially when it looks so artificial as just now. I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work. I'll explain all this some day. Good- night."

So he never says about getting rid of Adele or the sins bit.

Instead his last words are "I hope you'll be happy at Thornfield" and Jane says "I think so"
Which I don't see how it follows from just having told him off about the kid! Maybe from being told she's right, I guess that's unlikely to have happened to this Jane ever before.



end of scene, change to


ominous music, battlements, either clouds or fog
Thornfield is a snowy castle here?
And now the maniacal laughter. And the candle in the hall. And Mr Rochester's bed on fire.
... she doesn't put it out, dammit, she wakes him and he's all active putting it out, why do that? In the book she just grabs water and puts it out. She saves him with action, he doesn't save himself.

... hang on, she's connecting the laugh to Grace Poole without the film actually having made the laugh connect to Grace Poole. That's just stupid storytelling.

Wait, now he panics about Adele? He runs to check on Adele. He in fact gives a damn about Adele, and also considers her to be possibly in danger. That's a bloody big change from the books. Makes him a more sympathetic guy, to cut out him wanting rid of her and put in him caring. But he's just a jerk in the books.

"At least I had the pleasure of putting a bullet through my rival's lungs" vs "left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms" ... is that the difference between murder and just being very pissed off?

And "leaving me with what she said was my daughter" contrasts again with

But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given me this filette Adele, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. [...] I acknowledged no natural claim on Adele's part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of an English country garden.

Especially when the latter is said in front of Adele, who has just run up to them with a message. If the book intended Adele not to hear it could have left her out of the scene, but she's there the sentence before that paragraph and stays with Jane the sentence after. Mr Rochester is disowning her in her hearing and calling her country slime. Lovely.

See watching this film is interesting because I get to find out which bits of the book I know well enough to know they're doing damage to them, and also which bits the film makers found awkward.


And then Jane says
"Adele has had so little love, I shall try and make up for it."
It's bothering me increasing much that Mr Rochester gets to keep his words, but Jane in this film, whenever she opens her mouth, isn't Jane Eyre at all. Even when she means the same things she doesn't keep her own words. Seeing as the whole book is supposed to be her words it's... it feels like they're doing violence to her, who is only words. They keep taking chunks of her away. All the narrator, for a start, and now all her speaking too. Who is this clone with Jane's name on?

Now it's being all smooch music and Mr R asking if his life deserved saving and Jane saying "I should be distressed if harm came to you sir" and being all breathy. Now Mr R is shaking hands with her to thank her. And she's looking up at him all adoring. And "I knew you would do me good in some way"

... and that's it. Good Night time.

"You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different;--I feel your benefits no burden, Jane."

He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,- -but his voice was checked.

"Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case."

"I knew," he continued, "you would do me good in some way, at some time;--I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not"--(again he stopped)--"did not" (he proceeded hastily) "strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight!"

This is Mr R very nearly declaring himself, right here. He's saying it's a pleasure to owe her, and she strikes delight to his inmost heart. It's a huge big deal!
... I had to rewind to double check they skipped that.

It's a side effect of Movie Time I guess, they've only known each other half an hour on TV.


So then the next morning he goes out in the snow and Jane looks all :-( that he left.


Ooh, now she's going up the stairs to the Scary Room.
... the thing is in the book she went up the stairs often, and looked out from the roof. She walked up and down the corridor with the Scary Room. There was a spatial connection between her habits and Bertha's confinement.
But she never did like the film Jane just did, she never went and opened a door and got a scream.
Also it wasn't a 'no one is allowed up here' place, it was better managed than that, all hidden away.

Hang on, why is Grace Poole all thee-ing? She doesn't thee in the book.
Search says only Mr Rochester says thee, and it's in the context "I longed for thee"
rather a large difference in effect there.


Now lots of time is passing with a fake book page again. Fake Jane says winter turned to spring and she passed time happily with Adele.

Book Jane has to live with Mr R being "absent upwards of a fortnight", and knowing precisely where he's gone, to visit with women of his own social standing. And when he comes back he brings them with him. It's part of a deliberate plan to make Jane jealous, we just studied that in class last week. So adding this extra time passing breaks that connection. I bet they'll use it to make Mr R a nicer person again.


Jane Eyre in the film is much more often surprised and in the dark than Jane in the book. She's point of view girl, so we can be surprised too. And her first sight of Blanche Ingram is her first knowledge of it. 'Old Flame' and 'engagement' are brought up... wait, Blanche is a blonde? Er, no. Changing all the symbols.


Bets on what they keep: conversation about governesses-are-weird?
Corsair song?

It's not Blanche accompanying Mr Rochester, it's just Blanche singing. And Adele yawning at her, ha!
Yep, 'don't speak to me of governesses'

Backwards of the book, so I guess the actor bloke can't sing, so it can't make it her staying to watch him sing.

And then it gets up to "But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes--indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming;"
and a knock on the door interrupts him.
The paragraph is supposed to end with "Good-night, my--" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.
So once again they're cutting out any near declarations on his part.

Mr Mason?
Yep.

Mr Rochester is hiding from him.
Telling Jane he wished he was on an island with only her. And asking if she'd stay if everyone else hated him, and she's saying she would stay and comfort him. That matches the book, but skips to a whole other conversation.

I bet they're skipping the gypsy bit entirely.

So now Mr R is going and being grumpy at Mr Mason. In the book he's cheerful at him. The film is smoothing away the lies and hypocrisy and simplifying him rather. I guess that way you're not confused in your two hour romance. Blah.

And yeah, next there's screams in the night. No gypsy.
... I realise your romantic hero getting up in drag so he can check out what the women think of him isn't exactly an easy sell, but it's part of what a creep he is in the book.


So screams in the night, and then... Mr R kissing Blanche's hand as he sends her back to bed? Jealousy plot in visuals then.


Oooh, scary padded door of scariness!
"whatever the appearance, you must trust me" and there's a second door still barred, and now she has to look after Mason while Mr R goes for a surgeon. "do not speak to him on any account" creep creep creep
"whatever happens do not open a door, either door"
... yeah, big creep.

The film skips the part where Jane gets dressed in anticipation of being needed. Every bit of foresight or self willed action since Lowood has been stripped off this movie girl.

Behind the barred door someone rattles the door and sobs.
... we're supposed to be scared of them? Scared for them. Locked up in the tower, no way to be.

These visuals of Thornfield are interesting. I'm always thinking three floors of stately home, but this film reckons it's a castle with towers. For why?

Tigress and drain heart's blood images retained.

More scary screaming.

Really, why is this Jane still here? Screaming women isn't a good sign.

Huh, now Mr R sent her away and there's a scene where Jane isn't present. Book never did that. Stayed strictly point of view. The film did for the first hour or so, this is the first time it strayed. Now Mr R is yelling at Mason. "We've tried so long to avoid exposure"... yeah, whenever they make lines up its to make sure the movie audience gets the point.

"Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her--" he stopped and burst into tears.

"I do my best; and have done it, and will do it," was the answer: he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.

"Yet would to God there was an end of all this!" added Mr. Rochester, as he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.

Guess which line of that wasn't quoted in the film?
Yep, the one where Mr Rochester wants rid of it.

It continues down the book page to 'the house is a dungeon' but Mr R doesn't ask Jane for a response. She gets no opinions. The film silences her at every turn!


So then it goes up to "are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom"
and gives Jane an answer about conscience, and Mr R a bit about worrying about bringing shame to what you cherish and destroying what you desire to protect.
That bit in the book has no such speech for Mr R. I can't recall him worrying about destroying anyone with his marriage plan. If he did he didn't use any of these words.
They're prettying him up again.

And again

What cold fingers! They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?"

"Whenever I can be useful, sir."

"For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company?

that bit happens, but then Jane is all tearful face and "will you be married" and Mr R is "some day, why not? women like my money!"

That's backwards, in the book he's saying he's going to get married and all "She's a rare one, is she not, Jane?"

in the book he's an arse trying to make her jealous, in the film he's all lonely lonely poor little rich boy.



Then there's the conversation about if he's getting married Adele should go to school and Jane needs a new job. That pretty much stays. But instead of Rochester saying "If one shook hands, for instance; but no--that would not content me either." then Jane offers to shake hands and Rochester does and there's Significant Staring and Hand Rubbing. Hands are getting all the action here.

But the whole part where Jane is going back to see ill Mrs Reed is skipped. The film streamlines that out. It's about Jane not Mr R so no surprise.


Now the film has another inserted scene with Mr R and not Jane. Mr R is talking to Blanche. She's talking about all his property, and about Love. He's talking about fun. She's wondering if he has a heart. "Have I ever done or said anything to make you believe that I have? If so I assure you that it was quite unintentional." And now he's listing his bad qualities as a way of telling off BLANCHE. "Mr Rochester is revoltingly coarse and ugly as sin. Secondly, he flirts sometimes but is careful never to talk about love or marriage. However, this is the third point, Lady Ingram is somewhat impoverished. Whereas the revolting Mr Rochester has an income of £8,000 per year." So the fact that he has bad qualities is all about how bad Blanche is somehow. Well that's an ugly trick.
She's being insulted, he's saying he's completely honest and that's a compliment, she says he's a bore and a cur.

In the book he gets in disguise to tell her he has no money and so she goes away.

The film is more blunt, but both versions do almost the same nasty to Blanche. Except in the book it really was about money, they stopped being interested when he stopped being rich, but here he chases them off with bad manners, so she stops being interested either because he flat says no marriage or because he's a jerk.
... I think I'm on her side if it's because he's a jerk.
In the film it is not, actually, about money, unless its about money the can't get.

So now the Ingrams leave from having changed their mind.


Mr R goes to see Jane in the garden. She's all tearful.
In the book I think she's less often tearful.
In this film she's all sparkly with it quite often.


And now "it's a long way off from you sir"
and he's chasing her around the garden in this version.

"I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,--you'd forget me."

You know, as declarations of love go, that's really kind of morbid. Positively Addams-ish. I'd suffer internal bleeding without you! :eyeroll:

Also "What bride? I have no bride." Is a lie. Again.

And again in the film it isn't Mr R who deceived Jane, just Jane being mistaken. It makes her stupider and him nicer. Polish a creep and he's still a creep.


and now they keep some of her words

"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;--it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,--as we are!"

The bold bits they kept, but it ends "There, I have spoken my heart, now let me go."
Is it that they're trying to leave out God, or trying to leave out speaking as equals?
Well there's a bit of god in there, but as for equality...

then skip a bit to Rochester telling Jane "you strange, you almost unearthly thing!--I love as my own flesh."
more or less. But the rest in the book is: "You--poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are--I entreat to accept me as a husband."
There's no entreating here. She says 'Don't mock me' he says 'It's you I want' and tells her to say she'll marry him. "And say it, Jane. Say 'Edward, I'll marry you.' Say it, Jane."

In the book he phrases it almost like that, he does tell her to say it, tell her what to say. But plunked into this film that keeps on taking all her words it strikes me as extra double creepy. He's asking a question, it's not about ventriloquising the answer. In teh film, no entreating, makes it just stand there on its own. He repeats it too, "Say 'Edward, I'll marry you.'" It's the only bit he says.
And she's gazing up at him adoringly.

And thunder rumbles. Do they mean him to be being creepy? Because he really, really is.

then he's "God Pardon me" and *BOOM* the thunder breaks the tree. Wind! Lightning! Drama!

cool.



... then they make up another bit of book.

"All my doubts, and all the grim shadows that hung over Thornfield seemed to vanish - shattered like the riven chestnut-tree. I loved and I was loved. Every sunlit hour I looked forward to love's fulfillment."

Erm... in the book she feels happy all night and in the morning the first thing she hears is the tree is broken. It's more like they get a tiny happy and then *BOOM*. It's not a reassuring break!

Why keep the image and write a new bit of text to redo the meaning?


Now there's a Rochester Buys Things sequence. In the book Jane kept telling him off and saying no thanks. In the film he's buying her scarlet! Is the symbolism thoughtless or deliberate? In the book she makes him swap amethyst for grey and black.

So he's being all happy about buying things. I miss actual Jane! She had stuff to say about this bit. Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a jewellers shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation.
Annoyance and degradation! Not all this smiling.

She has no personality in this film.


church bells, church day, shadow falling over church
shadows walking into the church
nice use of mise en scene

and it's up to 'lawful impediment'
and 'I declare the existence of an impediment' 'Mr Rochester has a wife, now living'

And it all comes out. We watch Jane's face, but honestly I can't tell the difference between her expression here and all through the film so far.


So now he's saying no wedding today.
It's weird, in the book you get more of a sense of him wrestling with some sin, a darkness, building up. The compression of their relationship in the film left out so much it's rather more of a surprise.


"Grace Poole's patient, my wife"
And Jane still makes the long suffering face.
"Away with your congratulations, you're 15 years too late"

scary door! behind the curtain! Bar off!
reaching hands grab his throat, animal growling noises! Hissing and Groaning says the subtitles.
more shadows.

He staggers back to the doorway, next to Jane still in her big swish white silk wedding dress... with the veil still on.
Talking of scenes they skipped, there's an important one: Madwoman in her veil. In the mirror, she sees Bertha in the wedding veil. That's important to crit because seeing in the mirror is like seeing a dark self. But here? Skipped.
(It's also the occasion of Mr R telling Jane a lot more lies to her face and telling her she didn't see what she saw. He's more of a creep that way.)

I'm betting the film will not even show Bertha, they keep making her shadows and screams and growls. She isn't a person here. We're just watching Rochester react.


"That gentlemen is my wife. Mad and the offspring of a mad family. Of whom the church and law bind me for ever without hope of divorce."

It skips the Creole part entirely too, as it has skipped every mention of slavery. That's a whole thread of criticism taken right out.

It's just, here's pretty quiet girl, here's mad woman, look at the difference.

... are we supposed to sympathise with Mr R here? He's locked his wife in the dark. WTF?

So the book then says We all withdrew.
In the film *they* all withdrew, and the camera stays with Mr R.
This is Mr R's film to a much greater degree than the book ever was. Jane erased, Mr R gets point of view time.

No, wait, Mr R walks away and the door closes - on us/the camera in the dark. For right then our point of view is madwoman in the dark. Now that's a bit different...
interesting.



Now how much of the Rivers will they skip? All of it?
Because that's the way to remove absolutely the last shred of her agency.
In the book she decides to leave, because it's the morally right thing to do. And she sticks with it, leaves all the things he bought for her, ends up begging, then gets a job, and makes it work. She leaves him and looks after herself. Strong!
... and discovers relatives and a lot of Providence stuff. Books that believe in Providence can get away with a hell of a lot of coincidence. But she makes a morally principled decision and acts alone and makes it work. I bet the film won't let her.


Well, she's dressed, packed, has a case with her... goes to see Adele... when t there's a fire this Mr R will save Adele at his own expense, yes?

Jane tries to leave and Mr R stops her.
Explains arranged marriage. "I suffered all the agonies of a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste"


That skips a bit of a conversation,

"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel--she cannot help being mad."

"Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?"

"I do indeed, sir."

It gives Rochester his words and cuts Jane's opinions again.

She keeps the 'I forgive you' and 'I love you' but none of the telling him off!
Her ability to tell him off, the assumption of intellectual equality, was what the both of them valued about their relationship. This film is all squashed.

"I could crush you between my hands, but your spirit would still be free." Hrm. Reasonable shortening of a long paragraph.


Sad Jane is sad. You know I don't think she's cracked an expression other than sad or devoted all through it.



So, she actually left. And then they made up a paragraph of print again... wait, they're sending her back to Gateshead Hall? Well that saves them on sets and setup, lets the audience know where she's going, but you know what else it does? Send her back to her baby place. No agency for you, Miss Eyre.

And she's going back to "Bessie, who had once been kind to me" - back to the servant, not the relatives.
Oh, this is what the brooch at the start was about, give her a shiny so to recognise the grown up one.

So now they've squished the bit from the middle into the ending. Jane goes back to Gateshead and finds everyone gone to a bad end. Except since they got rid of most of the everyone at the start it compresses the story time at this end. John Reed spent all the money gambling then hanged himself, Mrs Reed is dying. "When they told the missus, she had a kind of stroke, wandering like in her mind." ... are there two mad women then? She's a bit wandering in the book, she's looking more ill here.

Why is this the appropriate ending? Why does it go in after Jane doesn't get married? It's like it paints that as a failure, she fails to marry, she fails at life, she goes back to Mrs Reed's house and they all failed too.

I guess she'll inherit from this house then, to simple the story?

No, wait, a man just arrived to see Miss Jane Eyre. ... is it Dr Rivers from the start? Because that would be the squickiest thing they could do, make him alternate-husband after that. No, wait, he has a message...

"Didn't stay in that place you went to long" so yeah, fail framing.

Lawyer writing from near Thornfield... "Do you know who's enquiring for you?" Is she going to hide? Yeah, he dropped it in the fire... hang on, mate, you didn't give her her own letter???

How many creepy ways...


And now they're auctioning off Mrs Reed's stuff cause she's dead. And there's a big storm. And the house is sold.


So she's writing a letter starting "My Dear Mr Brocklehurst"
So yes, this ending version has her completely failing at life and having to fall back on people who don't catch her and having men do the deciding and ARRRGH.


It's not more drama this way, it's just making her someone else entirely in a different story.

Is she going to hear Mr R supernaturally now?
Yep, there's a storm, the window blows open, and Mr R calls "Jane" and she makes happy face.


So they have her leave Mr R and it be a bad thing of complete fail. And she hasn't an inheritance! Not from anyone! So she goes back to him dead broke and knowing she has no other options whatsoever!

Could they get any further at all from "I am an independent woman now." and "I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress."

I'm sure there are people who like the film version better. And I'm sure what I think of them too.



And then there's this stupid pretend print bit they made up again

The book says

I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room-- nor in the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air- -nor from under the earth--nor from overhead. I had heard it-- where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being--a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!"

But this stupid film says

placable cruelty of Mr Brocklehurst.

It did not come out of the air, nor from under the earth, nor from overhead. And it was the voice of a human being- a loved, remembered voice.

It seemed the cry of a soul in pain, an appeal so wild and urgent that I knew I must go, and go quickly. Only when I knew what had happened to him - only when I had looked once more upon that tortured face - could I make my decision.

So, for one, the decision is not an adult decision from a secure financial position between two marriages, or a vocation and a marriage. It's not two adult men courting her, or her with a job deciding if she wants to get married or go be a missionary. She has no goals here. None beyond survival.
It's the choice between a life with Mr R and a life with Mr B, an adult life and a child life.

There's no Jane here, no success, no choices.

Book Jane has deciding:
It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone.
And then she prays and goes. Decides to go. From a comfortable place to an unknown one. Again.


this film has nothing of class, of employment, inheritance. Her rejection of being poor? Thrown out. Her argument that governessing is like slavery? All gone.
Somehow they've taken a book that was spiky with issues of class, gender, race and slavery and colonialism, and ironed it so flat and lifeless there's only Mr R still in it, and he's all polished up. The gender things are flattened to some caricature. It's ghastly.

And completely as expected.


Hmmm, one prediction wrong, Mrs Fairfax rescues Adele, Mr Rochester went into the house after the mad wife. Who has no name in this film.
So the scene where he panics about Adele earlier in the film, the inserted made up scene, it has no payoff in plot terms, it's just there to make him a nicer looking character.
We don't see the fire and death - a wonderfully cinematic set of images, you'd think. We just see wreckage and Mrs Fairfax doing narration.
Well I guess that's much cheaper.

There's no extra house in the woods now, there's the dog and Mr Rochester walking with a stick staring into space. Blind Mr R.
"Adele is waiting for her supper" so Adele hasn't been sent away to school. He rejects her and sends her away in the book, but not the film.

Jane says "I've come back sir" and "Edward Edward" and "Don't send me away, please don't send me away." (And that's all)
And makes happy face at him touching her - hang on, both hands work. Bit of a difference. Granted I wasn't expecting an actor to get one amputated for the story, but it isn't that difficult to stick it in your jumper or something.

"I don't want your pity" "You can't spend your life on the mere wreckage of a man" well he isn't in this one scarred or with any of his limbs not working, just blind... and with remarkably good targeting for a blind man, since he just yanked her in and kissed her on the lips first try. I know sighted people who don't get that quite right first go.

... hang on, that's the happy ending?

He grabs her, all action is him.

She's so damn passive in this, everything happens *to* her.

And then he gets the sight back, seeing stars and then his first born's eyes. That's the very next sentence, there's NO time when Rochester has to depend on Jane, rely on her for everything, the way that is the WHOLE ENTIRE POINT at the end of the book. He's walking and independent when Jane meets him, and then a sentence after they get together he's sighted again. It's like he's blind for thirty seconds and oops, better again.

Wait a second... *rewinds*...

Yeah, they skipped a stage there: Goes from kissing reunion to firstborn.

What happened to "Reader, I married him"

Aside from being one of the most famous lines ever, it unfortunately implies the kid's born without benefit of actual married parents.


Even if they're going to skip all the bits where she looks after him then how can they skip that?



I mean, granted, in the book, they are rather creepy together:

"Because you delight in sacrifice."

"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value--to press my lips to what I love--to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."

"And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies."

"Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector."

"Hitherto I have hated to be helped--to be led: henceforth, I feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling's, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane's little fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but Jane's soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit her?"

"To the finest fibre of my nature, sir."

"The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be married instantly."

Plus

Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near--that knit us so very close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.

All that 'yaay you're disabled I get to keep you!' is epitome of creep, but then they achieve an equality of creepiness that I'm sure stands them in good stead for married life. :eyeroll:




So... that was a very long set of notes and quotes there. Hopefully it was useful study time and not just extended growl time... Given that I started this at 11 and it's now nearly 4 I seem to have spent a bit of a long time on it.


Conclusion: The film strips Jane of personality, voice, her own words, her educational and vocational attainments, her financial independence, indeed any vestige of independent life.

In contrast Jane Eyre, the proper one in the book, has all of that. And a spiritual life, and multiple suitors, and political opinions, and options.

I thought I was bored with the book but I'm downright offended with what this stupid film did to it.



End of film I can see when it was: Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, 1944

:-p to that version.