Victoria Falls, Delices Buy Dominica products
Home
Welcome Message
Prior Issues
Feedback
Current Issue
Contact Us
Advertise
About Dominica

Spiderline

In the Spotlight
Karina Leblanc: World Class Goal Keeper
John Moorhouse: Extreme Sports Cyclist

Dominica Academy of Arts and Sciences
National Development Fund
Rosie Douglas Foundation

Become A Sponsor
The Dominican provides a unique opportunity to advertise to the thousands of people who access this free site daily, while becoming a sponsor of the site. For additional information, please

Inquire Here

Google
Volume No. 1 Issue No. 91 - Monday February 26, 2007
TELEVISION REVIEW; Feminism's Fictional Powerhouse
Allessandra Stanley - (Reprinted from the New York Times)


''Jane Eyre'' may not be the first feminist novel, but it is certainly one of the most enduring. There have been at least 20 movie and television versions of Charlotte Bront�'s gothic love story, even more than of ''Emma'' or ''Pride and Prejudice.''

And it's all the more of a tribute, since ''Jane Eyre'' is not easily refashioned to fit modern times. Unlike Jane Austen novels, ''Jane Eyre'' is hard to imagine updated into a ''Clueless'' or ''Bridget Jones's Diary.'' A governess could easily be turned into an au pair or a personal trainer, but a man who hides a mad wife in the attic is harder to transmute in an era of no-fault divorce and Thorazine. It's the kind of hurdle Steve Martin faced when he based his 1987 comedy ''Roxanne'' on ''Cyrano de Bergerac''; he solved it by giving his Cyrano an allergy to anesthesia that precluded a nose job.

And that constraint is probably one reason there isn't a huge difference in tone, setting or narrative structure between the 1944 version that starred Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine and the latest ''Masterpiece Theater'' adaptation of ''Jane Eyre,'' a two-part series that will be shown this Sunday and next on PBS.

The newest version is perhaps a little steamier. At one point Jane (Ruth Wilson) and Edward Rochester (Toby Stephens) lie on a bed and kiss (they remain dressed), and the mad wife, Bertha (Claudia Coulter), a half-Creole from the West Indies, is shown in a flashback committing strenuous adultery.

As befits a Victorian immorality tale, however, the illicit love affair between the governess and the man she calls ''master'' is more passionate in word and smoldering glance than in deed.

The ''Jane Eyre'' of today takes few liberties with characters, plot or language. Usually classics are revered in the classroom and mauled by Hollywood: ''Jane Eyre'' is treated with kid gloves in movies and is under constant critical review by scholars and writers.

Bront�'s ''poor, obscure, plain and little'' heroine became a huge success almost overnight when the novel was published in 1847. It remained beloved and tirelessly reprinted from generation to generation, but the book didn't become fully enshrined in the literary canon until the 1970s, when the women's movement was reaching its peak. ''Jane Eyre'' became a treasure map of feminist interpretation, from Jane's childhood as a rebellious bookworm to her tortuously postponed marriage to Mr. Rochester, who had to lose his sight before he could have her -- some scholars see this as a symbol of castration.

In the 1980s ''Jane Eyre'' also became a required text for postcolonial literary theory. The novel was viewed as subliminally imperialist: a European woman's individuality and emancipation are nurtured at the expense of exploited third world characters, who remain invisible or dehumanized.

And that view was bolstered by the Jean Rhys novel ''Wide Sargasso Sea,'' which was published in 1966 and serves as a First Wives Club defense of the mad wife.

Ms. Rhys, who was born on the British island of Dominica and was half-Creole, rewrote the story from Bertha Rochester's point of view. Renamed Antoinette, Ms. Rhys's heroine is a delicate West Indian free spirit crushed and driven insane by colonial arrogance and paternalism. (The conceit of the governess as sinister interloper has a separate life of its own, from ''The Turn of the Screw'' to ''The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.'')

Film interpretations of ''Jane Eyre'' are not nearly as daring: the only aspect of the novel that is mildly reworked in this version is the depiction of Bertha. In the book Bront� describes her as a ''clothed hyena,'' and the earliest films (there was a silent version as early as 1910) paint her as a wild-eyed nut case. This ''Masterpiece Theater'' madwoman is beautiful, not beastly, though obviously deranged. She attacks her own brother with a knife, tries to burn Mr. Rochester in his bed and sneaks out of her room at night to tear Jane's bridal veil to shreds.

The casting of the leads is a bit disappointing. In the past Mr. Rochester has been played by some remarkable actors: Welles in 1944, George C. Scott in 1970 and William Hurt in a 1996 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli. (Then again, the haughty Blanche Ingram was played by the supermodel Elle Macpherson.)

Comments about this article? Email:
editor@
thedominican.net
Telephone:
1-703-861-9411
Fax:
1-202-589-7937

Volume No. 1 Issue No. 94
Chavez visits Dominica
History of Zouk
Carnival Fire
My wayward friend
The greenest island



  | Home | Welcome Message | Prior Issues | Feedback | Current Issue |
| Contact Us | Advertise | About Dominica | Privacy Policy |

� Copyright 2002 TheDominican.Net.
Designed by Caribbean Supplies -- All Rights reserved