Book/Film Club: Jane Eyre April-May

One thing that has always bothered me in watching film versions of Jane Eyre is how rarely the character of Jane (and lately this is true of Mr. Rochester as well) resembles Jane in the book.  In the book, Jane is a very little women and very plain.  I some times imagine that perhaps Bronte was thinking of herself--as she was reputed to be plain.   None of the women playing Jane are plain.  I suppose film makers think that pulling the hair back or using less makeup does the trick. In the recent Masterpiece Theatre production the man who played Rochester was quite good looking, and in the book Rochester is spoken of as though he might be more than plain-ugly in fact.

I suppose some people might ask why it matters.  But it does matter, since that's a very important point in the novel.  And I'll leave that discussion for later or for someone else. 

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf said the following of Bronte and Jane Eyre.  I wonder what the rest of you think; do you agree in her comparison between Bronte and Austen (see the full essay, available online, if you want to read it in full or see what she says about Austen).  I've always had my doubts, although I certainly think Woolf's essay is brilliant, the definitive essay on gender.

I (Woolf) opened it at chapter twelve and my eye was caught by the phrase ‘Anybody may blame me who likes’. What were they blaming Charlotte Brontë for? I wondered. And I read how Jane Eyre used to go up on to the roof when Mrs Fairfax was making jellies and looked over the fields at the distant view. And then she longed—and it was for this that they blamed her—that ‘then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs Fairfax, and what was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.

‘Who blames me? Many, no doubt, and I shall he called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. . . .

‘It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow–minded in their more privileged fellow–creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

‘When thus alone I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh. . . .’

Woolf stops quoting and writes: 

That is an awkward break, I thought. It is upsetting to come upon Grace Poole all of a sudden. The continuity is disturbed. One might say, I continued, laying the book down beside PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, that the woman who wrote those pages had more genius in her than Jane Austen; but if one reads them over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation, one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. Her books will be deformed and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?

Keeping this alive--April 1 coming soon!

I'll begin.  I love the novel, yet I like some parts more than others.  I see "Jane Eyre" in four parts:  Jane as child; Jane as governess; Jane living with the Rivers; and the very short ending, when Jane finds Mr. Rochester.

I much prefer the early part, Jane as child. I haven't thought about it a great deal but I suppose I should.  Why do I prefer the part where Jane goes through so much unhappiness.  And why do I find it so much more real than Jane meeting Mr. Rochester, finding love, riches?  I suppose, in one respect, it's because the second part falls so much into the fairy tale genre:  poor plain girl with good character meets rich man, gets married, lives happily ever after.  Of course, that doesn't happen until they both achieve redemption, he in particular. They must both suffer greatly before the rewards are granted:  very Christian.

Any thoughts out there on this.  For example, why did Jane have to suffer along with Rochester? After all, she was marrying Rochester for love.  She didn't know about the woman in the attic, yet she also goes through great suffering, and almost dies, before the Rivers family takes her in. 

Does anyone else out there read this like a Christian text?