A representation of Jane Eyre at a Minor Theater would no doubt be a rather afflicting spectacle to the author of that work. I suppose all would be wofully exaggerated and painfully vulgarized by the actors and actresses on such a stage. What—I cannot help asking myself—would they make of Mr. Rochester? And the picture my fancy conjures up by way of reply is a somewhat humiliating one. What would they make of Jane Eyre? I see something very pert and very affected as an answer to that query.
—Charlotte Brontë (as Currer Bell) to W. S. Williams, February 5, 18481
Just like it had during my isolated, anxious college days, the prospect of holing up with a small screen and a large pair of headphones promised relief and comfort in this time of trial. There are more than thirty TV, film, radio, and stage adaptations (including a seriously misguided Broadway musical) of Jane Eyre, and around a dozen of Wuthering Heights. There’s at least one Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and an Agnes Grey. And I have watched nearly all of them. Nobody has gotten to Shirley or Villette yet—I’m not sure which is more daunting, the enlivening of Caroline Helstone or the defrosting of Lucy Snowe (more on her later). I recently saw a Bristol Old Vic production of Jane Eyre, directed by Sally Cookson, which was filmed on stage and broadcast to movie theaters around the world. It managed to incorporate a variety of contemporary music on a bare bones stage, making no effort to convey the lushness of the book’s setting and intent instead on capturing the story’s energy. Everything about it was lean, though Jane and Rochester had a definite spark, and most of the actors played multiple roles (except for Madeleine Worrall as Jane). It demanded versatility and nuance from the entire cast, and its deconstructed feel was a stark contrast to the approach most stage and film adaptations take.
The first theatrical version of Jane Eyre was staged during Charlotte’s lifetime; W. S. Williams wrote to her to ask if she’d like to come to London for it, and while she admitted she’d like to go, she declined (as much from dread at the prospect of seeing Mr. Rochester brought to life imperfectly as to keep her anonymity intact, since neither Smith nor Williams knew Currer Bell’s true identity at that point). She encouraged Williams to attend so he could report back to her, but confessed her concerns that he would find it terrible: “One can endure being disgusted with one’s own work, but that a friend should share the repugnance is unpleasant.”2 She, like everyone who loves Jane Eyre, doubted that any theater company would be able to do justice to Rochester’s and Jane’s peculiarities. According to Patsy Stoneman, who rounded up reviews and scripts from every known stage production to write Jane Eyre on Stage, this particular version had the following “distinctive features”: Brocklehurst was played as comedic relief, Rochester is portrayed as a philanthropist who takes Jane in when she is thrown out of Lowood, John Reed plots to marry Jane, and it is Jane who insists that Rochester save his wife from the fire and then refuses to marry him “out of respect.”3 Evidently, Charlotte was quite right to stay away from this unrecognizable farce.
Aside from improbable plot revision or the addition of cheesy music, a ham actor is the worst thing that can happen to Edward Fairfax Rochester. He needs to be funny but also glowering, tightly wound but also relaxed in his sarcasm, affectionate but clearly emotionally damaged. Striking, but unhandsome at first. One of the earliest versions featured Colin Clive, from the Frankenstein movies, and the fabulously blonde and beautiful Virginia Bruce. It is ludicrous. The Orson Welles version? By the time he finished chewing up the scenery you may have forgotten Jane entirely. Joan Fontaine is amazing at being Joan Fontaine, but when it comes to plain, moral, upright Jane, she’s on the wrong planet.
In the 1970s, the BBC made a version starring George C. Scott and Susannah York. I can’t account for who thought casting General Patton was a good idea, nor for the ridiculous oversized dimensions of Mrs. Fairfax’s bonnet, but they evidently forgot to tell Scott that Rochester was British. He resolutely retains his American accent and is thus impossible to take seriously. York has some of Jane’s solemnity but is also blonde, which is as antithetical to Jane Eyre as the white carriage and purple cushions Rochester attempts to foist upon her.
Do not talk to me about Timothy Dalton. Never speak of Timothy Dalton or the 1983 crime against literature in which he participated. Ever. Mr. Rochester cannot be pretty or delicate or posh. He can’t. Everyone else in every other pre-Victorian screen adaptation can, if you like, but not him. Zelah Clarke, the Jane who suffered his Rochester impersonation, was actually quite good.
I’m told people feel strongly about the Charlotte Gainsbourg version, which came out in 1996. Franco Zeffirelli’s cinematography is beautiful, the adaptation is clean and precise, but Gainsbourg is up against William Hurt’s terrible accent and his inappropriately blond hair. In their proposal scene? He goes in for the pivotal romantic encounter of my young life and winds up planting a kiss somewhere to the left of her actual mouth while she grimaces. He missed her mouth! I want to be transported by an otherworldly passion. Not mired in imprecise face rubbing and uncomfortable close-talking.
Ciaran Hinds attempted Rochester in 1997, opposite Samantha Morton. Hinds, aka the impeccable Captain Wentworth from 1995’s Persuasion, has a perfect voice, but they gave him a horrendous mustache, in flagrant defiance of Charlotte’s actual character description. Morton, whom you may remember from In America or Minority Report, has the clear, brilliant eyes you want in a competent Jane, though I think her demeanor too polished—she’s too refined to feel as uncomfortable as Jane must feel around people who’ve been bred amidst expensive things.
For my money there are only two adaptations worth seeing: the Cary Joji Fukunaga film and the Susanna White miniseries. I love them. Even when I’m not miserable, I watch them as often as I reread the books. When I am laid low by the perfidy of base humanity, I watch them back-to-back, and with occasional rewinding for the most important scenes.
Fukunaga’s Jane is Mia Wasikowska, alongside Michael Fassbender as Rochester. Visually, the film is subtle and exquisitely textured. There are lace patterns everywhere—in curtains, carriage seats, veils, drapery, embroidery. There’s a visual cue of Jane lacing and unlacing, dressing and undressing. When the Lowood teachers strip her finely made Gateshead dress away, when she later tears off her wedding gown, the motion is reminiscent, the implication—“I was never worthy of this in the first place”—identical. From stone masonry to cravat knots, this film is made out of its details.
In moments, it feels like Fukunaga was trying to sprinkle a little modern psychology on Miss Eyre and her Edward. For the first time in cinematic rendering, we see the effects of child abuse and neglect on a young woman who cannot see the love waiting before her, who cannot access the passion we are repeatedly told that she has (and that we finally see in her artwork—none of the other productions featured her art so clearly) or the anger she is entitled to. The one facet Wasikowska doesn’t really represent is Jane’s mischievous streak, but this adaptation feels so serious, there’s not really a place for her levity.
Moira Buffini’s screenplay cleverly takes the novel’s three parts and arranges them for suspense rather than strict linear fidelity. We meet Jane when she is wandering the moors after fleeing from Thornfield, and get the rest through flashbacks. Wasikowska, though too ethereally pretty for plainness, makes her naïveté totally believable in the face of Rochester’s obvious schemes. Fassbender is… well, Fassbender is next to perfect. That jaw. That gravelly voice. Those eyes. Their chemistry is as intense as my fevered adolescent brain could have wished. The casting of Jamie Bell, despite the fact that he’s wearing Arthur Bell Nicholls’s muttonchops, even makes St. John Rivers hard to resist.
In choosing what to cut and what to revise, Buffini chose to interpret, rather than adapt. She trimmed out unnecessary Reed and Rivers scenes, nearly erased Lowood, and, worst of all, truncated Jane and Rochester’s reconciliation, one of the most adorable scenes in literature. This is what’s supposed to happen:
When Jane Eyre returns to Rochester, she arrives without telling him she’s coming. As she approaches Ferndean, his manor house, the door opens and Edward steps outside. The ruin of Thornfield has left him maimed—he is blind and his right hand has been amputated. Their first meeting since the day they were supposed to be married, more than a year ago, and Jane Eyre seizes the opportunity to play “Guess Who” with the wounded love of her life. Her first act upon being reunited with him is to ask for a snack and then start fixing his hair. Jane’s easy, teasing bedside manner is so delightful, her confidence even more charming when we remember the timid, mistreated girl she was. She keeps things firmly in the realm of the practical, dismissing his morbid talk of ghosts and loneliness by taunting him with the mystery of where she has been and who she has stayed with.
Jane draws out his jealousy, evading his questions, until at last she tells him all about the Rivers family, admits that St. John proposed to her, and confesses that the only wife she wants to be is Rochester’s. Relieved and grateful, Rochester confesses that a few nights previously he’d called out to her, at the same moment that she heard “Jane, Jane, Jane,” borne on the wind, and actually heard her reply, “I am coming, wait for me”! Then they embrace and we must remember to hydrate ourselves.
But in the Fukunaga film, instead of jollying Rochester out of his sadness for a few moments, Jane walks straight up to him. When he asks if he is dreaming, she simply says, “Awaken, then.” And that’s it. Fade to black. It leaves one feeling like Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff holding up a “Really?!” sign. Buffini and Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre is as beautiful and airy as a snowflake, but it is a little bloodless.
The adaptation that got the most repeat viewings during my Great Mourning of 2012 is the five-hour BBC production from 2006, starring Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens. I feel more confident in saying Susanna White’s directorial choices are the work of a fan, not an interpreter. Jane Eyre’s dark and broody buildings are appropriately dark and broody, with repeated accents of red—Gateshead’s red room has crimson hangings and wallpaper, a red sash flutters from Bertha Rochester’s tower window, Jane ties a red kerchief at her throat. That last piece is actually a literal representation of something Rochester says to Jane when he’s likening her to a gray bird—that there are red feathers hiding under that drab exterior. Screenwriter Sandy Welch incorporated more dialogue directly drawn from the book than any other version (which makes the proposal the most stirring), and she also uses flashbacks to return us to Thornfield after Jane has fled, boosting the momentum of that dreary Millcote section. And because White had five hours to play with, her adaptation is more faithful than any other; nearly every scene in the novel is represented somehow, including a fully fledged reunion and a really compelling, literarily important scene where Rochester tries to persuade Jane to stay at Thornfield by gently reclining her onto his bed. In a novel with very little acknowledgment of physical contact, you become Very Aware that your hero has finally gotten a hand on your heroine’s collarbone amid actual honest-to-God kissing.
Stephens is my favorite Rochester because he’s more annoyed at the world than genuinely forbidding, and he pulls off the sarcasm the best. Wilson’s Jane has unusual features and the right sort of bright, broad-set eyes for Rochester to find so striking. She performs all of Jane’s uncertainty, her strong opinions, and her more selfish feelings, but quietly, with introspective thoughtfulness. I want to live in this version. I know it sounds crazy but hear me out. I’ll be Adele, I’ll be Leah the maid, I’ll be one of the Rivers sisters and come for an extended visit, just please, let me in.
Wuthering Heights has been adapted for film, TV, radio, and stage, too. And the usual suspects turn up to do scene-chewing turns as Heathcliff—Laurence Olivier (entirely too civilized), Charlton Heston (too gruff), Richard Burton (too Shakespearean), Ian McShane (too macho), Robert Cavanah (too gentle), Mike Vogel (too pretty), and Timothy Dalton again (are you kidding me?).
A 2011 adaptation ventured forth James Howson, a black actor from Yorkshire, as Heathcliff—justified by the fact that Heathcliff’s looks are sometimes referred to as dark or compared to a gypsy in the novel. In one of Charlotte’s letters she even calls him “black,” but whether that was physical description or problematic characterization is up for debate. I think there is plenty to be gained by casting diversely across race, gender, and type in this day and age. I mean, Hamilton.
The lineup of Cathys is also populated with marquee favorites: Juliet Binoche is the biggest name. She seems impossibly well behaved for a time-honored literary hoyden, especially opposite Ralph Fiennes, who is compelling, but way too elegant and aquiline for a ne’er-do-well of unknown parentage. Even his Voldemort was elegant—Heathcliff needs the ruffian factor turned up to eleven. In the Olivier adaptation, Merle Oberon’s arched manner matches Olivier’s sleek demeanor, and everyone overacts all over the place; they also brought in a much larger supporting cast than the book calls for. I don’t know how you justify a choice like that when the book’s world consists of eight people—it undermines the sense of inescapable insularity to populate it with a ballroom full of strangers. Angela Scoular and her perfect 1970s hair took a turn; Orla Brady showed Cathy’s elegance, if not her wildness. In case you wondered what Wuthering Heights would look like if cross-pollinated with The OC, in 2003 Erika Christensen gave us a glimpse into a modern surfer adaptation. But nobody succeeded in making Cathy seem like a human being, instead of a vehicle for every teenager’s romantic desperation, until the BBC knocked it out of the park in 2009.
Directed by Coky Giedroyc and adapted by Peter Bowker, this Wuthering Heights is the only one that has managed to produce a proper Heathcliff: Tom Hardy, whose pout makes me understand what all the fuss is about. He and his Cathy, Charlotte Riley, are so made for one another they got married in real life.* Also, they have a love scene out on the moors, which feels so appropriate and necessary I’m shocked most other adaptations don’t add it. Edgar Linton is played without spine or blood by Andrew Lincoln; for once, sticking by Heathcliff is a total no-brainer, regardless of how well furnished the Linton parlor is. The broader time span of the miniseries again allows the creators to temper the mania of Wuthering Heights by unfolding it gradually, interspersed with luscious location shots (cramming all that drama into under two hours never fails to make it seem ludicrous). Years seem to pass in the interval between Heathcliff’s storming out and Heathcliff’s storming back, between commencing his abuse of Hareton and deciding to force young Catherine to marry sickly Linton. It usually feels like minutes. I still loathe the story and everyone in it, but this version is very satisfying.
Watching all these adaptations brings up lots of big-picture questions about adaptation and reinterpretation. Why, with all the world’s novels and plays and short stories, do Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights keep turning up in remakes, in French, in Italian, in Japanese? Filmmakers and moviegoers seem fixated on these stories, their universal appeal fueled by the ferocity of the emotions they contain. Everybody loves passion. Everybody loves fate and its cruel mysteries. Everybody loves a woman ahead of her time who resists society’s constrictions. Everybody loves a redemption story, whether it comes to our hero directly or unfolds in the next generation. Everybody loves an underdog—the plain governess who gets the man of her dreams and her self-respect, the orphan boy striving for legitimacy and revenge. People seem very fond of crinolines, corsets, and cravats, too, regardless of their historical accuracy.
And for all the critics who grumbled that none of the Bells’ men or women could really exist anywhere (despite how often they also praised the Brontës’ character development), modern audiences continue to relate to the Heathcliffs and Rochesters, Janes and Cathys. We recognize them instinctively as facets of ourselves, even if they’re facets we only wish we had. Every decade has its own style to impose upon these imperfect templates—there’s something for every palate. The purists want to see their stories rendered absolutely, painstakingly correctly. The revisionists want a modern interpretation that smooths over the implausible leaps in the original source material or breathes fresh air into the claustrophobic hallways. Which one of these counts as “faithful”? The one that tries to render Charlotte’s vision exactly, or the one that tries to re-create the sensation her original readers might have felt? What would Charlotte have thought of the racy bedroom scene between Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson? (Probably a bit more appreciation than Jane Austen might have felt for Colin Firth’s infamous Pride and Prejudice pond scene.)
Since I know no adaptation will actually bring my vision to life, I also have a soft spot for iterations that throw conventionality out the window and go for whimsy. When I was in high school, my dad introduced me to a series by Jasper Fforde that begins with The Eyre Affair, set in an alternate universe where Shakespeare is a religion and people see Richard III the way my friends and I used to dress up for the midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fforde’s protagonist, Thursday Next, is a literary detective tasked with solving crimes, usually involving forgery and stolen manuscripts; The Eyre Affair requires her to pursue a criminal mastermind inside Jane Eyre. In Thursday’s world, Jane Eyre ends with Jane sailing off to India with St. John, and Rochester surviving unscathed, but miserable. Thursday fixes it by starting a fire at Thornfield and calling to Jane outside her window (finally, a plausible explanation for that moment!).
These books bring my oldest literary acquaintances to life with exciting new personalities that are both true to their on-the-page identities and allowed to blossom in unexpected ways. Over the course of the series, Miss Havisham conducts anger management group therapy for the residents of Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle takes in ironing, and Marianne Dashwood’s always trying to bum cigarettes. Fforde intuitively understands the way books come alive when you love them: What wouldn’t I give to be able to burrow all the way into Jane Eyre and pay rent at the little Millcote inn the way Thursday does in The Eyre Affair.
But since Thursday’s book-jumping technology wasn’t available, I could only take solace in watching one Brontë adaptation after another while the takeout containers piled up on my kitchen counter. Reading the books, I have to feel Jane’s and Rochester’s and Cathy’s and Heathcliff’s feelings. Watching the films, I get to watch other people having all the feelings. It takes the weight off my shoulders, moves the drama outside of my head and onto a screen, so I can get some distance.
Now that I had watched Jane Eyre three times in twenty-four hours, I could see the real moral of the story again: when the object of Jane’s affection turned out to have a mad wife in the attic (as good a metaphor for unwieldy emotional baggage as any), Jane packed up and left. She didn’t bargain, she didn’t explain, she didn’t compromise. She had to become independent and prove her self-worth, Rochester had to become penitent (and ditch the mad wife and lose a hand and an eye), and only then could they be together.
What I’d tried to do with Eric was skip straight to the tearful, teasing reunion without allowing him to do whatever symbolic burning his house down he needed to do to start fresh. Assuming he even wanted to start again, and hadn’t just been succumbing to the peer pressure of my enthusiasm. In short, I twisted the gospel of Brontë into something warped and selfish, and this current misery was the price I had to pay, along with my Chinese takeout tab. I would probably die alone, with only Gracie the Fifth by my side. Unless… perhaps… maybe… it didn’t have to be as miserable as all that. I got up, disposed of all the Styrofoam containers that had once held my feelings in the form of steamed dumplings and chicken with broccoli, washed my face, and opened the curtains. My life needed a new script.
It was time for Villette.