The Attraction of Jane Eyre

I just came across this small piece on Jane Eyre by Caroline Moynihan who writes for MercatorNet, an online magazine that is based in Sydney, Australia. Moynihan discusses possible reasons why so many are attracted to this novel and the many movie adaptations. there have been at least 9 English movie adaptations.

To the left, it a new edition of the book with its cover done in the style of book 2 of the Twilight series, New Moon. I don't like this as a cover for Jane Eyre, but it's definitely a marketing ploy to attract teens to the novel.


Here's an interesting tidbit from the article:

There is one thing about Jane, however, that today’s audience might find challenging. She is a very moral young woman. Not in a conventional sense; she has her creator’s vehement dislike of hypocrisy, especially when it is used, as her Aunt Reed and the loathsome Mr Brocklehurst use it, to oppress vulnerable children; and she believes it is more moral, however it looks, to go to India as St John’s sister-co-worker than as a wife in a loveless marriage. When the man she does love, however, turns out to be married (though the victim of deceit) she rejects his proposal to run off to France and live together anyway, though her heart is breaking.

And that is because Jane is not only instinctively virtuous but because she is religious, a Christian (of an ill-defined stamp), on all important points the mouthpiece of Charlotte Bronte, the clergyman’s daughter and Victorian Englishwoman. She not only dreams and draws inspiration from nature, including the best in human nature (Helen Burns, Miss Temple), she consults her conscience, she prays and seeks God’s will in her struggles, she forgives the Reeds their ill-treatment of her. Her story ends with a paean of praise for the “good and faithful servant” of Christ, the man who is not accidentally called “St John” Rivers. But don’t expect to find that in the latest movie.

Now go read the rest of it!