Essay: What Hollywood Doesn’t Get About Jane Eyre

Over the years, there have many film versions of Charlotte Brontë’s marvelous novel about an orphaned girl struggling to find happiness in Victorian England’s rigid society. Those of us who love this story have suffered through one inadequate version after another: some get the casting of at least one of the actors right, then fail with the other (usually, one of them is too pretty, and it isn’t always Jane!); some get the casting just right for the leads, but then fail for everyone else (why, oh why, is Blanche Ingram always blond?); some give us wonderful characters, but butcher Charlotte’s language; and finally, not one of them has managed, even the miniseries versions, to understand the need for most of the plot.

And so I suffer. I love this book. If someone wants to send me an “I <heart> Jane Eyre” t-shirt, I’ll wear it proudly. I have…