Free Republic

This is my fifth adaptation of Jane Eyre. The others are the 1943 movie with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, 1970 movie with George C. Scott and Susannah York, 1983 with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clark, and 2006 with Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson. The version starts by not following the chronology of the novel. The first image is Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre running from Thornfield Hall. Of course, anyone has read the novel knows why she is fleeing. She eventually finds refuge at the Rivers’ home. There is stunning scenery in this part as the filming was done...

The classic status of ‘Jane Eyre’ can obscure just how shocking its radical ideas were at the time. No one would be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth on April 21 were it not for her first and most famous novel, Jane Eyre, which has never been out of print since it was published in 1847 and is now a cornerstone of our literary culture. It’s easy to see how it got there. Brontë’s skilful telling of a Cinderella love story between a poor plain governess and her surly master has an irresistible power and many elements of...

It is hardly the most flattering of likenesses, but a pencil sketch of a woman's head has been identified as a rare self-portrait by Charlotte Brontë. It dates from 1843, four years before she was to publish Jane Eyre, one of English literature's great masterpieces, and when she was suffering the acute agony of unrequited love. The discovery has been made by the acclaimed literary biographer, Claire Harman, who describes it as 'massively significant' as there are only two other known lifetime portraits.

You're supposed to be happy at your wedding, even though some people aren't. At the same time, it's still considered selfish and immature to run away and abandon the caterers if you're distraught -- even though lots of people probably want to. Part of the culture says the conventional, social bits of weddings don't matter, and part of the culture says they do. Part of the culture says weddings are about true love, and part of the culture says they're about Cuisinarts. It's been hard, to avoid learning that she and her husband had planned to have 28 attendants and...