Growing Old Does Not Equal Growing Up
As those who have read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte know, Jane’s character develops mostly in the first section of the book, before she meets Mr. Rochester. The first third of the book describes Jane’s journey through life at Reed Manor and Lowood, explains her faith and her childhood, and how she decided to be a teacher. Much of Jane’s character develops outside of Thornfield Hall. Bronte’s book is not a love story, but a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel. The book is about Jane, and how she grows from a frightened and disobedient child into an accomplished and well-bred young lady. However, the BBC miniseries changes the focus of the story from Jane to her love with Mr. Rochester. The miniseries glosses over Jane’s formative years, preferring to focus on her love for Mr. Rochester and his love for her. This causes the story to lose some of the depth and meaning that exists in the book, as well as takes away much of the grounding for Jane’s character.
Charlotte Bronte’s book told a powerful story of one young girl growing up and overcoming everything that stood in her way. Jane survives an abusive aunt and cousins and a school that did not allow her to develop herself fully. When Jane arrives at Thornfield, she is already an accomplished, self-assured, and well-bred woman, but she did not start out that way. In the book, readers see Jane grow into the wonderful young woman that she becomes, but the miniseries takes a small, frightened child, and morphs her into a well-bred lady within ten minutes. Without witnessing Jane’s struggles, her next actions often seem random. Since her personal development has been stripped away, the audience must take all of Jane’s actions at face value. They cannot understand how difficult her submission to Rochester, to anyone is. They cannot appreciate how much she has changed, and how those changes allowed her to fall in love. “’Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no pointed repartee: it was only a blunder’” (Bronte 168). In this passage, Jane is apologizing for insulting Mr. Rochester just before. This is extremely difficult for Jane, as she dislikes changing herself to fit society’s views, and she dislikes authority. In fact, she is quite cordial to him at the beginning, which directly contradicts all of her previous interactions with authority. Watchers of the miniseries will never understand this, for they have not experienced Jane’s struggles with authority before. They learn about her character, not as she is evolving, but after she has changed into a woman. They are robbed of the context for this love story.
The fact that the miniseries focusses on the love story at all is a miscalculation on its part. The most important part of the book is Jane, and her journey towards adulthood and maturity. It is a hard road, full of trials. After Reed Manor and Lowood, the only person she has ever loved is stripped from her, and she leaves Thornfield, her favorite place on Earth. Jane wanders over the moors, desolate and abandoned, forced to flee from the only person she ever loved. Jane’s life is hard and unforgiving, and she receives her happy ending, but her journey allowed her to receive it. Without going through everything she did, she could never have ended up in her happy ending, and removal of any part of her story does it a grave injustice. “I know entirely what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth” (Bronte 593). But Jane can only know what happiness feels like if she has felt sadness. Life must have both halves to be full, and no one can say that Jane Eyre has not lived a full life.
However, the love between Jane and Rochester is a major part of the book. Their love shapes both of their characters, and their actions. While Rochester, at first, grows into a worse man, in the hopes of protecting Jane, Jane only grows into a better woman. She believes in Rochester and wants to help him with Adele, and with his life in general. She pushes herself to learn more, to speak better, to fit in with the society he keeps, to become a woman ‘worthy of him’. While she does make some errors, forgiving his faults even when she really shouldn’t. Jane loves Rochester, deeply loves him, in the depths of her soul. They seem to be able to call out to each other across large distances, and their personalities are very similar. Jane and Rochester fit together perfectly. But their love does not define either of their stories. Love shapes their stories, but is not the crux of either. Love helps Rochester transition from a lost sinner into a reformed man, helps Jane transition from a naïve girl into a worldly woman. Their stories ought not be defined by their love, like all great stories. The miniseries does both characters a disservice by focusing on this rather than other aspects of their personalities.
While Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is rich in character development and backstory, the BBC miniseries fails on these counts. Jane’s character is not developed fully because the series skipped over her childhood, and all the struggles that were set up in that portion of the book are incomprehensible to the viewer. Jane does not get the chance to develop fully with the most interesting parts of her character arc cut out. Both Rochester and Jane’s characters are glossed over in order to develop their love story, which the series treats as the paramount topic of the story. However, Jane Eyre is not, and should never be, a love story. It is a story of growth, of development, and it just so happens that two people fall in love in it.
Works Cited
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004. Print.
Jane Eyre. BBC, 2006. DVD.