Abstract of the article and why it matters
Justifying a Jane Eyre rewrite is not an easy task. The original Jane Eyre was quite a feminist for her day. In an age when beauty and wealth were considered the only essential characteristics of a woman, Jane is a plain and poor woman, who still lives an inspiring life. Reimagining her with modern sensibilities allows us to be more inspired by her story.
This exercise is to recreate Jane Eyre according to modern sensibilities and understand what components would we need to address to keep her undefeated in today’s context.
Original book short synopsis
Jane Eyre is an orphan raised by a mean aunt, who soon sends her to a very harsh boarding school. There, she manages to befriend a student and a teacher, but the student, Helen Burns, dies. Jane grows up to become a teacher at that same school. Dissatisfied with life, she applies to become a governess and gets a position at Thornfield Hall.
The owner of Thornfield is a brooding, sarcastic man named Edward Rochester who finds Jane his intellectual equal. Jane’s protégé, Adele Varens, might be Rochester’s illegitimate daughter even though he isn’t sure. Jane’s mean aunt dies and informs her of an uncle who has been looking to get in touch with Jane. After some questionable antics, including pretending to be engaged to another woman named Blanche Ingram, Rochester proposes to Jane, who accepts.
Their wedding is interrupted by the awful discovery that Rochester is already married. His wife, Bertha Mason, lives at Thornfield. She is a mentally ill lunatic, who has caused several violent accidents at Thornfield. Rochester’s family tricked him into the marriage and he is living a nightmare. He desperately pleads to Jane to not leave and stay with him. But being his mistress is unacceptable to Jane and she does leave.
Jane then inherits independent wealth from her long-lost uncle, rejects a potential suitor named St. John Rivers, and returns to Thornfield. But Thornfield is in ruins since Bertha burned down the place and committed suicide. Rochester is blinded and maimed while trying to save his wife and now lives at his other house, Ferndean Manor. Jane still loves him and marries him. Over time he regains some vision.
Changes made to the story and their reasoning
If you haven’t already read my critiques of Jane Eyre in my other articles on Jane Eyre’s main theme and Deus ex machina, I request you to do so now to give you a head start. Here is a list of changes I made in the story and my justification for each:
- The primary change I made is that Jane is a stronger feminist than she already was in the book. Though the book was radically feminist for its day, to modern sensibilities, Edward Rochester got away with tremendous transgressions. For the story to appeal to a modern reader, Rochester needed to become a better person before he could deserve her. In the original, his blindness served to bring him down a few notches. But that just served to break his haughtiness while making Jane’s life harder. What Jane deserves is a husband who isn’t thoughtless, hence the updated climax. To this end, I blatantly ignored some Victorian standards. Jane accepts the position of being a secretary to a landowner. There was no such position back in the day. And a woman could not hold it anyway. Worse, by doing so, Jane steps down from the role of a governess, who is a fringe gentlewoman, to an outright servant. But I wanted to reimagine Jane as a modern, self-respecting woman. This wasn’t really an option available to women back then, so much so that Brontë had to publish her book, Jane Eyre, under a pseudonym “Currer Bell”, to hide the fact that she was a woman.
- I did not repeat Jane’s Gateshead Hall and Lowood Institution experiences in the story to shorten the story. They are formative for Jane, and I took them mostly as a given for my story. I made two exceptions – details about the aunt and Helen’s fate. I change Helen’s fate to retain her as a foil for Jane.
- In Thornfield, I got rid of the illegitimate daughter of Edward Rochester, Adele Varens. Instead, I installed the two siblings as his niece and nephew. In the original, apart from being a protégé for Jane, Adele served three purposes: (a) bringing Jane to Thornsfield, (b) having Rochester announce his affair with Céline, and (c) allowing Jane to give him hope of unconditional love. I arranged for Jane to arrive as governess and had Rochester confess his affair with Céline based on a separate incident. I have discussed the issue and my take on unconditional love in this other article.
- To get rid of the Deus ex machina of the death of Bertha, I conveniently killed her off before Jane met Rochester. I had Rochester feel just as great a conflict after the death of his wife as during her lifetime. Bertha living is, at least to me, a minor impediment to the story if the resolution is to pull a Deus ex machina.
- I changed some of the sequences of events and recreated some events. For instance, because I did not give details about the aunt, Jane leaves Thornfield for a month because of her work instead of leaving for the death of the aunt.
- I created a foil for both Jane’s and Rochester’s characters. In the original, they both lacked romantic alternatives. Jane never found another man who could appreciate her for her virtues. And Rochester never found another smart woman who could keep his interest. That is the reason for reimagining the characters of St. John Rivers and Helen Burns.
- I changed the issue of inheritance of Edward Rochester. His bitterness towards his father in the original for not wanting to split his estate was confusing to me. I checked the inheritance laws of Britain for the Victorian times and primogeniture was a perfectly acceptable way of passing on inheritance. It is also unlikely that his father hid his intention of using primogeniture succession for his estate for twenty years. If Edward knew that his father is not going to split the estate, he should have been making plans of sustaining himself on his own. The deer in headlights plea does not work in this case.
- The original book was published in 1847. Therefore, I took advantage of England’s introduction of income tax laws in the 1840s to create the reason why Rochester needs a secretary and why Jane figures out Rochester’s past. I did take slight creative license by assuming that records for up to ten years prior were considered relevant back then as they are now.
References
- Article analyzing the main theme of Jane Eyre
- Article analyzing the need for Deus ex machina
- Rewrite of Jane Eyre
For comments or questions on this article, please email nayana@tobeandwhattobe.com
Article image courtesy: Unknown author – wikisource:Page:Jane Eyre (1st edition), Volume 1.djvu/7, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3298382
