Sally Cookson’s stylish production shows that Jane Eyre is a free human being with an independent will.
Editor’s note: Madeleine Kearns writes a weekly column noting peculiar aspects of cultural, artistic, and natural marvels.
E very English major is familiar with Freudian, Marxist, feminist, and “queer” readings, contorting and cheapening even the most potent love story into a petty power grab. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, about a young woman who falls in love with her employer, is, like all great novels, susceptible to being hijacked by monomaniacal agenda-pushers.
Commendably, Sally Cookson’s 2015 adaptation for the National Theatre in coproduction with the Bristol Old Vic avoids this nasty habit. Cookson’s Jane Eyre, which was made available for online streaming last week in response to theatre closures during the coronavirus shutdowns, was modern in staging only: “devised by the Company,” who showed up to rehearsal with copies of the original book rather than the script. The cast, wisely, stuck closely to Brontë’s text.
Though Madeleine Worrall’s performance as Jane Eyre is excellent, both forceful and tender, she was (dare I say) 20 years too old for the part. This mightn’t have mattered if Felix Hayes as Mr. Rochester, hadn’t been ten years too young for his. In the book, Jane’s idolization of Rochester is one of a younger woman infatuated with the “original, vigorous, expanded mind” of a significantly older, more worldly man.
Though Cookson’s casting threw off that dynamic, Worrall’s depiction of the famous betrothal scene may be the best I’ve ever seen. Other actresses, such as Ruth Wilson in the BBC series and Mia Wasikowska in the 2011 film version, have delivered their lines in that scene in a tearful, slightly pathetic way. But as Worrall’s Jane rebukes Rochester for his cruelty, her face flushes with anger:
Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; — it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!
The rest of the ensemble, especially Laura Elphinstone, give strong performances. This is particularly important with regards to Jane’s interior monologue (the novel is, after all, an autobiography). The haunting presence of a singer — a rich mezzo-soprano — is used in place of Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s deranged wife, whom he keeps in the attic.
In the 1970s, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar wrote a comprehensive guide to feminist literary criticism called “The Madwoman in the Attic.” There they argued that Mrs. Rochester was Jane’s alter ego. Jane was able to escape patriarchal oppression only through “flight,” “starvation” (i.e., death), or “a third, more terrifying, alternative: escape through madness.” The authors note that her quest is similar to Christian’s in The Pilgrim’s Progress but claim that it is without “the devout substance.” Ironically, this feminist interpretation is merely the inverse of that of Brontë’s earliest critics. “Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of unregenerate and undisciplined spirit,” wrote Elizabeth Rigby in The Quarterly Review in 1848. “She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature — the sin of pride.”
Both interpretations fundamentally miss the point. Charlotte Brontë, the daughter of a clergyman, was clear about her intentions. “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last,” she wrote in her preface to the second edition, dedicated to her friend, William Thackery. “Appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.”
In other words, Jane Eyre resists predestination in all its forms: Calvinist, feminist, Marxist, etc. Jane is a character constantly growing in faith. She is influenced by the spirituality of her school friend Helen Burns, whom she asks, “What is God? Where is God?” She is forgiving of her cruel and undeserving aunt. She leaves Rochester not because she wants to but because it is the right thing to do — and reflects that she could not “in those days, see God for His creature,” that she had idolized him, which was not only wrong but self-sabotaging. It’s only when Rochester is maimed and blinded (and what better symbol for humility and spiritual awakening?) that she is able to be with him.
The success of Cookson’s stylish production can be measured in the extent to which it communicates that Jane Eyre, rather than being ideological, is a story about a woman, “a free human being with an independent will,” who falls in love, but — more important — who chooses to love and, in doing so, becomes, in some mysterious way, herself.