Articles : Jane`s Progress in Three Film Adaptations of Jane Eyre

This study analyzes three film adaptations of Charlotte Bronte¨`s Jane Eyre-Robert Stevenson`s Jane Eyre (1941), Delbert Mann`s Jane Eyre (1971), and Franco Zeffirelli`s Jane Eyre (1996) - to show how the development in gender discourses has figured in shaping the literary text`s reception in popular culture. Especially, this study looks into how Jane`s rise in assertive powers-visual and narrative-becomes reinforced or subverted, as Bronte¨`s text is adapted to new social conditions and medium. Stevenson`s style of film noir emphasizes Jane`s destituteness and gives her only refuge in the domestic sphere, under the rule of a patriarchal figure. The grammar of the Hollywood narrative serves to frame Jane`s image and voice into one of passivity, while it is Rochester who becomes the subject of the narrative and camera`s gaze. Mann focuses on the equality of Jane and Rochester`s relationship, marked especially in Jane`s dialogic power, which serves to liberate her from the confinement in cinematic image. However, the spectator cannot experience the dynamics involved in the process of rising to verbal and visual authority as their equality is preconditioned from the beginning. Finally, Zeffirelli concentrates on visually rendering Bronte¨`s dynamics of Jane`s rising to narrative and visual power. The audience participates in the constructing and de-constructing of the female as image as they are led through processes of multiple identifications, experiencing not only Jane and other female characters` state of inhibition but also Rochester`s. In the end, the study of the film adaptations of Jane Eyre enables us to identify how our own perceptions of reality have been conditioned by patriarchy`s desires and to participate in alternative ways for women to assert their own perceptions.