Word: thornfield
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Jane Eyre, the novel, was always faintly absurd and decidedly lurid. But to a story bordering on trash, Charlotte Bronte brought storytelling bordering on genius. Told by uncoy, buffeted, orphanage-bred Jane herself-who comes as governess to Thornfield Hall, where the Byronic Mr. Rochester has a mad wife hidden away-Jane Eyre advances, in a rush of words, with a beat of real emotion...
...Heir Huntington Hartford's stage adaptation is Jane Eyre virtually without Jane, and chunks of the story with no hint of the storytelling. Everything stagiest about the book-the gruffly romantic hero, the pasteboard aristocrats, the burning of Thornfield, the blinding of Rochester-has been transferred to the stage; what results, not unnaturally, suggests the stage of 1870. Everything personally intense and imaginative has vanished; something crucial-the time element that shapes crises and aids credibility-has been destroyed. For an act, as the emotional furniture is set in place in Designer Ben Edwards' gloomy, fan-vaulted hall...
...self-righteousness. Miss Bronte was indeed indignant, and once described her novel as an attempt "to pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee." In true Dickens' fashion, she wrote about insufferable aunts, cruel schoolmasters, and orphans' asylums, and made them all as black as the corridors of Thornfield. But she added to her novel a vivid sense of melodrama, replete with thunderstorms, dark castles, and voices drifting across the moor...
...contrast to Edward's revelation, Miss Bronte chose to unravel Jane's character step by step, following her growth from a mistreated Chile to governess of Thornfield. Jane Eyre's early years provide the film with its best opportunity to depict the author's social philosophy, and the scenes of the orphanage contain both excellent photography and acting. Joan Fountain plays the mature Jane Eyre with all the simplicity and firm sense of right and wrong that Miss Bronte intended...