Movie - Feminist Themes in Jane Eyre, Novel and Film...

An Analysis of Feminist Themes in Jane Eyre and its Film Versions Concern for womens rights dates from the Enlightenment, when the liberal, egalitarian, and reformist ideals of that period began to be extended from the bourgeoisie, peasants, and urban laborers to women as well. As did most interest groups of the time, feminists gained force and stability through its writing. The periods blossoming ideas concerning womens rights were fully set forth in Judith Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes in 1790. Dr. Allyson Dowta, author of Women and the Written Word, states that without Margaret Wollstoncraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, â€Å"the feminist movement would have remained a fledgling†¦show more content†¦In 1847, however, Emma’s reception was exceeded by the approbative uproar for Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece Jane Eyre. A devastating critique of Victorian assumptions about gender as well as social class, it was one of the most successful novels, both critically and commerci ally, of the Victorian era. (Peters, 219) Ironically, given its proto-feminist subject matter, Jane Eyre was published under a male pseudonym, Currer Bell, to ensure its acceptance by a public that disapproved of the idea of women writers. Bronte also tailored the novel itself, and therefore the message it carried, to fit the trends of the time. Jane Eyre draws a great deal of its stylistic inspiration from the gothic novels that were in vogue during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These books used elements of supernatural horror, remote, desolate landscapes, and crumbling ruins to create a sense of psychological suspense, mystery, and horror. While Jane Eyre is certainly not a horror novel, and while its social considerations make it far more than merely a gothic romance, Jane Eyre touches on these genres in order to deliver its social treatise in popular packaging. (Zonana, 612) In 1934, this poignant tale was brought to the big screen and since then the novel has been adapted into 3 more movies, the most successful being the 1944 rendition featuring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles. However the theme of the independent woman is hardly explored in JaneShow MoreRelated Mansfield Park, the novel, or Mansfield Park the film? Essay1842 Words   |  8 Pagesof Jane Austens books over the years; all six of her novels have been made into films or television dramas with varying degrees of success, from the classics of Persuasion, Pride amp; Prejudice and Sense amp; Sensibility, to the funny modern version of Emma in the form of Clueless. In this paper I want to show how director Patricia Rozema has made Austens novel Mansfield Park much more modern, accessible, and, as some claim, radical, by skipping parts of the story that would make the film version