tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post6726255496312539736..comments2024-03-18T08:38:01.678+00:00Comments on The Life And Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: Reader, I Adapted HimUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-86312357390639743972006-10-25T16:31:00.000+01:002006-10-25T16:31:00.000+01:00I think that the use of telepathy to get Jane back...<i>I think that the use of telepathy to get Jane back to Thornfield is precisely a "science fiction" device, the same way that Frankstien is a science fiction novel.</i><br /><br />Huh. I'd be more inclined to call it a fantastic device, especially given how carefully steeped <i>Jane Eyre</i> (and, indeed, all of the Brontes' fiction) is in the gothic tradition. You do, however, make a good point about the scientist friend. I had wondered why the mini was paying him so much attention, and your theory makes a great deal of sense.<br /><br />You're obviously right that the Lowood segment is vital to our understanding of the development of Jane's religious philosophy, and clearly I'm going too far when I say that it ought to be cut out entirely. That said, it simply isn't very good. Charlotte's stated objective keeps getting trampled by her past, and it is at this point in particular that JE stops being a novel about Jane and starts being one about Charlotte. If you're going to get rid of the religious aspects of the novel as the miniseries did, there's really no justification for staying in Lowood a second longer than you need to.<br /><br /><i>Which implies that the adaptor thinks that Lowood was important to Jane's psychology, if only to react against it.</i><br /><br />Which again brings us to the mini's repositioning of the story as a fable about an orphan finding a family. Jane is mistreated first by her aunt and later in her school, and she creates idealized versions of both environments in which both she and others can be spared that mistreatment.<br /><br />You know, if you hadn't said anything, I never would have guessed that you hadn't seen <i>Torchwood</i> yet - your guesses are hitting pretty close to the mark.Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-23357014061555276012006-10-25T16:26:00.000+01:002006-10-25T16:26:00.000+01:00At least you British folk still read. Over here i...At least you British folk still read. Over here in the colonies, if it doesn't have explosions and sex, we don't care.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-88946619167673112722006-10-25T11:45:00.000+01:002006-10-25T11:45:00.000+01:00Nick: Would you believe it is half-tem.
Phil: I p...Nick: Would you believe it is half-tem.<br /><br />Phil: I pressed "publish" when I meant to press "draft", and didn't want to subject you to too many misplaced apostrophe's.<br /><br />Abigail: You may have a point about St. John.<br /><br />I think that the use of telepathy to get Jane back to Thornfield is <I>precisely</I> a "science fiction" device, the same way that <I>Frankstien</I> is a science fiction novel. The TV version went out of it's way to show us a scientist saying he believed in thought transferance between twins, I forget whether that is in the book. <br /><br />Of course, you could regard this as a classic example of the intervention of "plot" -- the author pretty much screams at the character "NO! You don't become a missionary, you go back and marry Rochester."<br /><br />I think that you are wrong about the Lowood section: I think that it is very important that we see Jane at different ages, and that she experiences different kinds of Christianity during the story. And I think that it is important in what is mostly a story about a teenager that we have seen her mind coming into being during her childhood. (The spoilsport who edited the Penguin edition points out that she was 10 when she went to Lowood, stayed there eight years, and was one year with Rochester and one year more as a school teacher. So how could she possibly have inherited money, much less signed it away?) <br /><br />Interestingly, when Adelle is being sent off to boarding school and again when Jane is setting up the village school for Rivers, the BBC has her mention that she doesn't approve of schools where they hit children and don't feed them properly. The scene in her village school shows her as a very 20th century primary school teacher, where in fact she would presumably have been doing Victorian style rote-learning. Which implies that the adaptor thinks that Lowood was important to Jane's psychology, if only to react against it. Given the film's inventive use of flashbacks, I rather wonder why they didn't start with her already ensconsed as a governess, and establish the backstory in flashbacks as it became necessary. <br /><br />Come to that, could you imagine a film which starts with an amnesiac Jane Eliot teaching little girls in a village, and a series of non-sequential flashbacks showed us how she had got there. Maybe the first we would know of Mr. Rochester is when Jane hears his voice on the wind. Good or bad, that would have been an interesting approach. They could have called it "Citizen Jane."<br /><br />Torchwood: I think that there is something intrinsically dubious about making a spin-off from a self-identified children's programme which is "adult" and sexually explicit but the supposedly mature plotlines couldn't really concel the fact that what we were dealing with weew Doctor Who monsters, not serios sci-fi aliens. And while I am the most liberal person on earth, I find some of Russel Davies' gay sensibilities tedious. Captain Jack is just about tolerable as a once-a-series foil for the Doctor, a sort of Anti-Brigadierl but I don't think he is funny enough to carry a whole series. It's nice that the Beeb is doing skiffy again, but I'd prefer something a bit different, rather than just Doctor Who with sex. <br /><br />But it's probably not fair to judge a programme just by the trailer: once it goes on on terrestrial TV there is every chance that I will write a review.Andrew Rilstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-70925922587092687872006-10-25T10:11:00.000+01:002006-10-25T10:11:00.000+01:00The BBC's new Jane Eyre is clearly imperfect - you...The BBC's new <i>Jane Eyre</i> is clearly imperfect - you might have said that by simply posting a picture of Ruth Wilson with the caption 'plain.' And yes, it does away with the novel's religious aspects (although I'm not terribly fussed over the choice to rush through the Lowood segments, which in the novel are basically Auntie Charlotte's Happy Therapy Hour, the exorcising of the ghosts of Maria and Elizabeth Bronte. It's a bad beginning and deserves to be cut).<br /><br />But I think you'd have to have read a very different novel from the one I have to suggest that the choice between Rochester and St. John is ever seriously contemplated by the author. Rochester may be a sexy bastard, but St. John is a bully. He harasses Jane and beats her down in her own house. It's almost too painful to read - after standing up to cruel men who try to tell her what to think and what to be for nearly twenty years, Jane very nearly succumbs to a will more powerful than her own. Jane may think of St. John as a good man, but that goodness is depicted as being too painful to look at. If there is a religious moral to <i>Jane Eyre</i> it's that happiness can be found in moderation - neither Rochester's flagrant atheism (of which he repents) nor St. John's self-immolating piety (to which he sacrifices himself and would have sacrificed Jane if she hadn't run away) are the answer.<br /><br />Oh, and as for Rochester being the be all and end all of Jane's life - I can't remember the exact quote but: "I am my husband's life, and he is mine." Similarly, the telepathy that brings Jane back to Rochester is in the novel (or, if you want to call it that, divine intervention - and the mini does say that Rochester prayed to God before calling out to Jane).<br /><br />I was actually expecting you to complain about the shift in the novel's moral to the standard Hollywood trope of putting family front and center. Jane's most fervent desire, in the mini, is to have a family - hence the framing device of the family portrait, from which she is excluded as a child and in which she is firmly in the center in the mini's closing image. <br /><br />So, what did you think of <i>Torchwood</i>?Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-28737432960827857842006-10-25T09:56:00.000+01:002006-10-25T09:56:00.000+01:00And why did the last antiTony rant disappear withi...And why did the last antiTony rant disappear within a day?Phil Mastershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12533451060065715833noreply@blogger.com