Jane Eyre (Book vs. Film)

After reading Jane Eyre book carefully and watching the movie (2011), I see myself able to compare the two of them and give my own opinion. Jane Eyre is an English novel written by Charlotte Brontë and published in London in 1847, known one of the best English novels. Off all the novels I have read, it is one of the most interesting, striking, original, and vigorous novels. "Jane Eyre" the 2011 British romantic drama movie, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, is a nice and smart adaptation of the classic novel; it closely follows the basic storyline. However, as a person who has lived with the novel for three weeks, I couldn’t but dislike the movie and prefer with no doubt the book.

On one hand, the movie by itself is a very interesting movie; the flashback technique used at the beginning of the film added something new to the story by changing the order of events and creating a mystery that attracts the spectators. On the other hand, the starters aren't exactly as expected; Jane is being a prettier person than what is described in the story with her soft skin and nice look. The same goes for Rochester who is a bit more handsome than what is described in the story; we can also mention here that the big difference in age between the two of them wasn’t really obvious in the film. Honestly, although the film is wonderful, but it can't be compared to the novel's greatness. The novel is a first-person narrative of the title character; through the story I could read what Jane has in her mind, the way she analyses everything around her, and the way she describes what she is suffering from. However, the movie omitted the thoughts of Jane, her politics, her beliefs, and her feminism. In the film of "Jane Eyre", the major themes presented in the book are barely shown such as searching for love and identity, and most importantly the attack on religion and female imprisonment that were major issues for Brontë especially in the 19^th century. Moreover, Charlotte Brontë is simply a great writer who has been known well for her wonderful sense of description. The description used in every single chapter of the novel is wonderful and intelligent, what made the story interesting from the first chapter; it made me live completely with the story and gave me a feeling as if I'm observing the scenes in front of me. However, watching the movie will never give you that sense or that pleasure, it just tells us the entire key events in the novel which raises a big question in my mind: how fair is it to summarize a 521 pages novel in a two hours movie? And could it be the same interesting? The movie had to omit some  some information that are interesting to me, such as that St. John and his sisters were Jane's cousins and the role of Grace Pool or the real violence of Bertha Mason, most probably because the writer of the film couldn’t include every single event of the novel in the movie. In addition, some characters were also omitted from the movie such as Miss temple who has a big role in the searching for love theme for Jane, we can also mention Rosamond Oliver who is attracted to St. John and how Jane tried to convince St. John to propose to her since she loves him. Yet, there was a big discrepancy at the end of the movie that I didn’t like and it makes difference to me; Mr. Rochester recovers his sight in one eye after two years in the book which made it a happy ending comparing to the film ending where he has been left blind for the rest of his life. However, he didn’t lose his arm in the movie since the passionate touching through the scenes is really important for the producer of the film as he said in an interview with him. Personally, I prefer the fact of having one eye and one arm instead of two arms only.  

"The masterwork of a great genius" that’s what William Thackeray said about the book of Jane Eyre. Personally, I see it unfair to make a film of Jane Eyre since it takes away a big part of the beauty of the novel. I believe it could be much better to produce the story of Jane Eyre as series with a minimum of twenty episodes. However, for a person who is not willing to read the big novel, "Jane Eyre" would be a nice and interesting movie to watch and would describe what the novel is about.