Thoughts on the new BBC Jane Eyre

Let me preface by saying that Jane Eyre is one of my favourite novels and has been since I was a little girl. I first read it when I was ten or eleven and loved it then, but it was only when I reread it during my first year of undergrad that the entirety of the book truly hit home for me. I'm still rather proud of my 'Defence of One Edward Fairfax Rochester' written for that class in response to a torrent of raging feminism (there were more than twenty girls and five guys at most, and I thought poor Rochester deserved a bit of sympathy).

I haven't reread the book recently; my copy is somewhere in the ether between Pennsylvania and Oxford at the moment, and therefore temporarily unreachable. I do plan to reread after watching tonight's episode (the last one, alas!).

( They are long, they ramble, and they contain spoilers from Episodes 1-3 )

On the whole, I suppose it's obvious that I'm really enjoying this adaptation. Both the Zeffirelli film and the 1997 miniseries seemed to gloss over Rochester's cruelty, which this production highlighted. The first version I ever saw was the 1971 miniseries with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke, which I remember liking, though I think this one has superseded it in my mind, in spite of its faults. And I absolutely cannot wait for Episode Four.