[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-149931-en":3,"doc-seo-149931-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":95},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},149931,962085570644,"Melati","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_994ba38a5ba835b3df7d355c54d3ed8d",8,"Research & Report","Dislocated Heroines - Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, Romantic Love and Bertha’s Legacy","This essay examines the 2011 Focus Features film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre directed by Cary Fukunaga. It argues that, despite claims of greater accuracy, the adaptation privileges heteronormative romantic love that frames modern womanhood as requiring a “complete” male partner. Jane’s portrayal of already-achieved subjecthood is contrasted with Bertha Mason’s lack of complete subjectivity, exposing tensions in contemporary remediations of classic romance and the heroine’s dislocation from the modern world.","Dislocated Heroines: Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, Romantic Love and Bertha’s Legacy  \nMeghan Jordan  \n(Upper Iowa University, Iowa, USA)  \nAbstract: This essay examines the 2011 Focus Features film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre directed by Cary Fukunaga. Like other modern adaptations of nineteenth-century women’s writing, Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre privileges heteronormative love for subject completion, belying his claim that this adaptation is both more accurate and less about period romance. Fukunaga’s representation of Jane juxtaposes her ‘complete ’subjecthood prior to the beginning of the film with Bertha Mason’s ‘lack ’ of complete subjectivity. Ultimately, this essay gestures towards a problematics of twenty-first century adaptations of classic romance novels and their representation of the heroine as needing love to alleviate her dislocation from the modern world.  \nKeywords: Bertha Mason, Charlotte Brontë, film adaptation, gender, heteronormativity, Jane Eyre (1847), Jane Eyre (2011), proto-feminism, romance, subjectivity.  \n*****  \nFrom 2000 to the present, adaptors of Victorian novels, especially those written by women, have privileged the love story but with a surprising twist: these films foreground heteronormative love in order to argue that modern women require an appropriate male partner to ‘complete’ them as gendered political subjects. This is accomplished through a ‘Victorian’ lens: historically, this oeuvre tells its predominantly female audience, even‘autonomous’ women want love to secure their radical independence. In other words, these films let the viewer know that the independent women of yesterday secured present-day female viewers the ‘right’ to love and companionate marriage. If the romance plot can no longer entice viewers with its biological determinism (women must marry in order to have children, but love gives them the drive to do so), then some other motivation must be used to secure the value of this form of love. Thus, filmmakers post-1980 tend to concentrate on the loveless life as an incomplete one.1 This turn secures ideological complicity through spectatorial fantasy for the modern female viewer.  \nDirector Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, however, presents the viewer with a sharper departure from this millennial-period model than appears at first glance. In his adaptation, the narrative begins with Jane as an adult, rather than as a child, thus disrupting the structure of the Victorian female Bildungsroman. The film opens with a panoramic shot of a weeping Jane Eyre (played by Mia Wasikowska) alone on the expansive and isolated moors. She wanders in the rain and wind for along time before collapsing at the door of the Rivers family. Since this moment occurs rather late in the novel, Fukunaga’s adaptation must at first be told through flashbacks, and Jane begins her narrative as an adult subject, rather than a child striving towards self-authorisation and social recognition as in Brontë’s novel. Instead of Jane reaching subjecthood through repeated suffering, she is portrayed as always-already a subject, unique in her ability to know and articulate her desires.2 Through this narrative of unique identity, which Fukunaga styled as Jane’s “uncompromising convictions”, the director’s representation de-historicises Victorian gender and power dynamics (Fukunaga in [Anon.] 2011b: 1:02-1:04) . Jane ‘rises above’ these restrictive institutions, because she has a singular power to do so; other nineteenth-century British women failed to do so, because they either accepted their secondary role or had insufficient will or power.  \nThis construction of Jane Eyre as an agent is one common to adaptations of the novel from the 1980s to the present day. Yet Fukunaga’s film, in its original approach to Bertha Mason, also examines what have been seen in recent years as the more transgressive aspects of the novel. Jane’s construction as an agent parallels Bertha","cbCaicfMNL8Udoma","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaicfMNL8Udoma","pdf",239966,1,25,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Heteronormative romance in modern Victorian adaptations\n## Adult Jane and the disrupted Bildungsroman structure\n## Jane’s agency versus Bertha’s opposing construction\n## Deleted scene: Bertha’s room entry and the veil destruction\n## Gothic turn and the stakes of adaptation","[{\"question\":\"How does the essay describe modern adaptations of Victorian novels about women’s writing?\",\"answer\":\"It says contemporary adaptations foreground heteronormative love, arguing that modern women need an appropriate male partner to “complete” them as gendered political subjects.\"},{\"question\":\"What narrative change does the essay highlight in Fukunaga’s 2011 Jane Eyre?\",\"answer\":\"The film begins with Jane as an adult rather than a child, disrupting the Victorian female Bildungsroman structure and shifting how her subjecthood is formed.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the essay interpret the relationship between Jane’s subjectivity and Bertha’s role?\",\"answer\":\"Jane is presented as an always-already subject with unique convictions, while Bertha is constructed as lacking complete subjectivity, revealing ideological tensions around heteronormativity and Victorian gender power.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the significance of the deleted scene involving Bertha and Jane’s wedding night?\",\"answer\":\"The essay argues it deepens the eerie connection between Jane and her predecessor, changes perceptions of both characters’ subjectivity, and exposes tension between heteronormativity’s elevation and the failures of ideal union.\"}]","Dislocated Heroines - Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, Romantic Love and Bertha’s Legacy | PDF",1787810419,63,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":90,"head_meta":92,"extra_data":94,"updated_unix":28},"dislocated-heroines-cary-fukunagas-jane-eyre-romantic-love-and-berthas-legacy","",{"@graph":36,"@context":89},[37,54,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,48,51],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":47},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/dislocated-heroines-cary-fukunagas-jane-eyre-romantic-love-and-berthas-legacy/149931/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":41,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-08-27",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":4},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81,85],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"How does the essay describe modern adaptations of Victorian novels about women’s writing?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"It says contemporary adaptations foreground heteronormative love, arguing that modern women need an appropriate male partner to “complete” them as gendered political subjects.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"What narrative change does the essay highlight in Fukunaga’s 2011 Jane Eyre?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"The film begins with Jane as an adult rather than a child, disrupting the Victorian female Bildungsroman structure and shifting how her subjecthood is formed.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"How does the essay interpret the relationship between Jane’s subjectivity and Bertha’s role?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"Jane is presented as an always-already subject with unique convictions, while Bertha is constructed as lacking complete subjectivity, revealing ideological tensions around heteronormativity and Victorian gender power.",{"name":86,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":87},"What is the significance of the deleted scene involving Bertha and Jane’s wedding night?",{"text":88,"@type":76},"The essay argues it deepens the eerie connection between Jane and her predecessor, changes perceptions of both characters’ subjectivity, and exposes tension between heteronormativity’s elevation and the failures of ideal union.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":91,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":93,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":24},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":96},[97,101,105,109,114,119,124,127,132,135,139],{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":47,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":106,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":108},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":110,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":125,"slug":126},30,"research-report",{"id":128,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":129,"show_sort_weight":130,"slug":131},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":130,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":133,"show_sort_weight":130,"slug":134},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":136,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":137,"show_sort_weight":136,"slug":138},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":140,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":141,"show_sort_weight":110,"slug":142},19,"General","general"]