Jane Eyre: 1996 Movie Assessments

The novel Jane Eyre ends, not with a reference to the love of Jane and Rochester, but to Jane's cousin St. John River. Jane's distant cousin is a missionary who has exorcized his passion for a worthless woman from his heart and stripped himself clean of all worldly desires in the pursuit of his faith. He dies, a faithful man in a far-off godless land, filled with the knowledge that what he has done is right for his own personal soul and struggle. This last, novelistic reference to St. John, although not nearly as famous as the statement 'reader, I married him,' is just as important when analyzing the differences between the book and movie versions of Charlotte Bronte film. This last reference to St. John, and the intimate reference to the reader of the text stresses the two key elements of distinction between film...
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