Getting "Jane Eyre" right on the screen

"Reader, I married him."

So begins the final chapter of Charlotte Brontë's hallowed novel, "Jane Eyre."

Between the first sentence of Chapter 1 ("There was not a possibility of taking a walk that day"), and that announcement that plain, admirable, ex-governess Jane has, against all odds, wed the rich, mercurial Mr. Rochester, lies a gripping tale of the meek triumphant.

With its romantic sweep and deft psycho-social insight, "Jane Eyre" endures as a masterwork. Since its publication in 1847, countless readers (many of them assigned the book in high school or college) have cheered on its unforgettable heroine.

Not all the many dramatizations of the book have fared as well. No fewer than 18 cinematic treatments of "Jane Eyre" have appeared — starting with a 1910 silent movie and extending to the ambitious 2006, two-part British TV series which has its U.S. debut on "Masterpiece Theatre" starting tonight.

Among the many stage re-tellings (some musical) is a lauded "Jane Eyre" adapted by Polly Teale for the leading London theater troupe Shared Experience. A student production of Teale's script opens at the University of Washington next month.

"Jane Eyre" has, in fact, had more enactments than "Wuthering Heights" (the celebrated novel by Charlotte Brontë's sister Emily) and "Agnes Grey" (by their talented sibling Anne Brontë) combined.

But what makes a cinematic "Jane Eyre" worth viewing? How does the new BBC model measure up to previous celluloid versions?

Consensus is rare on such questions. This "Jane Eyre" won high marks from English critics and some serious Brontë-lovers, but it won't please everyone. So what criteria can it reasonably be judged by?

Fidelity to the novel

Packing all the events and characters in Brontë's 350-plus-page text into one adaptation would require a maxi-series far longer than the BBC's four-hour treatment.

So what to cut, yet still retain the original work's spirit — if not the exact letter?

BBC screenwriter Sandy Welch (also responsible for a superb 1998 treatment of Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend") chose to shed much of the novel's early chapters, which detail young, orphaned Jane's early experiences at Lowood, a brutal boarding school.

We still meet the nasty guardian who sent little Jane there, and witness the child's poignant, fleeting bond with a fellow student, Helen. Much is condensed, but the choice to focus more on the adult Jane is understandable.

Another major choice: whether to preserve the book's first-person narration. Novelist and literary scholar Joyce Carol Oates praises Jane's authorial voice "in its directness, its ruefulness and scarcely concealed rage." She finds that voice "startlingly contemporary" and key to making the reversal of Jane's meager fortunes believable.

This new version uses scant narration. It inserts flashback material. And in numerous instances Welch has streamlined the dialogue. She does so in unshowy ways that don't offend my ears — but may bother some literary purists.

The portrayal of Jane

On the page, Jane is depicted as "plain" and "small" — no match in conventional beauty to her rival for Rochester's affection (the snooty socialite Blanche).

Eventually, though, 18-year-old Jane's inner beauty comes to the fore — via her intelligence, her integrity and her first flush of romantic love.

There's almost nothing worse than seeing a glamorous actress play a gilded Jane with mascara and lip gloss intact, as some have. The other extreme, an overly mousy and passive Ms. Eyre (a la Joan Fontaine) is no better.

The latest Jane, newcomer Ruth Wilson, strikes the right balance. Long-faced, broad-featured and pale, she is a wallflower one moment and naturally radiant the next.

Along with her fascinating looks, Wilson also has the acting skill to reveal the subtle gradations of Jane's pride, anguish and courage, as this little "nobody" quietly defies social convention.

To create Jane, Charlotte Brontë drew on the struggles and humiliations she and her sisters endured — in school, as genteel-poor governesses and as women writers who had to adopt male pseudonyms to get a fair reading.

Perhaps only a writer faced with the kind of misogyny poet Robert Southey expressed in a letter to Charlotte Brontë ("Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life and ought not to be") could write a "Jane Eyre." Wilson keeps faith with that defiant artistry.

Jane's chemistry with Rochester

The novel melds social critique and Gothic suspense, but romance is its beating heart.

One has to believe in the irresistible, multifaceted attraction between Jane and her brooding employer, Edward Rochester, and its complications.

Brontë fans often rank Timothy Dalton (who later played James Bond) as the sexiest Rochester, opposite Zelah Clarke in the BBC's 1983 "Jane Eyre." Others are partial to the William Hurt-Charlotte Gainsbourg matchup in the flawed 1996 Franco Zefferelli film.

What's so right about Wilson's Jane and Toby Stephens' virile, tormented Rochester is that their mutual erotic charge is matched by the teasing, bantering rapport of intellectual equals.

That affinity glimmers through Brontë's book but not always between screen couples. And Stephens (a newly-minted matinee idol in this role) also clarifies another aspect of Rochester.

The cruel tests he demands of Jane's love are not exercises in sadism in Stephens' reading. They are the fearful ploys of a man whose first marriage (to a faithless, deranged courtesan) was a tragic disaster. And he won't be fooled again.

Visuals

The most atmospheric element of "Jane Eyre" is Thornfield Hall, the grand and haunted country mansion where Jane is summoned as governess for Rochester's adopted daughter, Adele.

The new miniseries uses Haddon Hall, a rambling English estate in Derbyshire, as a stand-in for Thornfield — as did the Zefferelli film.

It's a perfect fit.

But while the costumes, lighting and locales are all up to the BBC's high Victorian-lit standard, what's notable in Susanna White's direction is the creative camera work and editing.

Patterns of shadows and silhouettes intensify the erotic tension and the mystery of dead-of-night malicious mischief at Thornfield. There are also misty memory, dream and fantasy sequences, and potent Jungian images of fire, water and landscape.

A few of these visual gambits are a bit much.

But they give the series a vividly sensual texture. In the end, no dramatization could fully replicate Brontë's "Jane Eyre." And to achieve any distinction, each has to approach the familiar tale anew.

This one does. And like Rochester's faith in Jane Eyre and vice versa, the risks are worth the taking.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com