Masterpiece Theater

Anyone who reads this blog with any degree of regularity is well acquainted with the many levels of my dorkiness. And so I feel at liberty to talk with impassioned fervor about my love of BBC classics and Masterpiece Theater.

I just finished watching Jane Eyre, and all I could say when I finished it was, "I LOVE Masterpiece Theater."

Let me forewarn you, these adaptations are NOT necessarily true to the novel as it was written. Translating a novel to film is like translating it from one language to another. What you are getting is someone else's interpretation of that novel. You're getting their reading of it, the themes, images and ideas that were prominent to the director and screen-writer. If you want the author's text, then read the novel. Don't go to any kind of adaptation for it, because you won't get it.

I don't watch these adaptations for the literature, I watch them for someone else's reading of a text that is already well-known to me. I watch them to see the text differently the next time I read it, but mostly, I watch them to be entertained.

And while I'm writing about my love of Masterpiece Theater, let me just say, I'm not one of those women who loves to see actors and actresses all dolled up in fancy clothes and poofy hair. I don't watch them for the fashion parade. I find it interesting how these adapations are able to show that kind of life, while still criticizing it.

And returning to Jane Eyre, yes, they play up the love story between Jane and Rochester--that's how the novel is READ. But they're also looking at how lonely and isolating the life of a governess was at the time. They're looking at how limited the choices were for women if they were poor and had the necessity of providing for themselves. They're looking at the worth of family more than the worth of money. And they don't breeze over the value of someone's character rather than the worth of their property.

I love that they didn't pick a pretty-pretty actress to play Jane, a notoriously plain heroine. They picked someone who isn't tradiationally pretty and just let her look odd. And in spite of what she knew to be her failings, she remains, as she does in the novel, certain of who she is and unwilling to pretend to be other than who she is. She is unabashedly Jane Eyre.


Since Chris is working so much right now, I've taken over the neflix queue, and I'm excited that I've got a new adapation of Little Dorrit coming, along with Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist and the Old Curiousity Shop.