18/100: Jane by April Lindner

I know I said I was trying not to be negative anymore, but I’m granting myself an exception, because Jane Eyre is my favorite novel, right after Gone with the Wind.

This book. Oh, this book. Jane by April Lindner is a modern-day version of Jane Eyre. And…it….well, just read on and you’ll see.

Jane suffers from the problem of trying to be too loyal to source material. The back of the book has the tag “What if Jane Eyre fell in love with a rock star?” Well, the fact of the matter is, that’s really not what this book explores.

Basically, Jane is a line-by-line remake of Jane Eyre, with updated language and situations. An extremely loyal remake, if you will. Like the most recent version of The Karate Kid. Actually, it’s exactly like that.

Look, in theory, I think this is a good idea. If you’re not used to 19th-century literature, Jane Eyre is a little difficult to approach. And so at first, I was digging all the updates. They made sense, they felt current…I had hopes.

But midway through the book, I’m like, okay, if I wanted this story, I’d read Jane Eyre! I don’t feel like April Lindner is adding anything new to the story, or at the very least, exploring the nuanced facets of the original that Charlotte Brontë, couldn’t explore because of propriety. Nothing. It’s just an “updated” version of Jane Eyre. I was thinking it’d be more along the lines of Thousand Acres or The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. You know, retellings instead of remakes.

In order for an adaptation to be good, it needs to improve or expand upon the original. Take ideas from the book and blow them up. A really good example of this is the film version of Dian Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle. Miyazaki’s version expands on small ideas that Jones had in her novel, and deemphasizes the ones that wouldn’t work well in film. It connects with the source material, but distinguishes itself enough so that you can enjoy both of them in different but equal ways.

That’s the type of feel I expected from this book. For it to expound upon ideas in the original while staying true to the spirit of the story. That’s a tall order, sure, but that’s what makes these books so enjoyable when they’re done well.

Because of her unflinching loyalty to the book, certain scenes, when placed into a modern context, simply do not make sense. Or characters stick so steadfastly to their Jane Eyre counterparts, things they do simply don’t make sense.

For example: Jane and Nico (the 21st century version of Rochester. He’s a rock star) falling in love. I felt like Lindner’s Jane falls in love with Nico too fast. It felt like Lindner was following her Jane Eyre outline, and “here’s where Jane Eyre fell in love in the book, so here’s where my Jane falls in love.” I mean, I could see Jane having an attraction to Nico at that point, but ready to hop into bed with him, like 5 seconds after he says “I love you?” Nope, I don’t believe that for a second in this book.

And when they go shopping for clothes? When Rochester does it, it makes sense. Keeping up appearances was tantamount. But when Nico does it? Tway it’s written, it makes it seem like he’s just had this huge personality change. Which then makes him seem like a massive douchebag. And the following scene makes his relationship with Jane seem very…physical, rather than emotional or mental. Which in turn makes him look like one horny fuck; e.g., douchebag.

For obvious reasons, all the school/early days is omitted in this version. But that is very important to Jane’s characterization. You know that from an early age, Jane Eyre is a badass. She’s got a pair of brass balls on her, and she really doesn’t give a shit about what others think of her.

We don’t get that from Lindner’s Jane, so when she decides to stand up to her siblings, it feels false and very out of character. Lindner’s Jane is a mouse, and when she does things like speak her mind, it doesn’t feel true to the character. For example, the “am I handsome” question. In Jane Eyre, Jane is very matter of fact about her answer. I mean, on some level, she knows she shouldn’t say it, but she doesn’t regret her candor. She owns her honesty. The same isn’t true of Lindner’s Jane. Jane is like “oh, my bad, I wish I could take that back.”

And I think these are CRUCIAL events that Lindner missed out on. Because of those experiences in childhood, we know that while Jane Eyre is generally a rational person, she has a fire in her, which causes her to act with her heart on several occasions. But because we don’t have that characterization with Lindner’s Jane, I don’t believe it when she acts with her heart. She’s far too pragmatic for that.

But above all else, Jane made me realize just how important the socio-historical context is to Jane Eyre. While it is still freaky to lock your wife in the attic, on some level, we get that Rochester is a victim of circumstance. Sure, he could have made some better life choices, but once he married Bertha, he was stuck with her. Divorce really wasn’t an option. And mental institutions pretty much meant a death sentence back then, so Rochester looks like a REALLY good guy by taking care of her.

Lindner tries to make out like Nico is a victim of circumstance but that just doesn’t ring true. When I started reading this book, I said that there better be a DAMN good reason that Nico locked Bibi (Bertha in this book) in the attic. And you know what? There isn’t. An institution would have been a FAR better place for her, especially with all the advances in medicine. And sure, some people aren’t responsive to treatment (this is, in fact, the entire basis of the FABULOUS play “Next to Normal”), but there’s plenty of experimental treatments and trials that Nico could have easily gotten Bibi in to (side note: if the current nurse can’t get her to take her pills, HIRE A NEW NURSE. Seriously, not that hard). Also, it’s not like when a girl gets married, she suddenly becomes property of her husband anymore. Presumably, Bibi had some sort of family that would (I hope) want some sort of say in her care. So for Nico to lock her up like that? CREEPY AND WEIRD.

Nico explains that he didn’t know that Bibi had schizophrenia when he married her, and he got her into all sorts of drugs, which may have exacerbated her illness. He felt obligated to her. And on her lucid days, he’d see glimmers of the woman he fell in love with. I get that. That’s perfectly sound. But he knew early on that Bibi was lost to him. If he planned to take care of her regardless, then divorce shouldn’t matter. But according to Nico, “If I sent her away, the press would have gotten wind of it. ‘Rock Star Hides Wife in Mental Institution.’ I’d be the villain.”

Look, it’s 2011. If Charlie Sheen can act like a crazy mofo and still come out relatively ahead, then one rock star can divorce his mentally ill ex-wife.

Jane puts it best: “All these years you chose to stay married to Bibi. That tells me something.” This is something we don’t get in the original—it’s not like Rochester wanted to stay married to Bertha. He was in a position where divorce would have been nearly impossible. Nico, being a man of the 21st century, has a choice. Now, of course, Nico’s defense is that he “owed” it to Bibi, but you know what? This day and age, it’s okay to take care of someone even if you’re not related to them. It’s admirable, even.

In fact, that would have made Nico come off a whole hell of a lot better.

And Nico’s explanation of why he didn’t institutionalize her doesn’t hold water. He said that they were either “bad” or “worse.” Which may be true if you’re a ward of the state and have to go into a state-run hospital, but Nico is Oprah rich. He can afford the best for Bibi. It’s like Lindner was using the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest view of a mental institution, and that just isn’t true anymore. I’m not going to say that mental illness is completely without stigma in this day and age, but compared to what it used to be in the period in which Jane Eyre was written, it’s practically nothing.

That’s not to say that Nico had to be divorced in this story. It could have worked if they had been married. I saw a very moving story on 60 Minutes about how one of the reporters was still legally married to his wife, but he was living with another woman. His wife had early-onset Alzheimer’s and while she knew she had a husband, and she loved him very much, she ceased to recognize him. Although the reporter looked pained to see his wife slipping away, he knew that she wouldn’t want him to stop living. And he would want her to do the same if the roles were reversed. So that’s what he did. It was romantic and tragic all at the same time.

But Nico’s story is hardly so noble. Basically, he didn’t want the press finding out about his wife and for it to ruin his career. I mean, I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but really, that’s kind of what it boils down to.

So because Nico’s reasons for hiding Bibi away seem really shallow when put into a modern-day context, this sets off a chain reaction that really makes Lindner’s Jane look like a damn fool for going back to Nico. I’m sorry, I don’t care what the circumstances, in 2011, nobody is ever going to think that locking someone in an attic is an understandable thing to do. And really, the public still likes this guy after they found out he keep his ex wife hidden from the world? Do you know where stories like that end up? On 48 Hours. And not in a flattering way, either.

I mean, it got so bad that I ended up rooting for St. John there at the end, even though I knew he eventually was going to douche it up. At least he put it all out there, even if he was a bit crass.

Sigh. I could go on and on about all the problems I had with this book. For instance, Nico is taking care of Maddy (the Adele character) because her mother left her alone in hotel rooms, so Nico sued for full custody and won (this version makes it clear that she is his daughter). Yet he somehow thinks keeping a DANGEROUS SCHIZOPHRENIC in the attic is better parenting?!? At least Rochester had the excuse of Celine being dead. And some of the attempts to be modern just…what is this I don’t even. I mean, at one point in time, a satin-lined mahogany box of condoms come into play. I am not even making that up just a little bit.

At the end of the novel, April Lindner has an endnote about why she decided to write this book. She talks about her love for the original, and how she was inspired by all the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice that were coming out. She wondered why nobody had tried to modernize Jane Eyre in a similar way, so she set out to do just that.

Like I said, the problem is that she is too loyal to the source material. To the point where characters do and say things that make no sense in a modern-day context. I appreciate what Lindner was trying to do here, I really do, but it just doesn’t work. Like, at all.

I think the reason that Jane Eyre hasn’t been modernized is that the story is so universal, even 150 years after its initial publication. Jane Eyre is still a badass by today’s standards. And because we have socio-historical background, keeping your wife in the attic—while a little weird—is still understandable. We sympathize with Rochester, even though he lies. And I’ll allow that some elements of the Jane Eyre story would work in a modern context.

But in 2011, there is no excuse for keeping your crazy wife in the attic. There just isn’t.