Teddy and Jane

Gothic and noir go together like a zombie Simon and Garfunkel; lying at the darker end of the literary spectrum they haunt us, sinking unctuously beneath our skin. Jane Eyre might not be the most brutally Gothic novel ever written - but it is a superbly disturbing text whose plot and characters lend themselves well to terrible re-writings by silly people (like me).

I must confess, the idea to transform Jane Eyre into a noir detective narrative landed fully formed in my mind with no clue as to why. It was only recently, as I began to pull together information for this blog, that I remembered a memorable afternoon last summer spent watching a film adaptation of the book. Crucially, the character of Rochester was played by the terrifyingly sexual Orson Welles.

Not only does this 1943 adaptation eerily capture the Gothic Yorkshire setting of the text, Welles provides early echoes of one of his most famous roles – Harry Lime from the film noir The Third Man (1949). Indeed, my noir mash-up of the text is undeniably more believable if we imagine Welles reprising his role as Rochester.

(L) Orson Welles as Rochester and (R) in The Third Man.

The main change I am going to make (and instantly upset those hardcore Eyre-ists) is to switch the main characters of Rochester and Jane, as the arrival of a male character to the home of a female is much more fitting for a detective narrative. Thus Teddy Rochester is born, with the same fiery temper and lust but none of the riches and responsibility. Jane is as cold as ever, taking on the role as the femme fatale and mistress of Thornfield Hall.

Now, lean in a little closer as we have some serious decisions to make.

Firstly, Teddy Rochester (oh how I can't get enough of saying his name) is no governess. Instead I would suggest that he comes to work at Thornfield in a similar way as the original Jane; he advertises his services as a detective and the only reply he receives relates to a young ward named Adele Varens. Perhaps he is needed to find her long-lost father, with Jane being her aunt or family friend. Here I'm channeling Chandler – think Phillip Marlowe in the opening of The Big Sleep and his arrival in the Sternwood home.

Then for the most part the plot continues as in Brontë's original. The opening scenes of Jane's childhood are still viable – I actually think it would strengthen her character if she had suffered poverty and loss as a child, only to come into fortune as the mistress of Thornfield Hall. The damaged and dangerous woman fits in so well within the noir genre as well as the Gothic

What I am still struggling with is the character of Bertha Mason. I just can't bring myself to sacrilegiously change her. But the final acts of the text depend on her wild eroticism, the fire and the betrayal - and this new version wouldn't work if either of these were missing. And so there are two options; either Bertha becomes mad Bert Mason and we believe cold, chaste Jane has locked her savage first husband in the attic. Horrible – but the betrayal of Teddy would work.

The second option is that Bertha is the madwoman and Jane has still been lying about her, only obviously they are not married. Perhaps she is the person Teddy has been hired to find, the supposedly dead mother of Adele(?). I am warming to this idea, and I think our detective hero could feel the same strength of betrayal over his job as Jane does over her heart.

Next, I would get my scissors of horror and cut the sappy passages of Jane wandering through the moors, meeting those wet relatives and hearing Edward's voice call to her. Instead I am thinking our Ted would go off and do some investigation because let's face it, it's what he is paid to do and he could attempt to salvage his career by uncovering the truth of Bertha's life. Once the case is done and dusted he can return to Jane with the truth, only to find her blinded and ruined.

In terms of setting, the wild cruelty of the moors and the Gothic tone of the original novel is classic. Just turning the hands of the clock slightly, we can retain this atmosphere whilst incorporating a more typical noir feel of the 1930s and 40s.

As a first attempt I hope this gives you an idea of what this blog is about and my destruction of a British classic isn't too disturbing. There are many more aspects of adaptation that I haven't gone in to - such as narrative voice or writing style – and so I will focus more on these areas in different posts.

And so if I haven't at least persuaded you to go back and read Jane Eyre, at least you might see the noir potential in this example of Jane, who is describing her happy ending.

“No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”

Ahoy

I have a lot of time on my hands. It's obscene, the amount of stuff I could reasonably achieve during these lonely weeks of unemployment but haven't because I prefer to sit on the sofa and stare vacantly into the ether.

In an effort to soak up some of my time, I have begun this blog. Much like one of those jazzy moths with eyes painted on their wings, upon initial inspection this blog has important narrative questions to answer and academic intentions. Yet look a little closer and you will see a bedraggled brown moth-blog, interested only in lightbulbs and eating shirts.

Anyway, forgetting moths for the time being (if only), I wrote an essay a while ago for a crime fiction module, in which I rewrote portions of a Sherlock Holmes story in an American / Noir style. I called it A Scandal in Little Bohemia and it was terrible. And so that is the aim of this blog; to explore how we can adapt narrative and character to different genres and mediums and whether this impacts the original texts.

For instance, my rewritten story followed the plot of Conan Doyle's writing and so we can wonder whether it was a new text or belonged in part to him. Nothing was copied exactly. All the recent Holmes adaptations, both good and bad, made me think of my own interpretation and whether modern characters and a change of location creates something entirely new.

Thus I want to come up with my own adaptations and mash ups. This is where it starts to look suspiciously like fun. Starting with some ideas and then possibly writing scenes or synopses and critical commentaries, I am going to swap the genres of famous narratives and see what happens. Although not an experiment in almost every sense of the word, who knows - this might actually help us understand what narrative is.

So apologies if you thought this was going to be an interesting or comedic read! It's more for my own amusement and as a writing aid. Anyone interested in reading narrative theory should make sure there is absolutely nothing else they could be doing, pour themselves a brandy and peruse some Russian formalism. Good luck and happy reading!