Promiscuity Instead of Inherited Insanity: Jane Eyre’s Bertha in Early Stage Adaptations

Although some criticism exists regarding Jane Eyre’s character on stage, early theatrical versions of Bertha’s character are largely unexamined. In this article I offer a twofold analysis of three stage scripts based on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) (premiering in 1867, 1870, and 1877). I show how each play contains drastic plot changes that deemphasize Bertha’s madness in favour of rendering her a promiscuous deviant. Simultaneously, the scripts cleanse Rochester’s character of sexual and marital scandal. The emergent plot alterations ultimately polarize Bertha’s and Rochester’s moral profiles and reduce feminist aspects that we have come to associate with Charlotte Brontë’s original novel.