Bertha and the Others: Representations of Bertha Antoinetta Mason in Modern Cinema
Summary
This paper is a case study of the 1943 and 2011 film adaptations of Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. By comparing three scenes from both movies, it looks into their different ways of representing Bertha as the Other. By thorough analysis using postcolonial theory, the paper argues that the 1943 film presents Bertha as a demonised Other whereas in the most recent film, Bertha is portrayed much more sympathetically and the distance between her and the Self is much smaller.