Jane Eyre on the German Stage

Autor(en)

Margarete Rubik

Abstrakt

The paper analyses Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer's popular stage-adaptation of Jane Eyre, which for half a century moved audiences across Europe to tears. Her double transformation of Brontë's plot, from narrative to stage, and from an English context into German culture, attests to her dramatic skill and experience, though the plot changes may seem sentimental and ridiculous nowadays. She rearranged and amalgamated scenes, mixing verbatim dialogue with freshly invented scenes, clarifies the characters' motivations and always aims at increasing the melodramatic effect. Although Birch did not completely edit out Jane's strength of character and artistic talent, her conception of gender roles was basically conservative: Jane's rebellious outbreaks are attributed to the fever she contracted in the red room, and her dependence on Rochester questions the equality of the lovers. The translation of the love-story into German culture presented no major problem, and Birch facilitated acceptance by making a few minor changes. However, occasionally she evinced surprising ignorance of the British cultural context. As is shown in the paper, Austrian critics treated her with unmitigated hostility. Nonetheless, she stayed in repertoire in the Burgtheater till 1895 and was performed 102 times there. In addition, she was frequently staged in suburban Viennese venues and in a great many provincial theatres. Interestingly, in the United States reviews in the course of the century changed from praise to depreciation. Late nineteenth-century American critics accused the German playwright of lacking understanding for the milieu she had ventured to portray and thereby re-appropriated Jane Eyre for English culture.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Band

181

Seiten

283-304

Anzahl der Seiten

22

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004292307_014

Publikationsdatum

2015

ÖFOS 2012

602008 Anglistik, 604029 Theaterwissenschaft

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeine Kunst und Geisteswissenschaften

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/477d8289-6ef3-4718-8737-1405c176ab42