The Bronte Goes to Woolworths

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 414, 30 May 1947, Page 8

The Bronte Goes to Woolworths

ANE EYRE is a good serial. inecollected in tranquillity the plot of the novel has its defects, but what seems melodramatic in printed form is merély good radio to listeners nurtured on Rebecca and The Legend of Kathie Warren; while Big Sister had far more to contend with than merely being expected to go through a form of marriage with a man who kept a mad wife locked up in the attic at home. In any case I have little sympathy with those who insist that their fiction be true to life, who seek to prune the wings of romanticism, and teduce to ‘tattle-tale grey the stuff that dreams are made of, Jane Eyre owes its long-lived popularity to the fact that it is the love story par excellence. The formula has now been worked out. First, the attraction of opposites, As John P. Marquand’s George Stanhope is fond of saying, there must be conflict. At last the lovers recognise their love, whereupon the happiness they crave is dashed from their lips. At the very end a certain measure of satisfaction is permitted to be salvaged from the ruin. Many since Charlotte Bronte have used the formula, particularly for radio serials. But lesser masters of the craft have multiplied the number of dashings and have squared things for their heroine by similarly multiplying the sum of happiness with which she is left at the end. Only

in Jane Eyre, among current radio serials, do we find the formula perfectly worked out.