Abstract
The history of Australian stage adaptations of Jane Eyre illustrates the shifting fortunes and reach of melodrama and its conventions, as they become psychologised over the course of the twentieth century. The earliest adaptation of Jane Eyre written for the Australian stage was Rose Evansâs Quite Alone (1872). Working within highly melodramatic codes, Quite Alone portrayed âhate, sympathy, love, and finally marriageâ (âMiss Rose Evansâs âQuite Aloneââ). Two creative engagements by Australian writers have reached wide international audiences: Helen Jeromeâs 1936 stage adaptation, published in 1937, was the most performed and successful adaptation of the twentieth century; the chamber opera with music by British composer Michael Berkeley and libretto by Australian writer David Malouf premiered in 2000, and has been performed in Britain, Australia and the U.S. In adapting a three-volume novel within the demands of contemporary staging, both Jerome and Malouf explore the nuances of a particular affect in the relationship between Jane and Rochester. In Jeromeâs 1936 stage adaptation the affect is passion, signalled in the published playâs subtitle A Drama of Passion; in Maloufâs libretto, the predominant affect is sympathy. Jeromeâs adaptation struggles to mesh melodrama, realism and more modernist elements in her rereading of the novel for the stage, whilst Malouf and Berkeleyâs chamber opera is late modernist. I place the adaptations in a broader history of creative engagements with Jane Eyre, drawing out intermedial influences on the staging of Jeromeâs and Maloufâs adaptations in particular.
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