ABSTRACT
This chapter restores attention to the innovative cycle of silent film adaptations to illustrate why, of all the Victorian novels, Jane Eyre was the most popular choice for film adapters at the start of the Great War. It traces of the lost Jane Eyre adaptations preserved in other written documents, such as newspaper reviews, magazine editorials, studio press releases, and advertisements. One of the most dominant approaches used by silent filmmakers to adapt Jane Eyre melodramatically is to dramatize the plight of the single or abandoned woman. Unlike contemporary film adaptations of Jane Eyre that visually convey both female character's repressed passion, the silent film adaptations of the 1910s seem insistent on presenting Jane as a controlled, modern woman faced with very real choices that will determine her chance at the good life. It concludes with a detailed analysis of the exquisite film adaptation produced.
