“The Autobiography of Jane Eyre” Adapts Brontë’s Heroine for Vlogs, Tumblr, Twitter & Instagram

Lest you remain unaware, Jane Eyre has a vlog. And though I would fain speak well of it, the truth must out. I pre­fer my Jane with bon­net strings knot­ted firm­ly beneath her chin. This Jane, as embod­ied by project co-cre­ator, Alysson Hall, often seems like a fan putting togeth­er a home­made audi­tion tape for Girls.

I sus­pect that’s the demo­graph­ic most like­ly to appre­ci­ate Char­lotte Bron­të’s rein­vent­ed hero­ine.  Like The Lizzie Ben­net Diaries, a self-declared “online mod­ern­ized adap­ta­tion” of Pride and Prej­u­dice, The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Jane Eyre takes a trans­me­dia approach, seri­al­iz­ing across mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal plat­forms.

In addi­tion to the YouTube chan­nel, Jane tweets to over 1500 fol­low­ers, and uploads pho­tos to Insta­gram. Her video diary might not be my cup of tea, but I must con­fess, I do rather enjoy her tum­blr. Per­haps not as much as I’d enjoy reread­ing the nov­el (find it in our col­lec­tion Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions), but it’s not a bad way to while away a minute or two.

Put anoth­er way, any­one who likes read­ing Bron­të is prob­a­bly amenable to pic­tures of tea cups, dead trees, and Tim Bur­ton’s ani­mat­ed dolls.

Jane’s embrace of social media is shared by many in her orbit, includ­ing Mr. Rochester’s employ­ee, Grace Poole, and his 8‑year-old daugh­ter, Adele, whose (ille­gal) Twit­ter feed will appeal to any pre­co­cious lit­tle smar­ty­pants eager for ran­dom facts regard­ing Bernese Moun­tain Dogs and Uranus’ moons.

The veil is lift­ed some­what on the series’ Face­book page, where the cre­ators inter­act with fans out-of-char­ac­ter and address mod­ern tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, such as soft­ware issues and audio glitch­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read (and Now Your Con­fes­sions?)

Bron­të Sis­ters Pow­er Dolls

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Ayun Hal­l­i­day was gob­s­macked to learn that her sec­ond book, No Touch Mon­key!  has been made avail­able in ebook form.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday