Abstract

This article presents Franco Zeffirelli’s baroque use of mirrors to evoke the specular alienation of Jane Eyre who is both the heroine and the story-teller in the movie and in the original text. The mirror image—or, condensed into a single word, the “mirage”—is not only whole and non-human as opposed to fragmented, turbulent and human, it is an “exteriority,” an outside that is also inside. The ego experiences a perpetual rift that is modeled on the subject’s dual relations with its specular counterpart, the other woman. The mirror stage presents through dramatic exemplification a certain level of rupture between inwardly lived and external realities. The director thus emphasizes the question of representation and its various metafictional modes as Jane Eyre—the movie— can be seen as a portrait of the artist. Drawing can be regarded as the cinematic equivalent of narration in Charlotte Brontë’s work and also as empowerment for the female subject who ultimately becomes a creator.