Helen Burns makes a brief appearance in Jane Eyre, the 2011, drama film that is set in 1843, describing the search for belonging and Jane’s need for love. In this film, Burns is compatible with what Naomi Schor notes as “everydayness” (79) as seen in Will Straw’s “Small Parts, Small Players” in a special issue of Screen. Although Burns plays a minor character at the beginning of the movie who ends up dying she adds a sense of everydayness to a movie that deals with harsh subject matters. Burns is Jane Eyres’ friend when Jane is at Lowood school, a school for orphaned females. Burns is a kind, compassionate, and genuine friend to Jane. She is constantly getting in trouble for standing up for herself and others at the school. Burns’s character helps to symbolize the good in people and humanity. Jane feels so helpless after losing her parents and being sent to live at this school. Burns’s character is the first person to treat Jane like a real human being that has feelings. Burns is used as the middleman to help teach Jane about the acceptance of Christianity, not just the hate and punishment that Mrs. Brocklehusrt pushes on Jane. Straw, discussing the work of Schor in a special issue of Screen points out that Schor argues, that without the use of minor characters such as in this case Helen Burns’s character we lose that sense of everydayness that is needed to help amplify the film’s allusion of realism that helps to create a connection between the film and the viewer. Although Burns is not used as an extra that brings a historical background of diversity she brings a sense of reality to Jane Eyre. As Straw discusses the argument of Schor he says that the absence of minor characters brings “the absence of a social everydayness that might significantly challenge the gendered character of these narratives and the worlds in which they unfold” (79). Burns’s role as a schoolgirl at Jane’s school creates a sense of everydayness and her character in particular plays an important role in shaping Jane Eyre’s experience with religion and life.
Works Cited
Jane Eyre (2011)
Straw, Will. “The Small Parts, Small Players Dossier Introduction.” SCREEN, vol. 52, no. 1, Mar. 2011, pp. 78–81.
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