Patricia Park’s Re Jane is an adaptation of Jane Eyre that investigates the nuances of living as a hyphenated American, specifically a Korean American in New York. Jane constantly finds herself looking through the eyes of others, a process that often leads her to trying to meet both Eurocentric beauty and cultural standards while in New York, and Korean beauty and cultural standards while in South Korea. This act of seeing herself through the eyes of others extends into Ed, her love interest in this adaptation of the novel. At first, she adores the way he looks at her, noticing the fondness and love he has for her. However, she eventually finds his gaze to be controlling, as he attempts to make her adhere to standards he believes a white American should follow (that echo the standard Chandler in Korea tried to impose upon her as well): moving in, settling down, and getting married (Park 318). By the end, she is able to avert his gaze, expressing her agency in living her life in a way that occupies a liminal space between living as a Korean and American woman in New York.

For further reading on the relationship between the “white gaze” and the “othered,” consider Gail Griffin’s article “White Girl Watching: Reading Eye to Eye.” Griffin writes, “Power relations always involve the gaze: girls were and are taught to lower their eyes around men…The politics of racial gaze were still present, of course; and so were the politics of gender, since the white man's overarching, panoramic, hegemonic gaze directed and monitored all social interaction” (Griffin 198).

Bibliography: Griffin, Gail B. “White Girl Watching: Reading Eye to Eye.” Feminist Teacher, vol. 14, no. 3, Oct. 2003, p. 197. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=12997671&site=eds-live.

Park, Patricia. Re Jane. Penguin Books, 2015.