From early on in Lindner’s hypertext, Jane makes a clear distinction between herself and other young women—chiefly through appearances. “I didn’t expend a lot of effort on my looks,” Jane muses. “I liked to think I had better things to do with my time than shop for lip gloss and clothes. In fact, I didn’t think about my appearance much, usually” (Lindner 18). Despite this claim, Jane is constantly weighing her appearance against those of the women around her.

In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane and Rochester build an intensely intimate connection through conversations centered around religion and morality. In her modernized adaptation Jane, April Lindner is quick to establish a similar spiritual link between Jane Moore and Nico Rathburn—this time, however, in the form of art. When prompted to divulge her musical preferences, Jane states: “I tend to like classical music. Baroque. Romantic. But not the modern atonal kind” (Lindner 4).

When Jane Eyre travels to Lowood, she chooses, stubbornly, to stop eating. This decision (though of course linked to her depression) is a clear act of resistance within a setting where Jane does not have much autonomy; her refusal to eat for these first few days indicates that Jane has found an outlet for expression separate from her mode of speaking out, which is sure to result in swift punishment. In The Flight of Gemma Hardy, the titular character undergoes a similar act of resistance following a traumatic experience.

“On one of our walks to the fort he had described the town of Bath, and how it had been built around the hot springs where the goddess Sulis lived. Sulis’s followers, my uncle said, used to throw lead tablets into the water inscribed with requests for children or good harvests, or sometimes curses” (Livesey 27).