Therem over at Feminist SF – The Blog! compares the last X-Men movie to Jane Eyre and echoes what I’ve thought myself about Jean Grey since seeing that movie.

In X-Men the writers had an opportunity to show a woman learning about her personal power — in Jean’s case, the power to destroy the world — but it’s assumed that she will never be able to control it. I wonder if they’d gone down that plot road if it was a male character with all that power?

Compare Jean to Wolverine, whose forced modifications (in the movie anyway) were done to him yes against his will, but with the objective of making him more dangerous. The tinkering Xavier does with Jean’s mind is to put a leash on her power. I can’t remember from the movie if the leash was originally intended to be temporary, but as a short-term or a long-term solution Jean should have been made aware of the bonds on her power.

It would actually be interesting to look at all of the X-Men movies in terms of personal freedom and control, since that’s one its overall theme with non-mutants wanting to control mutants. Jean Grey’s power just takes that friction to the nth degree.