Ah, but Brecht in theory and Brecht in practice were two different things, too. Both him as a playwright and as a director. (If you read descriptions by the actors, and also correspondance with collaborators etc.) He so wasn't above using emotional connections for the audience; he didn't want it to feel safe, though, I think that's the distance intended, i.e. maintaining the ability to think about the story you're told.

Re: Charlotte's anger, famously directed at Austen when people kept telling her she should write like Jane. I'm not sure whether I'd call it feminist anger, though; it was certainly connected to both her own entrapment in Victorian female roles, but at the same time, at lot of it is directed at other women. I'm thinking less of Bertha Mason here than of Blanche Ingram (what Rochester does in pretending to court her to make Jane jealous is incredibly jerkass not just to Jane but also Blanche, but I have the impression Charlotte thought Blanche had it coming), and one of her memorable anti Austen outbursts imagine the late Jane A. looking down at her "with a well bred sneer", which makes me think Charlotte who didn't know anything about JA's circumstances mentally cast her as Blanche and every female employer Charlotte in her governess attempts ever had. There's also her demonizing of Madame Heger (who seems to have handled a situation where one of her teachers crushed on her husband and turned increasingly stalkery with as much tact as she could) while casting Monsieur Heger as a flawless Übermale who has all the answers and surely would love her if only Madame would let him. It's an understandable emotional escape mechanism in what must have been an incredibly painful situation for Charlotte, but still.