...being.” As well as William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys utilize the supernatural in their books Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, respectively, to affect the amount of power each character has the ability to attain. No matter the gain or loss of power, the supernatural...
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...February 17, 2013 Jane Eyre Social Commentary Words: 553 In Jane Eyre, a book written by Charlotte Bronte, the idea of social class is analyzed and interpreted as wrong and unjust; especially for middle class women. Gender roles are also portrayed in this novel through the occupation the characters in the book have. Many critics believe that the overall theme of this novel has to be associated with roles in society and how unbalanced they truly are. Roles of middle-class women are seen in this novel through Jane. She was a governess throughout all adulthood. “Like Rochester, English society proved a "buoyant but unquiet sea" for Jane. Even though the Industrial Revolution created new opportunities for lower-class women, offering them new jobs such as in the factory, in place of household work, it did not do much good for the middle class. A single woman at this economic level still had only one option for respectable employment: working as a governess.” (thevictorianweb.com). Although a woman could maintain a decent living with this job, she could also anticipate "no security of employment, minimal wages, and an ambiguous status, somewhere between servant and family member that isolated her within the household" (Norton Anthology of English Literature, 2: 903). This is what was shown through Jane Eyre. If Jane did not marry and had no relatives to care for her, she would have to remain a governess all her life, which would mean that she would have to move from house...
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...Hide the Crazy Woman - The Figure of Bertha in Jane Eyre Introduction Over the time various famous and not so famous literary personalities have suffered from mental breakdowns. Very often writers themselves have written through their own “madness” and produced mad characters as a result. This is particularly true of many of the leading figures in Modernism, who all seem to have had some odd character traits. But even before Modernism the madman/woman was a very popular figure in literature. Just think of Shakespeare’s famous plays, where we encounter lunatics en masse. One of the most famous madwomen in English literature is Bertha, the locked up wife of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. In this paper I will look at Victorian madness in general and at the figure Bertha more closely. Furthermore I will also look, from a somewhat feminist perspective, at Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel in which Jean Rhys takes up the figure of Bertha again. I shall try to explain this rewriting of a canonical text in a postcolonial context. Historical Madness Early in the Victorian period the madness seems to be lurking in the shadows – especially in gothic fiction, but then madness was very much on everybody’s mind in those days. The Lunatics Act of 1845 required that all counties should have mental asylums, and this led to an enormous increase of mental patients admitted to public care.[1] Before that it was not unusual for husbands to “shut up” their madwomen behind...
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...their widespread recognition. Charlotte Brontë’s coming of age novel, Jane Eyre, qualifies as a classic because it has been read in Literature classes and libraries around the world for the past one hundred and sixty years, proving it can withstand the test of time. Her classic writing style, unforgettable characters, and literary acclaim have all contributed to the novel’s success. These same characteristics apply to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, supporting that this novel will also stand the test of time. Each author has a style uniquely their own, with...
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...famous and the fictions they created are so popular nowadays. They affect countless reader’s minds and how they chosed their next books. For example, Agatha Christie’s << Murder on the Orient Express>> and Charlotte Brontë’s << Jane Eyre>>, are better than most books which are in the same genre. We can never ignore what women writers did to help build the history of world literature and their amazing fictions. They have their own advantages and disadvantages. One big positive quality that female writers have is that they can describe their character’s feelings and minds very well. Most of the time they can express feelings with their pens far better than men. Kegan Gardines believes that these differences in experience will be apparent in the writing. She gives examples of the characteristics of women’s writing that differ from men’s writing: “recurrent imagery and distinctive concept … for example, imagery of confinement and unsentimental descriptions of child care” (178). As for men’s writing, “male fiction often splits characters into disjunct fragments, while female characters in novels by women tend to dissolve and merge into each other (185). Finally, she states, “female identity is a process” (179). Gender influences development of...
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...Q2: Comparison of Jane Eyre and “Goblin Market” Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” are both texts written in the Victorian period. They both carry similar themes of the evils of patriarchy and the importance of empowering women to assert their identity in this time period. Both Jane Eyre and Laura are characters that are affected by the issues that mainly affected women in the male-dominated Victorian society. This is clearly portrayed when the men in both texts try to confine women physically and emotionally through deception and force. The different portrayal of both male and female characters also plays a very important role in communicating these issues. Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” can be read as a criticism of Victorian arrangement of marriage. She stresses the importance of women’s friendship as the main agent that can help in fighting against or changing society’s exploitation of women. The two sisters represent two different kinds of women; Lizzie, the submissive ones and Laura, those that fought against patriarchy, and the goblins represent the patriarchal system. It shows that women can control their destinies, gain some level of independence, and avoid society’s oppressive rules and work towards their liberation and happiness. In the Victorians society men where more educated, powerful and rich hence they dominated women. Women were subjugated to the home as housewives whilst their husbands earned money for the family. This gave the men even more...
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...Jane Eyre The orphaned protagonist of the story. When the novel begins, she is an isolated, powerless ten-year-old living with an aunt and cousins who dislike her. As the novel progresses, she grows in strength. She distinguishes herself at Lowood School because of her hard work and strong intellectual abilities. As a governess at Thornfield, she learns of the pleasures and pains of love through her relationship with Edward Rochester. After being deceived by him, she goes to Marsh End, where she regains her spiritual focus and discovers her own strength when she rejects St. John River's marriage proposal. By novel's end she has become a powerful, independent woman, blissfully married to the man she loves, Rochester. Edward Fairfax Rochester Jane's lover; a dark, passionate, brooding man. A traditional romantic hero, Rochester has lived a troubled wife. Married to an insane Creole woman, Bertha Mason, Rochester sought solace for several years in the arms of mistresses. Finally, he seeks to purify his life and wants Jane Eyre, the innocent governess he has hired to teach his foster daughter, Adèle Varens, to become his wife. The wedding falls through when she learns of the existence of his wife. As penance for his transgressions, he is punished by the loss of an eye and a hand when Bertha sets fire to Thornfield. He finally gains happiness at the novel's end when he is reunited with Jane. Sarah Reed Jane's unpleasant aunt, who raises her until she is ten years old. Despite Jane's...
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...1847 novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of Antoinette Cosway (known as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre), a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage with Mr Rochester and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys's novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. For the main character in the novel,the character of Antoinette derives from Charlotte Brontë's repellent ,disgusting and gloomy wife of Mr’s Rochester. Rhys creates a prehistory for Bronte's character, tracing her development from a young solitary girl in Jamaica to a thoughtless and impertinent lunatic wife.By fleshing out Brontë's one-dimensional madwoman, Rhys enables us to sympathize with the mental and emotional decline of a human being. Antoinette is a far cry from the conventional female heroines of nineteenth- and even twentieth-century novels, who are often more rational and self-restrained (as is Jane Eyre herself). In Antoinette, by contrast, we see the potential dangers of a wild imagination and an acute sensitivity. Her restlessness and instability seem to stem, in some part, from her inability to belong to any particular community. From the perspective of post-colonialism, we may find inJane Eyre,there indeed...
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...A Comparison of Jane Eyre and Lin Daiyu in the View of Philosophy and Feminism I. Introduction 1.1 A Brief Introduction of Jane Eyre and Lin Daiyu “A Dream of Red Mansions” is one of the most outstanding works of China’s classic novels of realism. It bases on the background of Jia, Shi, Wang, Xue four families’ rising and falling, with the clue of the love tragedy of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu. It truly and artistically reflects the historically declining trend of China’s feudal society. “A Dream of Red Mansions” can also be described as “Girls’ Country”, which is the anthem of female, but also is the threnody of women. The heroine Lin Daiyu, Annatto Fairy, wants to repay the goodness of God Shen Yin, taking her lifetime of tears in exchange for his being saved. Her rebellious sprit and solitary character, makes her as a lotus opening at a secluded place, clinging to her own pureness—for pure you came and pure shall go. She is sentimental and unfortunate, and is doomed to being lonely and pathetical .She, Lin Daiyu, lives under another’s house—Rong mansion, Grand View Garden, and she has no one to complain her sadness to. She is “Yea to the very end of heaven, Where I could find a fragrant grave!” in frustration, “What time the third moon comes, the scented nests have been already built. And on the beams the swallows perch, excessive spiritless and staid” in sorrow, and finally ends up with the sadness of “Flowers fade and maidens die; and of either naught any more is known”...
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...sometimes they look exactly alike and sometimes they do not. It is interesting to view two characters that had never known or met one another as doubles, such is the case of Bertha and Jane in the novel Jane Eyre. Jane who is a poor English clergyman’s daughter was raised in a charity school; Bertha on the other hand is an exotic Creole, and a wealthy Jamaican planter’s spoiled daughter. Furthermore, how is it that these two distinct characters could be considered each other’s double? Despite the clear contrast in characterization between Jane and Bertha, it is important to note similarities in their lives at Thornfield. While Jane feels figuratively trapped, Bertha is...
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...centuries and ensnared women within a value system created by society that defined what a woman’s role should be. The cult presented women with four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. In the ages when these ideals were held at a high standard, works of literature written during this time reflected the societal standard. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, various essays, and our culture also depict the cult of domesticity that still exists regardless of the success of the feminist movements throughout history and in present day; meanwhile, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is a great example of women who lived within the “cult...
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...Beteckning: Humanities and Social Sciences Double Oppression in the Color Purple and Wide Sargasso Sea. A Comparison between the main characters Celie and Antoinette/Bertha. Ingela Lundin 2008 C-essay English Literature Supervisor: Dr Maria Mårdberg Examinator: Dr Helena Wahlström Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose and main questions ............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Method and material......................................................................................................... 1 1.3 Theoretical approach ........................................................................................................ 2 1.4 Previous research – an overview ...................................................................................... 3 1.5 Introducing the novels ...................................................................................................... 4 2. A comparison of the double oppression in the two protagonists’ marriages.................. 6 2.1 The diminishing and isolation of Celie and Antoinette/Bertha........................................ 6 2.2 The upholding of the white man’s norm ........................................................................ 14 Conclusion..........................................................
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...Unit 1 – Explorations in Poetry & Prose “The main interest is the male characters.” Both Jane Eyre and The Magic Toyshop present the reader with a rogues gallery of men who exhibit the worst, and occasionally the best, traits of their gender. To a modern feminist, the suggestion that both Jane and Melanie are defined by their experiences with these male characters would be a heresy, but there is little doubt that the males’ primary function is to provide the challenges that shape the emergent womanhood of the female protagonists. They are interesting because they are grotesque. Jane’s early experiences with men are physically and verbally abusive, highlighting Jane’s vulnerability as both orphan and young girl in a patriarchal society: ”Wicked and cruel boy --- You are like the Roman emperors! “ This comparison may seem exaggerated, even comical, were it not to show how John’s reign of terror impacts on a young child whose only frame of reference lies in the books she reads so avidly. These early experiences also reflect the connivance of women in men’s abusive behaviour towards other women, whether through defect of character or social conditioning. “John no-one thwarted, much less punished…” John’s mother indulges her wayward son just as she preconditions Mr Brocklehurst in his treatment of Jane by calling her a liar. Melanie too is quickly exposed to the brutishness of a dominant male, the extreme effects manifest in the symbolic and actual silencing of...
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...Patriarchal Oppression and Cultural Discrimination in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different” (Coco Chanel) “We may have all come in different ships but we’re in the same boat now” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) “Share our similarities, celebrate our differences” (Morgan Scott Peck) These quotations, which were uttered in the 20th century, have in common that to be different is regarded not only as tolerable but also as something that should be pursued. Also, they reflect the process of increasing tolerance towards females and foreigners, which in many countries has taken place during the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, with the result that, today, these two groups are widely, although by far not entirely, regarded as equal. However, only two centuries ago, people who were different or ‘other’ were considered subordinate or even frightening, and in the 19th century, this was true for both females and people from the orient or colonized people (Barry 134, 193). In Jane Eyre (JE), published in 1847, and in Wide Sargasso Sea (WSS), the prequel or paraquel of JE that was written about one hundred years later and published in 1966, the two female protagonists, Jane, a female orphan, and Antoinette, a female Creole, struggle against displacement and patriarchal oppression and, in Antoinette’s case, also against imperialistic domination. In JE, the reader learns that Jane can handle this pressure whereas Antoinette/Bertha1...
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...Sept 3, 2014 The Merchant of Venice The Merchant of Venice is a play written by Shakespeare, the most influential writer in history. The Merchant of Venice is about a variety of relationships: “Father-daughter; husband-wife; male friends; female friends; money lender-borrower; and Christian-Jew.” The relationship explored in this essay is the father-daughter relationship of Shylock and Jessica. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender in Venice, and he is so immersed in the business that he neglects his daughter Jessica. Shylock despises Christians, because of the mistreatment he suffered at their hands, and he encourages Jessica to do the same. Jessica is very different from her father. She is in love with Lorenzo, a young Christian boy, who her father disapproves of. The relationship between shylock and Jessica is very dysfunctional. Example is when Jessica is talking with Launcelot and she says “I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so; our house is hell, thou a merry devil” (p.30). Jessica detests her home life and wants to leave it behind. She also states “Alack, what a heinous sin is it in me to be ashamed to be my father’s child...I shall end this strife, become a Christian, and thy loving wife” (p.31). Jessica is confined to her father’s wants and wishes, but she is very unhappy. Therefore, when a chance of freedom came she took it. Jessica chooses to elope with Lorenzo, the one she is in love with and convert to Christianity. Shylock was a bad father. For instance, he says...
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