Within “Jane Eyre” and “The Yellow wallpaper”, both female writers themes focus on similar ideas in how women of the 19th century were manipulated and treated inadequately. Within “Jane Eyre” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” explore the themes of isolation, male dominance, and sickness the impact that these themes have on the main female characters within the text have similarities but also have there difference that contrast between each of the characters.
Jane Eyre, Bertha and Jane all at some point within the texts face the same fate of being sealed in a room against their own will and are isolated from the outside world. The way, in which Brontë writes allows the reader to sympathize with Jane Eyre’s emotions, experience, including her isolation in the red room. Jane Eyre is a young orphan isolated from her parents due to their death, she lives with her aunt and cousins, she is abused by her cousin John and receives punishment for Johns actions as a young child Jane Eyre recalls that “I shall remember how you thrust me back . . . into the red-room. . . . And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing” (Brontë 35). Locked into this empty room Jane Eyre becomes physically isolated from the world. Contrasted to Jane in The Yellow Wallpaper the difference is that Gilman’s Jane is trapped within the social world, of John, her “husband”, who also constantly manipulated Jane. He secluded her from the entire world, and he was known as the reason she went mad. If he had not forced her to sit in her room day as seen when Jane says, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition, if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus after day from the rest of the world,” (Gilman 60). then she ...
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...way. Mentally Jane and Bertha have completely gone mad, ending in death and complete psychosis.
In conclusion, the three women end up with different fates, they all face similar conditions within their lives. Each woman deals with their circumstances differently and it impacts not only their lives but also the men’s lives that they interact with throughout the story. Both authors highlight the key issues surrounded by the lack of power that women have, isolation, and mental health illness within the Victorian time period through their characters and enlighten the reader to the similarities and differences between the themes that Brontë and Gilman both address.
Works Cited
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Vol. 1. United States: Dover Publication INC., 2002.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Broadview Anthology of Short Fiction 1892: 60-75.
Victorian literature is a representation of society at the time. These Victorian authors have expressed their concerns with the dangers of the restrictions of society and the effect it has on women. Both “The Yellow Wallpaper and Wuthering Heights show the repression of women, the dependency on men, but also the resistance to a patriarchal society and its norms.
The situation when Jane in locked in the Red Room occurs because she has retaliated against John Reed hitting her and the fact that she is being punished for doing so. The mere fact that she is being locked in the Red Room can already accumulate sympathy within the reader because she is seemingly being very unfairly punished whereas her cousin John has attacked her already and managed to escape any punishment whatsoever. However in the events leading up to being locked in the room, the reader could not feel sympathy for Jane Eyre as she did in a way bring the punishment upon herself for attacking Mr. Reed in the first place. If she has not retaliated she would have not been locked in the room. Most readers however probably do feel sympathy for her as she was acting more in self-defence. She was also unfairly spoken too as they were dragging her to the room itself as they say things like she's like a mad cat' and do not seem to be letting her give an explanation at all for her actions, and only listening to what John had too say. They make sure that she knows her place by telling her that You are under obligation to Mrs. Reed' and that she is less than a servant'. These are not kind words and the reader will probably feel sympathetic as she is being treated as a worthless object. The room that she is sent too is a dark and unpleasant place with memories of the dead Mr. Reed. For a child of Jane's young age it would seemingly be very distressing for her, and with the added experience of her seemingly seeing a ghost' of some kind, it would be a terrible experience. Even if the reader has not felt sympathy for Jane before this incident they would surely feel so now, as she is in a distressing situation alone. When Jane first screams out for help from someone it does seem as though people are coming too help her as Bessie and Abbot come to open the door and ask her what is wrong and what has made her cry for help.
Jane seems to learn quickly that she is the only one who can help her break free from her entrapment. The first place Jane must learn how to leave is Gateshead. She is not happy at Gateshead because is constantly put down by her cousins and even the servants. Helen tries to teach Jane to forgive her enemies in order for Jane to be able move on and gain confidence in herself:
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, one of the most prevalent and recurring themes and ideas relates to human freedom. The main characters in the two novels, Edna Pontellier and Jane Eyre, both long for social, religious, and sexual emancipation among other things – freedom from the constraints of Victorian society, which have rendered them dependent and inferior to men. While it is true that both protagonists of their respective novels wanted emancipation, their living conditions and qualities of life varied widely. Even though both women, Edna and Jane, wanted “emancipation” from their respective societies, the conditions that each woman was subject to were quite dissimilar. Jane had a very malnourished upbringing and was an orphan, surround by treacherous and tormenting families. Edna, on the other hand, grew up in an affluent and aristocratic home, with little financial troubles. Edna is of a more “modern” generation than Jane, which must be taken into account when comparing the two, however. Jane Eyre was written in 1847 while The Awakening was written in 1899. Even so, both of these women, as was the case with women almost everywhere, had to succumb to what society deemed socially acceptable – very little. Women were generally no more than mere faces whose responsibilities fell into the categories of household affairs, and entertaining. Edna has money, a husband who loves her, children, friends, a large house, and everything else that comes from being wealthy at the time - but it’s not enough for her. She wants to be able to get what she wants when she wants. In this sense, Edna is slightly more “radical” than Jane because of her at times, open disregard for societal customs and traditions. Ult...
In the film, the viewer can see how the darkness in Jane’s past affects Jane’s future and how it creates a strong mystifying mood. Jane’s life was full of loneliness and solitude, after the death of her parents at an early age. In Jane’s childhood, she is left in the care of her cruel, aunt Mrs. Reed, who mistreated her. In her adulthood she is troubled by the Byronic Mr. Rochester. This can be seen when Jane is abused and put into “the blood red bed chamber” (Robinson). The purpose of putting Jane into the chamber is to torment her with the color of blood, and the presence of her dead uncle. The effect of the “Red Room” is to show little Jane’s breakdown as she experiences the dreadful misery and to increase the feeling of her being tortured which leads to a very ...
In the 19th century, women were not seen in society as being an equal to men. Men were responsible for providing and taking care of the family while their wives stayed at home not allowed leaving without their husbands. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about a woman named Jane who is trapped by society’s cage and tries to find herself. Throughout the story, the theme of self-discovery is developed through the symbols of the nursery, the journal and the wallpaper.
This novel was one of the most radical books of the Victorian Era. It portrayed women as equals to men. It showed that it was possible that men could even be worse than women, through John and Jane. It taught the Victorians never to judge a book by its cover. The novel would not be as successful were it not for Charlotte Brontë’s talent in writing, and were it not for the literary devices employed.
"I resisted all the way," (chapter 2) Jane says as she is borne away to be locked in the red-room of Gateshead, where she will experience a fit of rage that inevitably arises from her physical and emotional entrapment. Jane evinces her refusal to accept passively restrictive male standards as well as the female predilection towards anger early in the novel. That night in the red-room, Jane experiences a vehement anger that she describes as "oppressed" and "suffocated." From this impassioned rage Jane falls unconscious, and upon waking in the nursery, Jane finds herself prepared to challenge both the oppressive patriarchal society in which she is trapped and the anger this despotism incites. It is not until Jane reaches Thornfield some time later, that she is able to confront her own rage through her encounter with Bertha, Rochester's "savage" wife who has been locked away in the attic of Thornfield Hall for fifteen years. The two are aligned through the restrictions placed upon them by domineering patriarchs; their responses to these circumstances, however, make them antithetical counterparts. While Bertha kindles a fiery wrath toward her oppressor, Jane must learn to contend with her anger so that she will ultimately be free to live a life of true equality and love with Rochester. In the novel Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë draws distinct similarities between the red-room and the attic of Thornfield, suggesting the complex relationship between Jane and Bertha. While Brontë presents Jane as a woman who is determined to subsist in a patriarchal world without allowing her anger to consume her, she also offers Bertha as Jane's alter ego who is imprisoned by her own r...
In the novel, Jane Eyre starts as a young girl of ten years old; she lives with her aunt Mrs. Reed and her cousins John, Georgiana, and Eliza. At Gateshead, Jane has undergone betrayal in the acts that the Reed family does not treat her as a part of their family. Mrs. Reed treats Jane unkindly and as if she was a victim to put it, in other words, Mrs. Reed says “ take her away to the red-room and lock her in there” (Brontë, Ch. 1). Mrs. Reed
... the anger that she had expressed as a young girl, due to the fact that her society does not accept it. This anger that she once held inside is prevelant in Bertha's act. It is in the Red Room that Jane "became increasingly alive with bristling energy, feelings, and sensations, and with all sorts of terrifying amorphous matter and invisible phantoms" (Knapp 146). This igniting energy and flow of feelings, are very similar to those that Bertha realises at Thornfield.
The word ‘fear’ is recurring throughout the narrative as it imparts Jane’s endeavors to transcending the terrors of her life, preponderantly events from her childhood. As Mrs. Reed declares to ‘take her away to the red-room’, the passage unveils a traumatic encounter of Jane’s childhood. The scarlet hue in the Red Room exemplifies diverse meanings such as ‘fear’, ‘passion’, death, etc; symbolizing an emotional penitentiary for Jane as it coerces her to face that she is ostracized by the people around her. Accordingly, the scene’s importance enacts throughout the novel as the reader perceives Jane being haunted by the memory whenever her independence or self worth is in jeopardy. Furthermore, the author has the capability to provide a glimpse of the Victorian era as Jane compares herself to a ‘rebel slave’; Bronte, living in a time where women were oppressed in a social system dominated by men, exhibits her perception of the status of women – as equal to slaves imprisoned by circumstances beyond their control. This is reflected in the passage as Jane was chosen to be punished, despite John Reed’s
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre chronicles the growth of her titular character from girlhood to maturity, focusing on her journey from dependence on negative authority figures to both monetary and psychological independence, from confusion to a clear understanding of self, and from inequality to equality with those to whom she was formerly subject. Originally dependent on her Aunt Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst, and Mr. Rochester, she gains independence through her inheritance and teaching positions. Over the course of the novel, she awakens towards self-understanding, resulting in contentment and eventual happiness. She also achieves equality with the important masculine figures in her life, such as St. John Rivers and Mr. Rochester, gaining self-fulfillment as an independent, fully developed equal.
Bertha is Jane's truest and darkest double; she is the angry aspect of the orphan child, the ferocious secret self whom Jane has been trying to repress ever since her days at Gateshead. Brontë often places these two characters together, revealing the socially permissible through Jane who is juxtaposed with Bertha, her atrocious and unrestricted other half. If Bertha is Jane's darkest double throughout the novel, it is no wonder that Bertha manifests rage whenever Jane restrains her own anger. For example, as "bright visions" of "life, fire, [and] feeling" (101) appear to Jane on the third floor, she hears Bertha's "mirthless" laugh and "eccentric murmurs"
The three events that mark Jane as an evolving dynamic character are when she is locked in the red room, self reflecting on her time at Gateshead, her friendship with Helen Burns at LoWood, her relationship with Mr. Rochester, and her last moments with a sick Mrs. Reed. Brought up as an orphan by her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is accustomed to her aunts vindictive comments and selfish tendencies. Left out of family gatherings, shoved and hit by her cousin, John Reed, and teased by her other cousins, Georgina and Eliza Reed, the reader almost cringes at the unfairness of it all. But even at the young age of ten, Jane knows the consequences of her actions if she were to speak out against any of them. At one point she wonders why she endures in silence for the pleasure of others. Why she is oppressed. "Always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Bronte, 12). Jane’s life at Gateshead is not far from miserable. Not only is she bullied by her cousins and nagged by her aunt, but help from even Bessie, her nurse and sort of friend, seems out of her reach. In the red room scene Jane is drug by Ms. Ab...
Feminism is a global movement that affects women all around the world either directly or indirectly because of the discrimination that it defends. Over the years women have been limited to living in a male dominated world. Women have been alienated from educational opportunities, workforce or labor opportunities and most importantly financial opportunities. Being oppressed by these factors and others has left women with the little option of becoming a housewife or a servant, or inheritor. Feminism has proven to be a controversial yet present point in the works of literary giants such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and many others. Charlotte Bronte phenomenal novel Jane Eyre is developed with ample evidence that is a direct