To be able to discuss adequately how the master narratives of Bronte and Rhys’ time are revised, one must first understand what those master narratives were and what the social mood of the time was. From there one will be able to discuss how they were revised, and if in fact they were revised at all. Bronte is known as one of the first revolutionary and challenging authoress’ with her text Jane Eyre. The society of her time was male dominated, women were marginally cast aside and treated as trophies for their male counterparts. Their main role in life was to be a mother and a wife, “ Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life……the more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it.” A quote from a letter Robert Southey wrote to Bronte. A clear sign of the mentality and opposition Bronte was up against. A woman’s “proper duties” of course being to tend and wait on her “master’s” every whim and need. Women during Bronte’s time had no clear voice, none that was of any merit, they were a silent category of society, silenced by their male oppressors. Bronte’s book was in fact written before the first women’s rights movement had happened, yet it puts forward an image of an independent strong character, of a passionate and almost rebellious nature. A character “refusing subservience, disagreeing with her superiors, standing up for her right’s, and venturing creative thoughts.” I put forward that Bronte throughout her text not only revises the themes of male power and oppression, but reconstructs them also. The text is a female bildungsroman of it’s time, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly tackling the patriarchal view of women. Immediately from the start Bronte’s character Jane is different. She is an orphan, mis-treated and despised by her family. She has no clear social position, is described as “less than a servant” and treated like one. A protagonist who one would assume had no characteristics worth aspiring too. Jane is displayed perfectly in her hiding behind the curtain. She is placed by a window, which beyond is icy and cold, contrasting immensely from the inside of the fire and warmth. A clear statement of the icy coldness of the family she has been put to live with, and her fiery and passionate nature which we discover th... ... middle of paper ... ...ing novels of their time. They both revise aspects of their era, that would rarely, if ever, have been touched on. Wide Sargasso Sea having the double revision of challenging Jane Eyre, as well as social beliefs. “The devices that connect the two texts also rupture the boundary between them. Although this rupture completes Rhys’ text, it results in a breakdown of the integrity of Bronte’s.” As much as Bronte’s text was revolutionary of her time, so too was Rhys’. Time changed and what was once revolutionary became simplified and unbelievable. The fact remains, that without Jane Eyre, there would be no Wide Sargasso Sea, the two text’s are mutually exclusive, and just as revolutionary now as when they were written. -Gordon, Lyndall, Charlotte Bronte: A passionate life. (London: Vintage, 1995) -Margaret McFadden – Gerber, Ed Frank N Magill, Critical Evaluation, Masterplots, Vol 6, (1996) -Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London:Penguin:First Published 1847) -Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, (London:Penguin:1966) -Ellen G Friedman, Breaking the Master Narrative: Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in Breaking the Sequence: Women’s Experimental Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989,
The beginning of the novel starts out with a picture of a peaceful home that is very similar to the Moor House Jane lives in while visiting her cousins. It even states in line 2 that Bronte feels like the place is familiar. There is “marshland stretched for miles” ( ln 1) outside the home like the land of England in Jane Eyre. This common setting is also connecting how much Charlotte Bronte is like her character Jane. Dunn describes Bronte as “passionate [and] assertive” (ln 12) which is much like Jane Eyre’s character. Bronte is also said to not “come back to complain or haunt” (ln 20), and she lives in a “mod...
In the first few chapters, Bronte establishes Jane's character as a young girl who is the
Jane Eyre's literary success of the time has been cheaply commercialized. In other words, Bronte's novel never got the appreciation it deserved, in the areas it deserved. Many 19th century critics merely assigned literary themes to their reviews to "get it over with". Critics commended Jane Eyre for everything from its themes to its form. However, their surface examinations amount to nothing without careful consideration of the deeper underlying background in Jane's life where their hasty principles originate. The widely discussed free will of Jane's, her strong individuality, and independence are segments of a greater scheme, her life. For example: Jane's childhood serves as the most important precedent for all of the self-realism although this purpose is widely disregarded. Even though "many have celebrated Bronte's carefully wrought description of her protagonist's first eighteen years for its vivid pathos, no one has as yet accorded this childhood its deserved weight in the novels ultimate resolution." (Ashe 1) Jane Eyre's genius develops in a series of internal reactions to external circumstances rather than shallow judgments about those internal happenings.
The novel Wide Sargasso Sea isn't just a prequel to Jane Eyre, but rather a significant re-writing of the classic Victorian aged writings. This time around Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a young Creole girl living in the British Colony of Jamaica, and Rochester's marriage is no longer a harsh sub-story. It is actually the main plot in which the genders battle over emotional and economical control. Throughout the blend of twisted romance, island mystery, and deceptive magic, the deep rooted love themes appear. The many emotions of desire, lust, trust, and happiness are portrayed, but also hate, fear, and jealousy.
Analyse the methods Charlotte Brontë uses to make the reader empathise with Jane Eyre in the opening chapters. Reflect on how the novel portrays Victorian ideology and relate your analysis to the novel’s literary content.
Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre depicts the passionate love Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester have for each other, and as Bertha Mason stands in the way of the happiness of Brontë's heroine, the reader sees Mason as little more than a villainous demon and a raving lunatic. Jean Rhys' serves as Mason's defendant, as the author's 1966 novella Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre, seeks to explore and explain Bertha's (or Antoinette Cosway's) descent into madness. Rhys rejects the notion that Antoinette has been born into a family of lunatics and is therefore destined to become one herself. Instead, Rhys suggests that the Cosways are sane people thrown into madness as a result of oppression. Parallels are drawn between Jane and Antoinette in an attempt to win the latter the reader's sympathy and understanding. Just as they did in Jane Eyre, readers of Wide Sargasso Sea bear witness to a young woman's struggle to escape and overcome her repressive surroundings. Brontë makes heavy use of the motif of fire in her novel and Rhys does the same in Wide Sargasso Sea. In Rhys' novella, fire represents defiance in the face of oppression and the destructive nature of this resistance.
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.
Jane Eyre, the female protagonist of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, begins the novel as a ten-year old orphan living with her aunt in Victorian England. As an orphan, Jane gains very few happy experiences with her cousins—John, Georgina, and Eliza Reed—and her aunt—Mrs. Reed, and she has even fewer privileges in the Gateshead estate where she is viewed as “less than a servant [because] she does nothing for her keep” (14). However, Jane, for a youth of barely ten years, clearly communicates an intrinsic dream to find a community in which she not only feels loved and respected, but also finds that she can act independently of this community. Unfortunately, these desires work against the conventions of society that would rather see Jane be “kept humble” (36) and utilized “properly” according to her class. Nevertheless, Jane Eyre’s precise articulation, effective assimilation will help her conquer society’s conventions and gain a sense of individualism.
Mezei, Kathy. "'And it Kept its Secret': Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea." Critique 28.4 (1987): 195-209.
Jane Eyre is a novel that explores the Victorian theme of the emergence of feminism. The Victorian Era is distinguished in history as a time when men and women started to become equal; when women started to question their place in society. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë’s hero in Jane Eyre, embodied the ideas of a feminist, rather, the ideas that Charlotte believed which were portrayed through Jane. Throughout Jane Eyre, Jane is continuously on a search to love, be loved, and find acceptance. The opening of the novel, we see Jane as a helpless young girl living as a dependent. She is abused by her dense cousin, John Reed, until her wicked Aunt, Mrs. Reed, sends her away to Lowood. Living with the Reed family sets Jane up for a life of inner turmoil as from a young age no one would love her or accept her.
While Jane Eyre is told exclusively from Jane’s point of view, Wide Sargasso Sea is told from three different vantage points. The novel begins from Antoinette’s point of view and through her narrative, we as readers can appreciate her character and share her feelings and travel with her from Jamaica to Rochester’s manor. In the first part of the novel, Rhys handles the narration so as to show Antoinette growing up, remembering her childhood and youth up to the point when her marriage to Rochester is arranged. As a child, Rhys has Antoinette recalls rumors pertaining to her family. Rhys is conveying to the readers that Antoinette is still speaking, but is, at the same time, is portraying how the while populace views her family in the Caribbean. As readers, we are able to see how Antoinette and her family are different from the people in this community.
Mezei, Kathy. "'And it Kept its Secret': Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea." Critique 28.4 (1987): 195-209.
The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys were produced at different times in history. Indeed, they were created in different centuries and depicted extensively divergent political, social and cultural setting. Despite their differences, the two novels can be compared in the presentation of female otherness, childhood, and the elements that concern adulthood. Indeed, these aspects have been depicted as threatening the female other in the society. The female other has been perceived as an unfathomable force that is demonic in nature but respects these enigmatic threatening characters. The female other has been portrayed as intensely alienated while grows knowing that their actions are subject to ridicule, rumor,
Jane Eyre is a revolutionary text that allows us as 21st era readers to reflect back to issues that we are still faced with today. It leaves us to question whether these issues have improved or whether we are still very much a woman of the Victorian era. Whilst it seems odd to relate to someone that lives in a drastically different environment, the challenges that Jane faces have all happened to us. I definitely had a few light bulb moments when I went that’s happened to me, for example being picked on by a teacher or loving someone that we have really no chance with because we are apparently of a “lower standard”. Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre challenges us with rich narrative and vocabulary, a style of writing we are not accustomed to, and enables us to learn some history whilst being taken on a journey of a young Victorian woman. Thank you.
The construction of Jane Eyre as a seemingly flawless and strong character serves two purposes in the text. The primary purpose is to display the Victorian struggle for women against patriarchal dominance. The patriarchal systems of dominance and control within the Victorian society were the sole machinery that advanced the colonial interests of the male gender against the female gender. In Jane Eyre, the female gender is portrayed as particularly weak and lacking in the necessary strengths that are required to pursue their interests. Jane Eyre becomes a rebel within the system by articulating open and consistent defiance against the status quo. Her travails, challenges, successes and final triumph signify the determined shift by the author in portraying women as different beings other than the weak and fragile characters that were consistent with the Victorian meta-...