Big Bertha Essays

  • Reactions to Patriarchal Oppression by Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason

    3815 Words  | 8 Pages

    Reactions to Patriarchal Oppression by Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason Missing Works Cited Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason are both oppressed by the British patriarchal system were men are the makers, interpreters, and enforcers of social and political rules. However, these two women differ greatly in the ways that they accept and cope with the reality of their place in society, and it is these differences that ultimately determine their fate. Jane Eyre follows the rules. Although she initially revolts

  • Jane Eyre

    3143 Words  | 7 Pages

    Jane Eyre is the story of a lovemad woman who has two parts to her personality (herself and Bertha Mason) to accommodate this madness. Charlotte Bronte takes the already used character of the lovemad woman and uses her to be an outlet for the confinement that comes from being in a male-dominated society. Jane has to control this madness, whereas the other part of her personality, her counterpart, Bertha Mason, is able to express her rage at being caged up. As what it means to be insane was changing

  • The Purpose of Sati in Jane Eyre

    2078 Words  | 5 Pages

    80). With the use of the custom of Sati, Charlotte Bronte writes a novel which coveys the contrast between the east and the west, the old and the new, revealed sexuality and repressed sexuality. The two characters, Jane and Bertha, each represent a different region; while Bertha represents the East and the ancient, Jane represents the new and the modern. Dorothy K. Stein finds that Sati was a motif used for feminist discussions in Victorian England: [Sati] did not occur in England, but many manifestations

  • Personification of Oppression in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

    1557 Words  | 4 Pages

    and her characteristics are manifested through several subtle parallels. These parallels relate to objects and nature, but mostly to one particular individual in the novel. A seemingly exact opposite of the persona's placid character, the maniacal Bertha Mason actually personifies an inner part of Jane, the part of her personality that longs to live free but goes crazy under the oppression of society, and especially that of Mr. Rochester. Jane's doppelgänger, or counterpart, truly doubles Miss Eyre's

  • Bertha as Jane's Alter Ego in Jane Eyre

    1471 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bertha as Jane's Alter Ego in Jane Eyre "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"

  • The Metamorphosis of Bertha in Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss

    2155 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Metamorphosis of Bertha in Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss” is quite an interesting story full of underlying meanings and themes. Upon a first reading, it seems to be a simple story of a woman who feels uncontainable bliss one day, only to have it end when she discovers her husband is having an affair. Although this is a correct interpretation, after a second reading, much more is apparent. “Bliss” is a story of the revelation of a vibrant young woman, of criticism

  • Postcolonial Discourse in Wide Sargasso Sea

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë's legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean. The story is set just after the emancipation of the slaves, in that uneasy time when racial relations in the Caribbean were at their most strained. Antoinette (Rhys renames her and has Rochester impose the name of Bertha on her when their relationship dissolves) is descended

  • Delia's Marriage in Hurston's Sweat

    2162 Words  | 5 Pages

    even before the first year had passed. She was young and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscles limbs, her harsh knuckly hands, and drew herself up into an unhappy little ball in the middle of the big feather bed. Too late now to hope for love, even if it were not Bertha it would be someone else. This case differed from the others only in that she was bolder than the others. Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the

  • Colonising Within the Marriage in Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

    1147 Words  | 3 Pages

    identity for Rochester's mad wife, Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, as Rhys felt that Bronte had totally misrepresented Creole women and the West Indies: 'why should she think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester's wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I'd write a story as it might really have been.' (Jean Rhys: the West Indian Novels, p144).  It is clear that Rhys wanted to reclaim a voice and a subjectivity for Bertha, the silenced Creole, and to subvert

  • The Oppressed Female in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    relationship between sexuality and morality in Victorian society through the character of Bertha Mason, the daughter of a West Indian planter and Rochester's first wife. Rochester recklessly married Bertha in his youth, and when it was discovered shortly after the marriage that Bertha was sexually promiscuous, Rochester locked her away. Bertha is called a "maniac" and is characterized as insane. Confining Bertha for her display of excess passion reinforces a prevalent theme in Jane Eyre, that of

  • No Reason to Ban Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

    1913 Words  | 4 Pages

    live together. The idea of a strictly physical love is shown briefly through Mellors and his marriage to his first wife. Though the two had a stable marriage based on physical love, it eventually deteriorated to the point of them living separately. Bertha re... ... middle of paper ... ...between sex and love. Limiting and censoring books in just a way for some to keep others ignorant. Works Cited 1. Bloom, Harold (Editor), Twentieth-Century British Literature Volume 3. Chelsea House:

  • I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

    757 Words  | 2 Pages

    obstacles and has grown into one of the élite intellectual people of this country, and perhaps the world. Along her numerous struggles, various people have given her positive guidance and passed down their knowledge to her. Among these people was Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a person in which Maya respected greatly. She was a dignified person that Maya could strive to achieve the gratitude that Mrs. Flowers gave to the people around her, a sense of appreciation. In her life story, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

  • Fire Imagery in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

    2653 Words  | 6 Pages

    from a source of passionate love, not of vengeance, and the possibility of being consumed by it is as seductive as it is terrifying" (128). Jane thus creates fire and uses this ... ... middle of paper ... ...'s eyes. Through the destruction of Bertha, Jane is able to come to terms with her idea of self-consuming passion. Berth's death was the liberating factor for Jane. It was the release of the suppressed passions that were dwelling inside her. The fires that Jane speaks after the reuniting of

  • Leni Riefenstahl

    2428 Words  | 5 Pages

    over was her involvement and relationship with Hitler and the Nazis party. This report will look over Leni’s early to role as director of her Infamous films Triumph of the Will and Olympia and her involvement and view of Nazism and Hitler. Helene Bertha Amelie (Leni) was born on 22 August 1902 in Berlin. Leni lived in a comfortable middle-class family. Since a young age Leni has had a passion for dance. Leni’s dancing career began in the 1920s, during the Weimar republic that saw the birth of a culturally

  • Jane Eyre as Feminist Role Model for all Women

    2452 Words  | 5 Pages

    her relationships, and to follow her example in their own lives.  Just as we see Jane as a model of a woman successful in asserting her self-worth, we are also given a warning about the possible outcome of failure to realize self-worth in Bertha Rochester.  This facet will also be discussed briefly.  Bronte uses the motivation of personal experiences to create the life of Jane Eyre in which we see the quest for social betterment through her relationships. Bronte herself

  • Muddy Waters

    845 Words  | 2 Pages

    industry up until and even after his death in 1983. Morganfield was born April 4, 1915 to Ollie Morganfield and Bertha Jones. He was born in Rollingfork, Mississippi. Near their two room shack in Rollingfork there was a creek, Deer Creek. As a youngster he used to play in the creek and get all dirty and muddy. It was at this point when his sisters gave him the nickname ‘Muddy Waters’. Bertha died when he was about three. After her death he had to move in with his grandmother in Clarksdale. Raised in

  • Jane Eyre - Woman as Demon

    1959 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jane Eyre - Woman as Demon Missing Works Cited Women in Victorian literature often came to be seen as "the other" or in more direct terms, as somehow demonized. This is certainly true in Jane Eyre. Bertha Mason, Rochester's mad wife, is the epitome of the demon in the attic. By virtue of being the first wife she is in continually compared to Jane. Although there are parallels in plot and language between the two women, they are completely different people. In addition, Bronte also depicts other

  • Laying the Last Minstrel in Jane Eyre

    2127 Words  | 5 Pages

    Jane and Rochester’s marriage, pride is a major factor in keeping them apart. The first instance where The Lay of the Last Minstrel appears in Jane Eyre is the scene where Jane tells Rochester of the night that someone (she later learns it was Bertha) came to her bedroom and ripped the veil she was supposed to wear at Jane and Rochester’s wedding: "But, sir, as it grew dark, the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening not as it blows now – wild and high – but ‘with a sullen, moaning sound’ far more

  • Comparing Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

    3183 Words  | 7 Pages

    discount this oversimplified view. Both fires are set by arsonists described as insane. Bronte's Bertha is "the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch" (Bronte 435). Rhys's Antoinette recalls "a horrible noise sprang up" from the attacking freedmen, "like animals howling, but worse" (Rhys 38). This madness, however, serves different purposes for each scene. Bronte uses madness to further degrade Bertha to the level of bestiality and insanity, a theme which she develops from the very moment the character

  • The Issue of Happiness in Gooseberries

    914 Words  | 2 Pages

    you happy? What do you do in order to attain happiness? Only after you answer these questions will you be able to understand the word in the way that Chekhov intended. Wouldn't it be difficult to suppress happiness? If you don't think so, just ask Bertha from Bliss. In the first paragraph of Gooseberries, the last line reads, "On this still day, when the whole of nature seemed kindly and pensive, Ivan Ivanich and Burkin felt a surge of love for this plain, and thought how vast and beautiful their