...To what extent can Bertha be seen as ‘the repressed side’ of Jane’s personality? In the novel Bronte makes several comparisons between Jane and Bertha to show Bertha to be the repressed side to Jane’s personality. To repress something means to hold back an act of volition. This means that Bertha is the personification of Jane’s hidden feelings and passions and is shown through her characteristics and mannerisms. It can be argued that Bertha is the repressed side of Jane’s personality due to the fact that they are both described as animals. Jane is described as a ‘masterless and stray dog’. This gives the impression that Jane isn’t seen as anything more than a mere dog because she is very obedient to repress her passions which shows her to be subdued in her character. . The use of the verb ‘masterless’ could suggest that she doesn’t belong to anyone, this could be due to the fact that she moved from one place to another and so hasn’t been able to settle down with anyone. The use of the verb ‘stray’ suggests that Jane doesn’t belong anywhere and she has no real home. We know this to be true because, again, through her life she’s been moved from one place to another and so has nowhere in which she can call home. The theme of animals could link with Bertha because, just like Jane, Bertha is also described as an animal however a more vicious animal. Jane describes Bertha as ‘a clothed hyena’ and also states that she sounds like ‘a dog quarrelling’. This shows that even though Bertha...
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...all voices and perspectives together in which Antoinette has the role of a 19th century heroine in colonial Era. In effect, Wide Sargasso Sea challenges the point of view which we perceive from Jane Eyre since there is a different point of view than in Bronte’s novel. Briefly, Rhys' novel is a retelling of Bronte’s novel where Rhys particularly pays attention to the negative effects that the culture of the Caribbean went through, due to the European colonization. Actually, Post-colonial writing revises European historical details, by giving accounts using different perspectives of the colonized peoples. In this novel specifically, Rhys manages to give voice to the previous Bronte’s Creole madwoman, now known as Antoinette. By imagining Antoinette's history before being locked in the attic, a terrible fate that Bronte led her to, Rhys...
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...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 locked doors[2], and confining them to the attic or the madhouse might indeed have been a convenient way to dispose of unwanted wives and daughters. Most of the patients admitted to the new asylums were women, and they were mainly admitted because of “Hysteria”.[3] At that point hysteria had various definitions; physical aggression, grandeur, sexuality, alcoholism, addiction to drugs,...
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...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 literally locked up in the attic. Jane paces the attic floor when she felt extremely restless and closed in: “Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it” (p.129). Similar to Jane, Bertha is described to continually pace and run in her attic cell. It is also important to note that they are only separated by a single wall by at this point in the novel. However, when comparing the two it is not these obvious differences in class, behavior, and the physical that are important. The difference that defines these women and determines each of their fates is in the way they accept their roles as women in a male-dominated society. Bertha and Jane were born into this society; due to their circumstances and the time period they had little choice but to accept it. Their only survival alternatives involve...
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...text for post-colonial purposes. The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's famous 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...
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...Rochester is a different type of hero, while displaying qualities superior to most men, his unconventional outlook borders on villainy. Discuss the characterization of Mr Rochester in jane eyre in light of this statement. Mr Rochester is different and varies from the idea of the conventional tragic Byronic hero. Byronic heroes are usually extraordinarily handsome or appealing physically. However, from a physical point of view, Mr Rochester is not in any way handsome in a traditional sense. In chapter 13, he is described as “having broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy”. Although his craggy looks should in fact make him a social outcast, he overcomes his physical “deformities” by having a passionate and colourful personality, making him one of the most sensual and interesting characters in jane eyre. People are drawn to him despite his physical appearance, and he has a high standing in society (although this could be attributed partly to his wealth). Next, Byronic heroes are wounded physically and/or emotionally—vulnerable in some way. We first encounter Mr Rochester when his horse slipped on the ice, causing him to fall...
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...the passivity forced onto women, the aura of mystery that subsequently surrounds the feminine, and the mental illness that inevitably follows. Gilman’s text is a tale that warns of the dangers of forcing inactivity onto women. The narrator’s husband, a physician named John, diagnoses her with a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 648). He prescribes for her uninterrupted isolation: a “rest cure.” This was a common treatment for hysteria and nervousness for women in the setting of this story, and the narrator is no exception. She is forbidden from doing even the most menial tasks, much less pursuing the writing she so desperately craves. Gilbert and Gubar explain the reason of this happening in The Madwoman in the Attic when they say “for women in particular patriarchal culture has always assumed mental exercises would have dire consequences” (1934). The narrator has always had an active imagination, especially when she was younger: “I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store” (Gilman 650). The men in the narrator’s life believe that any intellectual stimulation would only make her condition worse, even though mental exercises are exactly what she needs. This “rest cure” proves to be ironic as it greatly feeds into the narrator’s growing mental unrest, and ultimately leads to her total undoing. As a result of this forced passivity, many women...
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...Art as Technique 1. Defamiliarization is stripping objects or subjects from their individual or “familiar” characteristics and giving them unusual or “unfamiliar” traits to allow the reader to see it in a whole new perspective. An example of this is in Tolstoy's defamiliarization of spanking, explaining the act as “to strip people who have broken the law, to hurl them to the floor, and to rap on their bottoms with switches.” The crude description removes the disciplinary context it had and creates a vicious and “savage” form of abuse. This continues with Tolstoy saying “Just why precisely this stupid, savage means of causing pain and not any other – why not prick the shoulders or any part of the body with needles, squeeze the hands or the feet in a vice, or anything like that?” The initial reaction to the latter quote is condemning its barbaric nature. However upon thinking that, it exposes several contradictions and hypocritical opinions as the only thing that changed in both scenarios was the form of punishment, not the infliction of pain on the child itself. Like Shklovsky said “the object isn’t important,” it is the connotations it conveys. 2. The concept is quite prevalent in feminist literature, specifically in the feminist critique in which most, if not all, the female characters are produced by men and male-oriented literature. However, gynocriticism isn’t immune to this technique as it could easily be exploited to further “radical feminism”. In the feminist...
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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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...Discuss the 'Fallen Woman' as a Familiar Feature of Victorian Writing Victorian social conventions placed the female inside the male domain, a domestically cultivated flower rather than a wild one, uncontrollable and free to roam. Woman was idealised: the angel in the house, the wife complementing her husband, the helpmate of man. Social conditions offered the Victorian woman little in occupation so her aim in life was to secure a husband, succumbing to the political propaganda. As Foster states: Because so much importance was attached to the roles of wifehood and motherhood, marriage was deemed the apotheosis of womanly fulfilment, alternatives to which were regarded as pitiable or unnatural.( Foster 1985: 6) In this role of wife, woman's great function is to praise her husband and, in return, she shall be praised for ruling inside the home where she can be 'incapable of error' (Ruskin 1865: 149) In Ruskin's lecture his view is that a husband is a chivalric knight guarding his wife from the 'peril and trial' he encounters. For the 'noble' woman, her true place is in the home, an 'incorruptibly good household nun', praised for choosing 'self-renunciation' over 'self-development'(D'Amico 1992: 69). This could also be viewed as oppression. Rather than the female 'complementing' the male, she is oppressed by him, and the praise offered by Ruskin could be viewed as a weapon, lulling the female into a false consciousness, trapping her inside the home. For the Victorian...
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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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...UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS FACULDADE DE LETRAS COMTEMPORARY WOMEN’S WRITING PROF. DR. SANDRA ALMEIDA ANA PAULA RAPOSO Women we know: a biographical critical analysis on Unless by Carol Shields Belo Horizonte 2013 Sumário Introduction 3 Men and Women 4 Writers and Readers 7 Goodness 9 Mothers and Children 10 Referências 13 Women we know: a biographical critical analysis on Unless by Carol Shields Introduction Unless is the last novel written by Carol Shields, before she passed away of breast cancer in 2003. The novel is structured in a first person narrative; the narrator is Reta Winters, a 44-year old writer and translator. Throughout the narrative, the reader follows a linear chain of thoughts by Reta on the central theme of the novel, which is her quest to find out why her daughter Norah decided to drop out of university and live on the street with a sign on her chest written "Goodness". The essay will be developed through research in primary sources – interviews – in order to analyze Carol Shield’s work using mostly, but not only, her own concepts and reflections on Literature, writing and being a writer, and composition process of Unless. Many scholars have made researches on the novel, especially about language resources, metafiction and gender issues. The most cited work is Nora Foster Stovel’s ““Because she is a woman”: Myth and Metafiction in Carol Shield’s Unless”. By investigating her compositional...
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...B.A. (HONOURS) ENGLISH (Three Year Full Time Programme) COURSE CONTENTS (Effective from the Academic Year 2011-2012 onwards) DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DELHI DELHI - 110007 0 Course: B.A. (Hons.) English Semester I Paper 1: English Literature 4(i) Paper 2: Twentieth Century Indian Writing(i) Paper 3: Concurrent – Qualifying Language Paper 4: English Literature 4(ii) Semester II Paper 5: Twentieth Century Indian Writing(ii) Paper 6: English Literature 1(i) Paper 7: Concurrent – Credit Language Paper 8: English Literature 1(ii) Semester III Paper 9: English Literature 2(i) Paper 10: Option A: Nineteenth Century European Realism(i) Option B: Classical Literature (i) Option C: Forms of Popular Fiction (i) Paper 11: Concurrent – Interdisciplinary Semester IV Semester V Paper 12: English Literature 2(ii) Paper 13: English Literature 3(i) Paper 14: Option A: Nineteenth Century European Realism(ii) Option B: Classical Literature (ii) Option C: Forms of Popular Fiction (ii) Paper 15: Concurrent – Discipline Centered I Paper 16: English Literature 3(ii) Paper 17: English Literature 5(i) Paper 18: Contemporary Literature(i) Paper 19: Option A: Anglo-American Writing from 1930(i) Option B: Literary Theory (i) Option C: Women’s Writing of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (i) Option D: Modern European Drama (i) Paper 20: English Literature 5(ii) Semester VI Paper 21: Contemporary Literature(ii) Paper 22: Option A: Anglo-American Writing from 1930(ii) Option B:...
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...12/7/2015 Wuthering Heights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wuthering Heights From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. Written between October 1845 and June 1846,[1] Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell"; Brontë died the following year, aged 30. Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey were accepted by publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.[2] Although Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of English literature, contemporary reviews for the novel were deeply polarised; it was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality.[3][4] The English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti referred to it as "A fiend of a book – an incredible monster ... The action is laid in hell, – only it seems places and people have English names there."[5] In the second half of the 19th century, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, but following later re-evaluation, critics began to argue that Wuthering Heights was superior.[6] The book has inspired adaptations...
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...Reading Between the Lines: An analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, using Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto as an example of male discourse about women Louise Othello Knudsen English Almen, 10th semester Master’s Thesis 31-07-2012 Tabel of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Historical Context .............................................................................................................................. 10 The View on Women and Their Expected Roles in the late 18th and 19th Century ....................... 11 - Mary Shelley disowns herself .................................................................................................. 11 - Mary Shelley’s Background .................................................................................................... 12 Women’s Role in Frankenstein ..................................................................................................... 13 Men’s Role in Frankenstein ........................................................................................................... 13 - Women in Society and Women as Writers .........................................................
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