Comparing and contrasting Jane Eyre to Lord of the Flies
The children's childhood in 'Lord of the Flies' is similar to Jane's
in 'Jane Eyre' e.g. just like the boys, she is scared of something
that may not be real. Jane is afraid to go into the 'Red Room', when
Jane is told that she must go to the Red Room she says 'O Aunt! Have
pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it - let me be punished some other
way!' She is afraid of the ghost of Mr. Reed who died in the room a
long time ago. She has never seen the ghost but she is still afraid of
the possibility that it might be there. This is similar to the boys in
'Lord of the Flies' who are scared of the 'beast' that inhabits the
island their plane has crashed on, even though none of the children
have seen it. In both of these incidents the children are afraid of
something in their heads.
Jane is different to the boys in 'Lord of the Flies' because the boys
go looking for the 'beast' to prove that it does or does not exist.
Jane doesn't even want to go near the red room and is quite happy to
forget about the possibility of a ghost.
Jane is disliked by the people around her (the Reeds). This is just
like Piggy in the way that they are both disliked by the people around
them. They have nowhere else to go so they must endure the agony of
being hated.
Jane reads a lot of books and in 'Lord of the Flies', when the boys
first arrive on the island they compare their situation to the books
that they have read i.e. Coral Island.
In 'Jane Eyre' Jane hates the place that she has to live in and wishes
that she could go and live somewhere else. Her knowledge of what she
has read and how much imagination she has is shown here because in the
book she wants to go and live in Lilliput or Brodingnad. The boys on
the other hand love the place that they are in at the start - the
prospects of no adults to control them are endless, but when the order
the Democracy they created falls through, they begin to hate the
island and wish to leave.
The only adult relationship in 'Lord of the Flies' is very brief, it
is between Ralph and the Navy Officer who has come to rescue the boys
from the island. The officer does not understand Ralph or what has
happened on the island.
We learn that Jane is a young girl who is a victim of emotional and
bits like this help to shape Jane into a Lady and who she will be when
Reed had received a letter from a John Eyre of Madeira; saying that he wanted to meet Jane and wanted to adopt her because he didn't have any family himself, he was not married and had no children. As the merciless person she was, she did not want Jane to experience the feeling of hope or contentment. The author's use of Jane being locked in the red room, as a symbol of hell. Jane is being punished for her sins and her boorishness; meanwhile, in the room, Jane becomes hysterical when she thinks she sees her dead uncles ghost, which becomes a traumatic experience for her that leads to her being unconsciousness. The red room symbolizes the death of Mr.Reed and the promise Mrs. Reed vowed to keep to take care of Jane and that she be treated and
From an early age Jane is aware she is at a disadvantage, yet she learns how to break free from her entrapment by following her heart. Jane appears as not only the main character in the text, but also a female narrator. Being a female narrator suggests a strong independent woman, but Jane does not seem quite that.
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...
Jane spends her first 10 years of her life at Gateshead Hall, a lavish mansion. She lived with her Aunt, Mrs Reed, and three cousins, Eliza, Georgina and John. During her time in the mansion she wouldn't dare argue with the mistress, and fulfilled every duty. Jane is deprived of love, joy and acceptance. She is very much unwanted and isolated.
In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre there are many occasions in which there is motifs about division and bias relations. Money was a major division between people in the Victorian Era. Family made people rise in the standings with others, If your family was rich or well known, then you were going to be well known and well liked. There are many situations in which Jane is thought of as poor and worthless, as well as having no family.
If we look at the world, through Jane's eyes we see that she is a
... the red room and likewise, saw a reflection of her in Mr. Rochester. In both traumatizing situations, Jane ironically experiences an outer body experience from within her body. In the red room she literally saw herself and fainted because of the sight of herself, but when conversing with Mr. Rochester she saw the hatred she had for Mrs. Reed in his hatred for Bertha. For example, "the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones," (306)
Jane Eyre’s continuous search for love, a sense of belonging, and family are all thoroughly displayed by Charlotte Brontë. Jane starts off as a despised orphan who is captivated by the thought of love, believing that it will help her achieve happiness. Throughout the novel, Jane attempts to find different substitutes to fill the void in her life.
At the start of Jane Eyre, Jane is living with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her family after being orphaned. Jane is bitterly unhappy there because she is constantly tormented by her cousins, John, Eliza, and Georgiana. After reading the entire book you realize that Jane was perfectly capable of dealing with that issue on her own, but what made it unbearable was that Mrs. Reed always sided with her children, and never admitted to herself that her offspring could ever do such things as they did to Jane. Therefore, Jane was always punished for what the other three children did, and was branded a liar by Mrs. Reed. This point in the book marks the beginning of Jane's primary conflict in the novel. She feels unloved and unaccepted by the world, as her own family betrays her.
"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...
Watching the narrator lose her sanity can be more terrifying for the readers than simply looking for an otherworldly being or a logical explanation. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” she is aware of her revulsion to the wallpaper, and yet, is unaware of the haunting consequence it has on her mind. “He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn’t, and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately” (Gilman). Most stories try to terrify in a predictable, more traditional manner, “The Red Room” by H.G. Wells is terrifying i...
... 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.
During the era were Jane lived it was thought to be a selfish for women to show desire, it was a bad emotion that women were expected to control and keep quite. To perform one's duty to society was thought to be respectful and should be put before anything else. Desire is a term to want something or someone very strongly no matter what the outcome is. Duty in contrast, is a moral obligation to something that somebody is obliged to do for moral, legal, or religious reasons , which is thought to be selfless. The decisions made regarding these emotions are significant throughout Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte shows us Jane’s integrity helps her find the balance between duty to herself, and desire to stay.