What would influence you to change your name? Maybe you prefer your nickname or it is possibly because you cannot stand your own name. But, authors change their names very frequently for many purposes. In other words, authors use pen names. For an example, Charlotte Bronte changed her name to get her book published. Also, back in the old days, men did not take women writers seriously; publishers wouldn’t publish the book just because they were woman. Last but not least, pen names were also used to publish more then just one book a year. These pen names gave writers more freedom, liberty, flexibility and opportunity.
In the first place, pen names can be created in many different ways. You could create you own name like Benjamin Franklin, which went “under the persona of the middle-aged widow Silence Dogood”(What’s in a Name? By: E. Bennet). Also, you could use your abbreviations of your name as a pen name. A great example is J.K Rowling. In fear of young boys finding out a woman
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A woman could not publish anything without a pen name. “Considering Bronte’s position and her desire for literary achievement given that context, we are able to see why she felt compelled to write Jane Eyre and to publish it under a male pen name, Currer Bell” (Introducing Jane Eyre: An Unlikely Victorian Heroine). She couldn’t publish anything without creating a pen name. According to the article, Letter from Robert Southey to Charlotte Bronte, “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation.” During this Era, Woman were not taken seriously, men believed that they should stay home, cook and clean. Some women did not know how to read nor write, due to the fact that they did not have an opportunity for a proper
“Can you imagine what a mess a world would be without names? (website)Names are very important to a person and their individuality. Ayn Rand’s novel “Anthem” is a book in which the people written about do not have names. The importance of having your own individual names is huge. A name can have meaning given to it, like how the name Sue means lily. Most parents when giving you your name have a meaning behind it and put much thought into what their future child should be named. Names can give you a part of your identity.
Jane Eyre is about a girl named Jane who struggles to find who she really is and with it what she really wants. “As a model for women readers in the Victorian period and throughout the twentieth century to follow, Jane Eyre encouraged them to make their own choices in living their lives, to develop respect for themselves, and to become individuals” (Markley). One of the reasons why this book gained merit was because of its striking presence within its time period. During the “Victorian Age” woman did not have much say in society, so this novel broke boundaries to societal norms that restricted woman from things they have today. “Brontë is able to enact this tension through her characters and thus show dramatically the journey of a woman striving for balance within her nature.
Through out Lawrence Hill's novel names are often linked to identity and have importance for his characters. For example, Aminata's character attaches huge importance to her name. For Aminata it is an inextricable part of her identity. It links her to her homeland and her family. When Chekura says her full African name she is overwhelmed that someone knows her name and describes how this makes her want to live. Having her true name be known is a way of having her identity affirmed and helps her feel connected to her family, home and to Chekura. In fact, Aminata's character defiantly makes reference to her full name, including the name of the town she was born in. Holding onto her name helps her remain connected to the land and people she has left behind and to her own life story and origins. Further underscoring the importance of names in one...
Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë, was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Company, in London. This year is exactly ten years into Queen Victoria’s sixty-four year reign of the British Empire. The Victorian Era was renowned for its patriarchal Society and definition by class. These two things provide vital background to the novel, as Jane suffers from both. Jane Eyre relates in some ways to Brontë’s own life, as its original title suggest, “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography”. Charlotte Brontë would have suffered from too, as a relatively poor woman. She would have been treated lowly within the community. In fact, the book itself was published under a pseudonym of Currer Bell, the initials taken from Brontë’s own name, due to the fact that a book published by a woman was seen as inferior, as they were deemed intellectually substandard to men. Emily Brontë, Charlotte’s sister, was also forced to publish her most famous novel, Wuthering Heights, under the nom de plume of Ellis Bell, again taking the initials of her name to form her own alias. The novel is a political touchstone to illustrate the period in which it was written, and also acts as a critique of the Victorian patriarchal society.
Pen names are names that authors use instead of their real names. As stated in “What’s in a name?” Eric Blair uses the name “George Orwell” because he feared his early work would embarrass his family. Sometimes, a pen name is the only way an author can get published, sometimes depending on their gender or race. There have been many authors who could not get published because they were girls. The writer of the Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling thought that if she put her real name on Harry Potter, her readers wouldn’t take the book seriously if they knew a woman had written it. Many authors fear the same as Rowling.
Charlotte “Jane Eyre” Bronte was born April 21, 1816. She was born the third daughter out of six children. In 1824, Charlotte and her older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth Bronte, enrolled in the Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters’ School and obtained their education. Soon after Charlotte’s younger sister, Emily, joined them at the school, Maria and Elizabeth became very ill. Charlotte’s father, Patrick Bronte, requested for Maria and Elizabeth to be sent home to be taken care of. Charlotte and Emily were left to attend Cowan Bridge alone; however, this did not last long because they were soon requested home by their father as well. In the following year, Elizabeth and Maria both died of consumption. The death of these two beloved sisters took a toll on the Bronte family causing the remaining siblings to cling together for support and become best friends. Charlotte, her brother Branwell, Emily, and youngest sister Anne began to write epic stories and poems together, often set in the realm of the Kingdom of Gondal. This was the beginning of the legacy to be left by Charlotte Bronte. (Gerin, 169)
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.
Charlotte Bronte described one of the few occupations permitted women at this time in her book Jane Eyre. As stated previously the income received for such grueling work was one twenty fifth the tuition of Cobbe's tuition for boarding school.
My book was The City of Bones, written by Cassandra Clare. As a child Cassandra spent a lot of time traveling around the world. She went to Los Angeles for high school. After high school she worked for many entertainment and tabloids. She began writing fan fiction using the name Cassandra Clare. She deleted her fan fiction shortly before she wrote her first novel, “City of Bones”. Cassandra has written many other books, including the rest of the series to City of Bones. City of Ashes is the second book to the trilogy, and City of Glass is the third. As of now I think she is working on the next cycle of books for the Mortal Instruments series. She tells young writers about how she gets her ideas. She says that your ideas come from all around you, everything you experience in your everyday life.
The Victorian Era had lasted from the years 1837-1901. People in this era were known through their social class and how efficiently they were able to present themselves. Those who were obligated to carry themselves is such a proficient manner, were the women of Victorian Era. Although they had been expected to perform and execute many tasks, they were never recognized just as equal to the men in society. They were never acknowledged to make judgments or decisions, rather were best known for marriage, prostitution, and motherhood. As the men, dominated and took control of every decision possible. They were known for their aggressive and independent attitude. This led an extraordinary women named, Charlotte Brontë to begin a revolution of change and improvement in the social standings. As her living in the Victorian Era, set her upon a journey of many hardships but her well-known classics, Jane Eyre, depicted her strength and courage to step up for women equality and portray who she truly was in society.
Even though today Jane Austen is regarded for her writing, during her time she couldn’t even publish her work under her own name, because it was considered unladylike for women to be intellectual figures. Unlike J. K. Rowling and other English female writers today, who are well known for their works even without using their full names, Jane Austen lived within the sanctuary of a close-knit family and always published her works under a pseudonym that could not be traced back to her (jasna.org). Writing at the time was a male-dominated profession and women depended completely on men for their livelihood. During her upbringing she knew the importance of money to women in a severely classist and patriarchal society, and so marriage was the answer to the survival of women during this time (Helms 32). Even knowing these qualities were important in her life she criticized them. Jane’s writing is somewhat comical, because even while criticising those normal discriminations in her book Pride and Prejudice, the book was published with a prejudiced nameless cover, shedding even greater light on the lack of sense and shortcoming of sensibility of eighteenth century Great Britain. So in order for women to hide their identity while writing about things that were highly controversial they used male pen names. Female authors resorted to pseudonyms to become published and to not be shunned away by their readers, and only after they did this their work was taken as serious literature. Although we ask why do we see Jane Austen’s name printed on all her classical works? That is because we see it “today” in the current year. During her lifetime Jane Austen remained pretty much unidentified because all her novels were published anonymously unde...
In contrast to Wuthering Heights, which was written by a woman, Emily Brontë, was actually written under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Ellis is a gender-neutral name, and Charlotte, one of her sisters, wrote ‘…we did not like to...
Naming and Identity can shape a good portion of the person’s life. People are forever know by the name they are given and it can cause assumptions based on the name that was given to them. A way names can be used constructively is giving someone a name that doesn’t stand out too much but carries a certain sense of identity with it. Names like John, Anna, Anthony, Alexis, and Catherine all carry an image with them but they don’t stand out to the point of absurdity. A wrong way of using names would be to use something like Shithead (shi-thead) or North West. These names, while carrying a sense of identity, will open up people to not only ridicule through their school life but will make it hard for them in the future by causing employment issues from employers looking at their name and drawing a different image of who that person is. Names can seriously cripple or help someone depending on how it’s used.
In early medieval England last names were not common, as people only used their first names. Once the population increased it was harder to distinguish between each person since some names were more common amongst the people. Thus, surnames or last names became more common often based on lineage. It wasn’t until the ninth century england where women began to take the same last name as their husband. The reason was for the women to become “one” with their husband and was then required to assume the husband’s surname as their own. In my opinion I believe women still take their husband's last name because it’s a tradition. That’s just what happened years ago. Not only that, to some women they change their last name because they want to be apart
The novel, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë is about a female character battling society's conservative view on women's rights and roles in civilization. Jane Eyre was written during the Victorian Era when women were seen less than equals to men, but more as property and an asset. At the end of the era was when feminist ideas and the women's suffrage movement began to gain momentum. In the novel, Jane encounters three male characters, Mr.Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester and Mr. St. John Rivers, who try to restrict her from expressing her thoughts and emotions. In Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre, Victorian ideology influences today's society by making women seem inadequate to men. Brontë wants to convey that rather than conforming to other's opinions, women should seek freedom and break free of the barrier that society has created for them.