Rochester is a mimic of the occident despite being a member of the society. He is ‘almost the same’ but patriarchal structures meant that the younger son would not gain as much as the first born, and so he is victimized by his difference, just as Antoinette is. Sylvie Maurel believes that by ‘marrying Antoinette, Rochester is by no means creating his own story. As a penniless younger son, he is pressurized by his family into an arranged marriage with a presumably wealthy creole.’ Unlike Annette’s second husband, Mr. Mason, Rochester does not travel to Jamaica in order to ‘make money [off old estates] as they all do’ (p. 13), he does so to please his father. This is shown when he muses about writing a letter to his father,
Dear father, the thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without
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[…] I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no mean requests. None of the furtive shabby manoeuvres of a younger son. I have sold my soul or you have sold it’. (p. 42)
He only wants the money in order to not ‘disgrace’ his father or brother, and believes he has ‘sold [his] soul’ to please them. Here he is similar to Antoinette as despite being orphans by the end of the novel, both are affected by the everlasting influence of the older generation. They are forced to mimic the white colonial marriage. But Rochester is aware that he ‘played the part [he] was expected to play’, and questions how no one noticed that ‘every movement [he] made was an effort of will’ (p. 46). He is pleading for someone to discover his mimicry, but is trapped by it. Although Rochester visibly does not approve the treatment of the younger son in the patriarchal and imperialist regime, and is ‘almost the same, but not quite’, he also does not use his difference to undermine the authority. Bhabha was analysing the mimicry of colonised subjects, but Rochester’s mimicry provides questions as to whether the
Demos looks into the different family style of the Mohawk tribe. The Mohawk tradition holds the woman in charge while the Puritans maintain a patriarchal society like in Britain. He looks at Eunice trip to Canada on top of the shoulders of her eventual uncle, Hatironta. Eunice looks back to see her “falling back, gasping, calling out for rest.” The view on top of a strong man showed her the weakness of her father and upon hearing of his remarriage she described him as “faithless, forgetful father: protector who could not protect, comforter who would not comfort, caretaker who did not care.”2 Why such a change in heart from the seven year old girl? Was it the death of her mother? Demos did not go into it, but her father did not protect. Did her father's inability to take care of her on the march after the raid? John Williams's strength failed him and he could not “walk for the two of them”3 Eunice found comfort and care in the Indian who picked her up. Or did the change occur during the raid? Eunice awakes in the darkness to shouts in a different language and flames blazing outside her window, and she gets taken down the stairs by strangely dressed men. Her father failed to protect her or comfort her. Another possibility Demos does not investigate the possibility of any occurrence before the raid which created the rift between Eunice and the civilized world. Demos claims “the training, the discipline would surely have been firm-- and carefully channeled. Eunice did not enjoy, nor want to learn her catechism and she found peace when she arrived with the Mohawk
Already full of self-criticism and self-loathing (Grigg 140), Antoinette begins feeling an “unconscious sense of guilt,” the result of an identification with someone to whom the person has been erotically attached; and it is “often the sole remaining trace of the abandoned love –relation” (Grigg 141). While Rochester is determined not to love her, he cannot help but feel responsible for her, after all part of the exile, and therefore her undoing is attributed to him. Unable to walk away from the marriage, he sets out to make the best of it the only way he knows how, by locking her away, exiling her
The inability to have control and excessive control in the novel ultimately leads to the downfall of Antoinette and Rochester’s marriage which is seen as inevitable. The theme is presented in the novel culturally, socially and mentally. Rhys’s purpose in reacting to these topics is to identify the contextual issues within the novel, such as the struggle for control and power surrounding women’s role in society and traditional conventions within marriage.
Bronte, we meet Jane Eyre, who finds her true love to be someone she is not
We learn that Jane is a young girl who is a victim of emotional and
Within Rhys’s novel, he incorporates the normality of the West Indies during the nineteenth and mid- twentieth centuries. Antoinette, the main character, who happens to be a white Creole, is mistreated and discriminated because of her identity. Throughout the text, characters are victimized by prejudices. For example, Antoinette and Annette become victims of traumatic experience as they face numerous kinds of mistreatment. Antoinette had to deal with an arranged marriage, which results her becoming distressed. Throughout this marriage, she was treated irrationally by her husband, Rochester and servants. She was unable to relate to Rochester because their upbringings were incompatible. She had to stomach the trauma of being shunned because of her appearance and identity. She was called names, mainly “white cockroach”, and was treated as an
her is inferior to Rochester and others of high class. She is forced into this social
Blanche Ingram is a woman without scruples or morality - haughty and proud - very beautiful and priveleged - she is nevertheless shallow and intellectually inferior. She is a warning shadow to JE, who is soon to be faced with the temptation to give in to her passions and embrace the shallow life of a courtesan, when Rochester pleads with her to go to the continent with him after the "wedding". The more virtuous minor characters serve the same function, standing as moral or spiritual beacons to which Jane may aspire, but may not ever reach.
The Rochester figure notices how the life has started to go out of her. He even compares her to a corpse after their one night tryst, getting up and covering her “as if [he] covered a dead girl” (Rhys 83). At the very end, of the section he “watche[s] the hate go out of her eyes. […] And with the hate her beauty” (Rhys 102). He even says that he forces it out of her.
Explore how Charlotte Bronte presents the character of Jane Eyre in the novel of the same name, noting the effects of social and historical influences on the text. Jane Eyre was a plain and insignificant unloved orphan, she was cared for by her aunt Reed, who did not like her but was obliged to look after her because it was a request of Mr. Reed who was also Jane's uncle. Eventually she was sent away to school after fighting with her bullying cousin John and getting locked in the room her Uncle died in, and she fainted. The school was awful with a horrible owner and bad conditions; there was a typhus epidemic in which her friend Helen Burns died.
Rhys divides the speaking voice between Rochester and Antoinette, thus avoiding the suppression of alternative voices which she recognises in Bronte's text. Rochester, who is never named in the novel, is not portrayed as an evil tyrant, but as a proud and bigoted younger brother betrayed by his family into a loveless marriage. His double standards with regards to the former slaves and Antoinette's family involvement with them are exposed when he chooses to sleep with the maid, Amelie, thus displaying the promiscuous behaviour and attraction to the ...
How does Bront portray Jane as an unconventional female character in the novel Jane Eyre? Jane Eyre was published in 1847, during the reign of Queen Victoria. The novel was written by Charlotte Bront, but published under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Pseudonyms were used frequently by women at this point in time, as they were believed to be inferior to men. The The work of female authors was not as well respected as those of male writers.
Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre embraces many feminist views in opposition to the Victorian feminine ideal. Charlotte Bronte herself was among the first feminist writers of her time, and wrote this book in order to send the message of feminism to a Victorian-Age Society in which women were looked upon as inferior and repressed by the society in which they lived. This novel embodies the ideology of equality between a man and woman in marriage, as well as in society at large. As a feminist writer, Charlotte Bronte created this novel to support and spread the idea of an independent woman who works for herself, thinks for herself, and acts of her own accord.
Despite Rochester’s stern manner and unhandsome appearance, Jane still finds herself falling in love with him. During her first encounter with Rochester Jane describes him
The realistic novel places greater emphasis on its characters, rather than its plot, and explores the relationships between these characters. The selected passage shows both the servant-master aspect of Jane and Mr. Rochester’s relationship, as well as its romantic nature. At the beginning of the selected passage, Jane affectionately describes Mr. Rochester as a “kind master,” which is indicative that even after his proposal, she is unable to separate herself from her position as a servant. This is further emphasized when Jane states that “he would send for [her] in the morning,” whic...