Charlotte Bronte 's Jane Eyre And Jean Rhys 's Wide Sargasso Sea

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane begins as a ten year old girl who shows insecurity at home. She felt the need to meet her aunt’s expectations to be seen as part of the family. After Jane lives at Lowood for eight years, she grows to become a young independent woman. She is capable of making decisions for herself and expressing her own opinion. In the last events of the book, Jane demonstrates her self-worth. She is able to resist hardships in her life and start thinking for herself. In the novel, Jane transitions from someone with insecurity to having independence and self-worth.

Abuse was a very consistent thing in Jane Eyre's childhood life. After her parents died she was taken in by her aunt and uncle Reed but her world turned upside down after uncle passed away and she was left under the care of her cruel aunt. Most of the abuse came from both her cousin John and her aunt Reed. Jane Eyre was a novel whose theme portrayed physical and mental abuse,forms of cruelty presented to her throughout her childhood.

The novel in which Jane Eyre stars in can be seen criticizing many aspects of those times such as the role and nature of women, child negligence and social hardships for those in a lesser class. Jane Eyre’s alienation from society allows for a greater reveal of the story’s culture, values, and assumptions. It’s presented through the use of gender, class and character conflicts throughout the story. On multiple occasions, Jane is judged for the presented factors reflecting the type of society Jane lives in and what the times were like at that time.

Violence is the most recurrent gothic convention used in Jane Eyre, which is prominent in Charlotte Brontë's effective development of the novel and the character of Jane Eyre, who, throughout this novel, is searching for a home in which she would have a sense of belonging and love which would ultimately resolve this exact unfulfilled need she had as a child. The neglect she experienced in her childhood is manifested in the way she is treated by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, as in the first page of the novel Jane Eyre admits: ‘Me, she had dispensed from joining the group, saying, 'She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance’’. This opening shows how there is a clear line of separation drawn between Jane and her relatives due to her complicated family background which consequently results in their reluctance to accept her into their environment. These complications lead to her maltreatment, which also adds on to the violence she experiences acting as a catalyst for the development of the character and her subconscious quest.

In Jane Eyre, both Jane and Edward keep breaking rules and boundaries that come their way. The rules of their society forbid their relationship, which should have prevented them from being together but it brings them closer. In the period of time that the book is set in, the difference in social classes are visible between the two. This creates the problems that arise as she feels the difference that separates them. Jane Eyre is not only an orphan; she is also poor with no permanent home and relatives. Edward Rochester is a man that is wealthier and much older than she is. This displays the two people that should have not been able to meet and fall in love the way they did. The boundary that they face later in the story is that as they are about to get married, it is revealed that he is still married to a mentally ill woman. These boundaries and rules that exist in both stories are the reasons to why their love prospers as they face them together and break though limits imposed upon them.

In the first few opening chapters Jane Eyre is seen as a mentally and physically abused child, during her years at Gateshead Hall. John Reed displays violence towards Jane in the first chapter. He punishes and bullies Jane; it is not known why the Reed family resent her so much. Her situation is seen as desperate within the first few paragraphs. Her cousins and Aunt make her life impossible and unbearable, she is not seen as a member of the family. Jane is simply seen as ‘’less than a servant’’ as she does ‘’nothing for her keep’’.

A confidant or a confidante is a supporting character who presents the main character with a sympathetic aid; as writer Henry James wrote, confidants or confidantes can be “the reader’s friend as the protagonist’s.” In the 1847 novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Helen Burns is such the character that provides moral support to the protagonist, Jane Eyre. Through Helen, Brontë presented the protagonist a valuable friendship as well as created a literary foil, or “a character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character” (“Foil”). Jane Eyre was orphaned when she was a small child and was taken in by her uncle, who also shortly died as well.

In the early chapters of the novel Jane Eyre, our heroine resides at Gateshead and Lowood school; her character immediately inspires pity from the readers. She is an outcast within her own family, the Reeds, and is considered less than a servant. John Reed bullies her to the extent that she fears him, introducing weakness as one of her character flaws. Jane is somewhat jealous of her cousins’ lack of punishment and condemnation, although she believes they were “not fit to associate with [her]” (Bronte, 35). She feels wrongly accused, leading to a growing bitterness towards those who have treated her so harshly.

Jane Eyre’s life was full of oppression, neglect and sorrow. The novel was formed around a few main ideas. One of those would be the search of love and acceptance. Jane wanted to find a family so desperately and she wanted to belong to people. More than this though, Jane wanted to be treated equally. She was denied equality because of her social status, her income,her lack of “beauty” and most of all because of her gender. The book Jane Eyre shows the struggle that women face while attempting to overcome oppression and inequality in the Victorian era.

Authors, Jean Rhys and Charlotte Bronte constructed their novels in completely different time periods and came from different influences in writing. Jean Rhys’s fiction book, Wide Sargasso Sea is an interesting relation to Jane Eyre. The female character of Jane Eyre forms into a furiously, passionate, independent young woman. The female character of Jean Rhys’s illustration is a character that Jane will know further on as Rochester’s crazy wife who is bolted in an attic. Jean Rhys further studies this character, where as Charlotte Bronte approved that it was left explained (Thorpe 175). Antoinette, considerably like Jane, evolves in a world with minimal amount of love to offer. Both these women are taken cared of as children by

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane is an orphan who is often mistreated by the family and other people who surround her. Faced with constant abuse from her aunt and her cousins, Jane at a young age questions the treatment she receives: "All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sister’s proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always brow-beaten, always accused, forever condemned?" (27; ch. 2). Despite her early suffering, as the novel progresses Jane is cared for and surrounded by various women who act as a sort of "substitute mother" in the way they guide,

Jane Eyre was born an orphan and raised under the hands of a heartless Aunt. Aunt Reed stressed to Jane that she was privileged to live so well without any

Jane Eyre is a story about a little orphan girl who was raised by an abusive aunt and later was sent to a charity school. Though she met further hardships, she successfully educated herself and took a job as a governess for the Rochester family. The dark history of Mr. Rochester forced Jane to abandon the bond once between them. After a series of challenges and self-exploration, Jane returned as a mature and independent woman and lived a happily ever-after life with the love of her life. Although she faces all different kinds of changes in her life, she never lost the sense of dignity and the determination for maintaining her own autonomy.

In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways. However, they both find ways to triumph over their losses and regain their independence.

Jane Eyre is a story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued and belonging. However, this search is constantly hindered by her need for independence. She starts of as an unloved orphan who is desperate to find love and a purpose. For example, Jane says to Helen, “to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest”. However, over the course of the novel, Jane learns to gain love without harming herself in the process. Although she is despised by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, she finds parental figures throughout the book. Miss Temple and Bessie care for Jane and give her love and guidance. However, Jane does not feel as though she has found