Brief Comparison Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Turned By Thomas Hardy

Oftentimes, stories composed in a conventionally gothic aspect also conceal tales of suffering, repression, and resistance underlying the otherwise eerie façade. This subversive technique applies, in particular, to several prominent foremothers in women’s literature, many of whom have attained recognition for their forward-thinking during an era of absolute patriarchal domination. For women writers, gothic literature possesses an inherent ability to serve as a platform to explore broader thematic concerns in a discreet fashion. Thus, the haunted setting, trivialization of feminine fear, and alter-ego madwoman motif in Charlotte Bronte’s, “Jane Eyre,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is instrumental to each author’s shrouded

Flannery O’Conner, a Gothic literature writer, has written several short stories throughout her life. Among these stories, two of them being A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People, she has included some of the most fleshed out and grotesque characters I have ever read. O’Conner brings her characters to life throughout her writing in near flawless and subtle detail with ironic humor. For example, O’Conner makes skillful use of ironic names for her characters. The titles and names such as grandmother, the misfit, Joy/Hulga, and the bible salesman are used ironically. These subtle characterizations help guide the reader to the final, and often times ironic, conclusions all her characters deserve.

The short stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Conner are mind-blowing and a little scary. One of the stories is about an old grandmother and her family being murdered, and the other is about a lady who decided to kill her lover and then sleep next to his cold dead body. William Faulkner and Flannery O’Conner both decided to make the main character a southern woman and use interesting items in the story to symbolize what going to happen at the end.

In the eighteenth century, Gothic story was an extremely popular form of literature, and it has been a major genre since then. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner are both Gothic horror stories consisting madness and suspense. The Gothic horror story carries particular conventions in its setting, theme, point of view, and characterisation. Both Gilman and Faulkner follow the conventions of the Gothic horror story to create feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense that are essential for compelling stories.

In this book, the author, Charlotte Bronte, has chosen to take an almost autobiographical approach to the plot. At

It can be said that the Freudian psychoanalysis lends itself easily to an unsettling novel similar to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne Bronte makes use of the Freudian concept of the uncanny to describe a vampire-like creature named Arthur Huntington, and

Dorset is an important place that Hardy draws many experiences for his writing. In 1840, Dorset was slow with change, compared to the rest of England. For example the railroad did not spread to the county until Hardy was seven years old. This slow changed allowed folk traditions of this small population last longer, giving Hardy more time to adapt to it. “During his early years Hardy was to witness the hand of change at work on landscape and rural community at the same time that his own intellectual and emotional development was leading him in directions for which family history offered no precedent” (Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography).

Of the various themes attributed to and found in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, many are introduced within the first chapters, providing a base to be mirrored, re-used and developed later on. As a recurring element of the Gothic genre, the supernatural and its association with the human mind are a crucial part of the novel’s atmosphere, and act as a constant ominous presence in Jane’s life, starting with her early reading materials and, more significantly, with the red room scene. Jane Eyre is also qualified as a bildungsroman, following an individual and their evolution from childhood to adulthood, and the first part of the book provide, through its description of

The narrator also manifest idea of what it is to be women in this time period and what is expected from her. She reveals this by explaining how she is not what she should be. She comments on Janie and compares herself to her when she states, “she is perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for not better profession, I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!” (Gilman 545). This quote is informing the reader that the ‘perfect’ woman in this time is a housekeeper who sticks to traditional woman roles of housekeeping. This also shows how women are criticized for being writers and it is a profession that is unusual for a woman. In this story, the narrator also discusses how she in not happy in her marriage by stating

Anne becomes the author of the Avonlea Vignettes which inadvertently situates her within the avenue of female nineteenth-century local-colourists. As Anne ages in Avonlea, she begins to appreciate the rural space more so than the romanticism in the novels she read in her youth. She goes from reading the Highwayman to writing the Avonlea Vignettes, which naturally shows the transference of her interests to Avonlea. Anne grows to value her community and comes to an understanding that Avonlea is favourable in comparison to urbanized Charlottetown. She notices the superiority of Avonlea’s consciousness in its appreciation for the humble pleasures. The Avonlea Vignettes are written in a plainer prose style, celebrate rural Avonlea, and explore the cartoonish two-dimensional character models (a local colour trope) in its episodic structure. Anne’s first novel is autobiographical in nature seeing her experiences compare with Montgomery’s own experiences in Cavendish. Both Anne and Montgomery favour their beloved rural community to looming urbanized centres.

In his essay ‘The Profitable Reading of Fiction’ (1888) Hardy, proclaims that ‘an attentive reader will catch the vision the writer has in his eye, and is endeavouring to project upon the paper, even when it half eludes him’. (Regan, 2000p.325-326). However, at the time of writing Far From the Madding Crowd, Hardy was unaware of the anxiety he would go through to portray the intended verisimilitude of his narrative to his readership. Hardy’s initial objective was to present a retrospective view of reality in a rural community rapidly changing within this new industrial society. Leslie Stephen editor of the prestigious Cornhill Magazine first commissioned Hardy to write Far From The Madding Crowd, which was serialised in the magazine between

Renowned author and poet, Thomas Hardy, was born and raised in the English village of Dorset, a town that known for its ability to remain relatively untouched for hundreds of year by modern society in both quality of life and mentalities. Hardy bases his story, The Mayor of Casterbridge, in the town of Casterbridge, which is based on his own hometown of Dorset. Within this town of Casterbridge, we follow, as Hardy puts it, “A Story of a Man of Character”. This supposed Man of Character, is Michael Henchard, a man with a tumultuous past and an excess of secrets. This story also follows the characters of Elizabeth-Jane, Henchard’s daughter, and Donald Farfrae, his co-worker and later rival.

Pillow by Horacio Quiroga, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, and The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving are brimming with grotesque themes filling their stories with dark and somber moments. Authors use ominous themes-violence or entrapment-not only to set the tone of the story, but to develop and establish an exaggerated story using realistic and relatable scenarios that are stretched to make the story eerie and more terrifying for the reader.

In Thomas Hardy’s novel, titled Far From The Madding Crowd, the protagonist, Bathsheba, is surrounded by three different suitors. Gabriel, Boldwood, and Troy each try to win her hand in marriage. The different characteristics of these characters create a dynamic story where marriage and love are both highlighted and critiqued. The majority of this conflict takes place in the fictional area of Wessex, England. Hardy uses this fictional setting, and the surrounding town of Weatherbury, to depict how rural England was slowly going extinct with the rise of modern technology and industry. As a result of this rural setting, many of elements of pastoral literature are seen in the novel. Due to this, the text is often referred to as a pastoral novel. Pastoral novels portray rural country life as free from the complexity and corruption of city life. This idealized approach often uses shepherds and other natural elements in a poetic way to describe both love and freedom. Hardy uses the connotation associated with pastoral literature sarcastically to demonstrate how even in rural life social problems do arise. In the case of this work, the pastoral elements are structured in a way to create parallelism. These parallel episodes compare and contrast different characters through figurative language. The repetition of these motifs reflect and influence characters as well as develop themes. The contrast of fire and water is seen many times throughout the text. In Chapters Six and Thirty

Thomas Hardy was born in rural England where he spent his early life training as an architect. His family did not have much money and this made him acutely conscious of social inequalities in Victorian England. He moved to London when he was a young man and worked there for a time. He later returned to Dorset, becoming a fulltime writer. The decay of rural Britain, the status of women in society and social inequalities of his times and the Christian idea of God are some of the recurring themes we see in Thomas Hardy’s novels. Many of his stories are set in semi-fictional Wessex. Thomas Hardy’s characters struggle against adverse social circumstances, strong passions and an inexorable fate that decides the path of their life.