My Mother's Betrayal Of Jane Essay

   "I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child". Jane Austen wrote these words about her novel, Sense and Sensibility, in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1811. Such a maternal feeling in Austen is interesting to note, particularly because any reader of hers is well aware of a lack of mothers in her novels. Frequently we encounter heroines and other major characters whom, if not motherless, have mothers who are deficient in maturity, showing affection, and/or common sense. Specifically, I would like to look at Sense and Sensibility, which, according to Ros Ballaster's introduction to the novel, "is full of, indeed over-crowded with, mothers" (vii). By

While moral Jane remains an invalid, captive at the Bingleys, her satirical sister Elizabeth walks two miles along muddy roads to help nurse her…While Jane remains at home, lovesick but uncomplaining, Elizabeth accompanies the Gardiners on a walking tour of Derbyshire. Jane’s docility, gentleness, and benevolence are remarkable, for she suffers silently throughout the entire plot… (Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, 65)

Jane Addams, a pioneering social worker, helped bring attention to the possibility of revolutionizing America’s attitude toward the poor. Not only does she remain a rich source of provocative social theory to this day, her accomplishments affected the philosophical, sociological, and political thought. Addams was an activist of courage and a thinker of originality. Jane Addams embodied the purest moral standards of society which were best demonstrated by her founding of the Hull-House and her societal contributions, culminating with the winning of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize.

"The Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a sorrowful, distressing poem about a mother who has experienced numerous abortions. While reading the poem, you can feel the pain, heartache, distress and grief she is feeling. She is both remorseful and regretful; nevertheless, she explains that she had no other alternative. It is a sentimental and heart wrenching poem where she talks about not being able to experience or do things with the children that she aborted -- things that people who have children often take for granted. Perhaps this poem is a reflection of what many women in society are feeling.

The media is biased towards public incidents, but one community is in the media’s eye. For the past decade, the media pressed Jane and Finch on numerous occasions that has left a bad image of it. Jane and Finch is "known" for its extreme violence which has led the public to believe it is a dangerous community. Furthermore, the community's view differs from the media's negative perspective. This community has drastically improved throughout the years and has turned into a better community and to this day, the media and the public contradict it. Jane and Finch is the most positive community in Toronto because support is available to youth, it has a low crime rate and the graduation rate is high.

Furthermore, this demeaning and negative attitude Jane is exposed to is further instigated when her cousin, John Reed, expresses her situation by saying: "You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us". The truth of Jane's unfortunate situation is expressed against her which results in her feeling no true support from this family and confides only in her childhood nursemaid- Bessie, who although behaves inconsistently and has “a capricious and hasty temper”, is the closest mother figure to her. Furthermore, the friction between Jane and John is further emphasised when the first physical aspect of violence is introduced to the reader through a graphic portrayal, further showing the ultimate rejection Jane experienced

Miss Jane Pittman is roughly about 110 years old who tells her life story to a history teacher who wants to publish a book about her. Although, this may seem like it happened to Jane, no interview actually occurred. In fact, Miss Jane is not real. Ernest Gaines, the author of the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman successfully made his fictional novel realistic and believable through his title choice, allusions to real life event and people, and point-of-view.

An American pragmatist and feminist, Hull-House founder Jane Addams (1860-1935) came of age in time of increasing tensions and division between segments of the American society, a division that was reflected in debates about educational reform. In the midst of this diversity, Addams saw the profoundly interdependent nature of all social and political interaction, and she aligned her efforts to support, emphasize and increase this interdependence. Education was one of the ways she relied on to overcome class disparity, as well as to increase interaction between classes. Her theories about the interdependent nature of living in a democracy provided a backdrop for her educational theory. Education, she thought, needed to produce people who

  "The Yellow Wallpaper," written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late nineteenth century, explores the dark forbidding world of one woman's plunge into a severe post-partum depressive state. The story presents a theme of the search for self-identity. Through interacting with human beings and the environment, the protagonist creates for herself a life of her own.

She is judged since she is so quiet and not as fast as her sister Gillian, so much so that her aunts encourage her to get out of the house and out of her routines. Gillian and Sally Owens’ distinctive dispositions contribute to the judgement they receive from the

In a world in which abortion is considered either a woman's right or a sin against God, the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks gives a voice to a mother lamenting her aborted children through three stanzas in which a warning is given to mothers, an admission of guilt is made, and an apology to the dead is given. The poet-speaker, the mother, as part of her memory addresses the children that she "got that [she] did not get" (2). The shift in voice from stanza to stanza allows Brooks to capture the grief associated with an abortion by not condemning her actions, nor excusing them; she merely grieves for what might have been. The narrator's longing and regret over the children she will never have is highlighted by the change in tone

simply, it is the story of a woman who began her life with nothing but

These internal conflicts seem to be caused by Jane's own insecurities. She cannot speak to anyone about her worries, and thus they fester. Each of the problems also intersect, since Mr. Mason's suspicious nature affects Mr. Rochester with something that Jane does not know about. Rochester's anxiety over Mason appears to hinder his ability to think properly about his actions, since he wants to marry a woman he does not even love. Without these conflicts, there would be no interesting interactions between the characters, making them very boring and

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’s foster family, the Reeds, restrict her rights, refusing to treat her as an equal to the other members of the family. Jane, at a mere eight years old, is chastised by Mrs. Abbott, the nanny, who asserts, “you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep” (Bronte 11). When Rochester imprisons Antoinette in England, he deprives her of any sense of humanity. The people in their lives who yielded power over them unjustly repressed both women.