The Correlation Between Hierarchy, Virtue, And Vice In Eighteenth Century Literature

In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Zenobia ‘Zeena’ Frome serves as the chief antagonist. Zeena is portrayed as a malcontent, apathetic wife who adds to her husband (Ethan Frome)’s feelings of imprisonment and stands as an obstacle to his desires. While readers come to support or empathize with Ethan’s dreams for a life outside of Starkfield, full of adventure and passion, Zeena is vilified and often loathed by readers. Ethan paints her as a villain because she, coupled with crushing poverty, blocks Ethan’s deepest desires. However, while portrayed as the novel’s villain, Zeena does not actively seek to ruin Ethan’s life, her nature as a villain is much more unintentional. Throughout Ethan Frome, the perspective of the narrating Ethan

During the 19th century female authors were commonly degraded especially when books had a sexual nature. A now notable biography from this period is Charlotte Brontё’s “Jane Eyre”, a detailed account of the life of a young girl that blossoms into adulthood having to face the challenges and social norms of the time. In many works of literature a character intentionally deceives others to either hurt or offer protection. In “Jane Eyre” a character intentionally deceives a loved one with the intention to protect everyone including himself. This particular deception plays a large role in developing the characters of the narrative and the plot development, contributing to the work as a whole.

This article analyzes the way Austen portrays women in her novels. Kruger mentions that Jane Austen’s work is often deprived by the

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, one of the most prevalent and recurring themes and ideas relates to human freedom. The main characters in the two novels, Edna Pontellier and Jane Eyre, both long for social, religious, and sexual emancipation among other things – freedom from the constraints of Victorian society, which have rendered them dependent and inferior to men. While it is true that both protagonists of their respective novels wanted emancipation, their living conditions and qualities of life varied widely. Even though both women, Edna and Jane, wanted “emancipation” from their respective societies, the conditions that each woman was subject to were quite dissimilar. Jane had a very malnourished

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.

Annabella, the female protagonist in John Ford’s play, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, ultimately dies after trying to meet the conflicting demands that her brother and father place on her. While her brother, Giovanni, commands her to be his clandestine lover, her father, Florio, expects her to marry a socially appropriate man and bear a child. These demands closely resemble the real-life demands that Queen Elizabeth I’s subjects placed on her because they simultaneously wanted her to fulfill their erotic desires, marry a politically appropriate man, and produce an heir to the throne. Ford’s play “was first published in 1633,” thirty years after the death of Queen

As the engineer-narrator opens the story of Ethan Frome's tragedy, the reader is quickly made aware that the novel is made up of an expanding series of opposing images and symbols and that the setting is not just a physical place, but also a moral landscape. Mattie Silver's role representative of unrestricted, natural emotions is made all the more clear by Contrast with Zeena, who rules her husband and Mattie with something of a tyranny, as the embodiment of acquired reason and conscience which check them “like the jerk of a chain”(p.3). Furthermore, there is an unmistakeable correspondence between the physical setting of the “outcropping granite,” the bleak and barren village of New England, where the characters move round like ghosts, and the moral

In Willa Cather’s novel entitled My Antonia, she writes about several female characters that challenge the stereotypical role of women in a male-dominated society during the early 1900s. In Trifles, a play written by Susan Glaspell, her female characters are represented as crafty and bright and not mere intellectual inferiors to their male counterparts. Upon closer examination of these two separate and distinct stories, Cather and Glaspell establish that these female characters defy the existing typecast of women as being less capable than men.

This article’s thesis may be expressed in the following manner: Nathaniel Hawthorne intentionally develops an ambiguous narrator in Miles Coverdale, thus being able to develop his strategic irony. Delving deeper into the character of Coverdale, the author explores his relationship with Priscilla, noting that there is an ambiguity between their respective gender roles, specifically due to the fact that they both own the same type of silk purse. This ambiguity is ironic, particularly considering that Priscilla will eventually assert her femininity by subjecting herself willingly to Hollingsworth. Priscilla cannot be herself without depending on a man, and this is precisely why she holds on to Hollingsworth. Her life and her destiny is inextricably

Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl are two opposite literary texts which, despite being 19th century texts, belong to different historical periods. Brontë sets her character in the Victorian England. Jacobs, on the other hand, writes about slavery during the civil war in order to relate the treatment of slaves, and more precisely that of female slaves. We will analyse, in this essay, the differences as well as the similarities which exist between Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself. We see that they differ in terms of genre, the period of history in which they find themselves, the way the characters are presented and so forth. However, they share some of the main

As Lockwood lays to rest in the third chapter of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, he is wrought with a dream of a fictional Reverend Jabez Branderham and his surplus of sins. The dream almost reads as incomprehensible at first glance, especially when wedged between Lockwood’s visions of Catherine Earnshaw, but the dream holds clout in the overarching tale of Wuthering Heights, especially when taking its moral implications into consideration. To implement a biblical allusion in one’s text requires the understanding that, no matter what one intends to do with the material, it will remain morally-charged nonetheless. The material can be contorted or figured into a new message altogether, but some moral proposition will certainly remain. In the case of Lockwood’s dream, Brontë’s allusion to Peter and his interest in forgiveness are contorted to address what happens when the threshold of forgiveness is surpassed. Furthermore, the dream does not grapple with the power of forgiveness, but with the level of desperate exasperation one reaches after prolonged anguish. It is through the contortion of such a biblical allusion that Lockwood is met with what is essentially a warning against staying at either Thrushcross Grange or Wuthering Heights—a warning which he ultimately disregards, thus leading to his exposure to the litany of terrors which exist in the story of Wuthering Heights.

Although typically overlooked by the inattentive reader, the minor character can serve a myriad of literary roles from adding to the overall story elements to distinguishing the character’s impact on the plot. In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, minor characters play a paramount role in advancing the plot, reinforcing Austen's tone, and uniquely contributing to the work as a whole. Surprisingly, the impact of a certain minor character upon the work is illuminated as well as expatiated when analyzed. Lady Catherine de Bourgh has a much greater impact on the plot, characters, and theme of Pride and Prejudice that her minor role would suggest. In this way, she advances the plot, emphasizes the theme of social expectations,

Parallel to many of the great feministic novels throughout literary history, Jane Eyre is a story about the quest for authentic love. However, Jane Eyre is unique and separate from other romantic pieces, in that it is also about a woman searching for a sense of self-worth through achieving a degree of independence. Orphaned and dismissed at an early age, Jane was born into a modest lifestyle that was characterized by a form of oppressive servitude of which she had no autonomy. She was busy spending much of her adolescent years locked in chains, both imaginary and real, as well as catering to the needs of her peers. Jane was never being able to enjoy the pleasures and joys that an ordinary and independent child values. Jane struggles

Jane Eyre is a novel written by Charlotte Brontë. It is distinctly a female Bildungsroman, as it follows the progress and growth of Jane’s character on her quest for selfhood and independence in a society that tries its best to impress upon her the roles and expectations of women in the Victorian era (which is neatly packaged in the figure of the ‘Angel-in-the-house’.) This is something with which this essay seeks to engage by looking at female figures which feature prominently in Jane’s life, how those who embrace the figure of ‘Angel-in-the-house’ are treated and viewed, versus those who do not. Furthermore, important male figures will also be looked at in order to understand Jane’s own feelings to the ‘Angel-in-the-house’ figure and how she approaches it, as well as how the Byronic hero might relate – if it even does.

Oroonoko is a novel by author Aphra Behn, in which Behn tried to illustrate the life of the African Prince, who was captured and made slave, Oroonoko. Behn offers criticism for the cruelest of Europeans, while still holding a bias against people of color. She ignores self-identity while focusing on the exotic other that fills the pages of her book. Though she tries to make the African character relatable, she maintains her sense of European superiority. She also portrays a somewhat accurate depiction of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Finally she often relates religion and Christianity the lack of society and civilization or barbarianism. This work will prove the themes of otherness, European superiority, slavery and the slave trade, and religion as it relates to barbarianism.