Reflection versus Conversation

The 19th and 20th centuries introduced readers to a variety of prominent authors who are still read today. Two of these prominent and well-read authors from each period include Charlotte Brontë and Jean Rhys...

If Charlotte Brontë’s character of Miss Temple in Jane Eyre could be distilled down to one word, perhaps it would be “perfect.” At a cursory glance, Miss Temple seemingly represents a paragon of conventional, Victorian femininity. Brontë...

The openings of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Brontë's Jane Eyre are both centered around introducing the main characters, Stevens and Jane, respectively. Through the first-person narration, their personalities, settings and situations are...

When discussing Jane Eyre, the critical conversation tends to largely ignore the character of Eliza Reed, the title characters cousin. At best, she is often analyzed in terms of her role as a foil to her sister. However, while her contrast to...

When comparing Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to fellow Victorian novelist, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, one might feel inclined to draw similarities between the title character of the former, to Dorothea Brooke. However, the Middlemarch character...

Nobody with any literary merit would deny that the title character of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre and Vivie Warren of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession are groundbreaking feminist characters of Victorian Literature....

"In many different societies, women, like colonised subjects, have been relegated to the position of 'Other,' 'colonised' by various forms of patriarchal domination. They thus share with colonised races and cultures an intimate experience of the...

Imagine a girl growing up around the turn of the nineteenth century. An orphan, she has no family or friends, no wealth or position. Misunderstood and mistreated by the relatives she does have, she is sent away to a school where the cycle of...

What means does Charlotte Bronte employ to create mystery and suspense in Jane Eyre?

Mystery and suspense in Bronte's novel Jane Eyre provides a crucial element to the reader's interpretation of the novel, allowing Bronte to subtly aid the reader...

In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the setting is used as a tool to reflect the hardships its protagonist, Jane Eyre, experiences. The locations Jane resides in play an integral part in determining what actions she is to take next. Her transient...

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"Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting." --Jane Eyre (9)

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There is something extraordinary and spiritual about Jane Eyre's artwork. In...

In the novel Jane Eyre, author Charlotte Bronte places great importance on the appearance of her characters, repeatedly evaluating their attractiveness through narrative descriptions and dialogue. Her heroine, Jane, is mentioned countless times as...

"Reader, I married him," proclaims Jane in the first line of Bronte's famous conclusion to her masterpiece, Jane Eyre (552). The reader, in turn, responds to this powerful line by preparing for what will surely be a satisfying ending: the...

Subjective novelists tend to use personal attitudes to shape their characters. Whether it be an interjection of opinion here, or an allusion to personal experience there, the beauty of a story lies in the clever disclosure of the author's...

"There was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do, and having everything decided for her"

--George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

The feminist literary critics, Gilbert and Gubar, claim, in their famous essay on Jane Eyre in The Madwoman in the...

In Villette and Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë creates protagonists who are markedly strange and isolated people. Throughout both books, their awkwardness in society and difficulty communicating is a continuous concern. These women are also our...

Scorching flames, conflagration, burning. The imagery of fire has long been linked to power and passion. Fire can enact complete obliteration, and yet can also forge a new beginning where only scattered ashes of the past remain. The symbolic motif...

Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre are both relatively isolated women struggling to survive in a male-dominated society. Although both women are striving to attain similar goals of happiness, equality, and a sense of...

"They are not fit to associate with me," says young Jane Eyre of her rude, spoiled cousins who consider themselves above her.(29) In this simple quote lies all the facets of the young Jane: she is angry, passionate, and subtly - but positively -...

Assignment: Discuss the treatment of female independence and the independent heroine in two Victorian novels.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, both utilise the Victorian convention of the orphaned heroine...

In Jane Eyre, each episode Charlotte Brontë tells of Jane's life recounts a new struggle, always featuring a man and his patriarchal institution: John Reed's Gateshead, Brocklehurst's Lowood, Rochester's Thornfield, and St. John's Moor House. In...

Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1965, and immediately caught the attention of critics. Its publication helped to save Jean Rhys from the obscurity into which she had fallen after her previous novels, published between the First and Second World...

Although his methods have largely been discredited, Sigmund Freud's theories about the unconscious, the subconscious, and repression are extremely useful when applied to literary texts. None of the three novels discussed here - Jane Austen's Emma,...

At first glance, Jane Eyre might be seen as simply a skillfully written Gothic romance. A closer look reveals layers of gender criticism and feminism. Yet, one of the most interesting readings focuses on the layers of class and Marxist commentary...