Examine the way in which childhood perspectives are created in Jane Eyre and Hideous Kinky

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Examine the way in which childhood perspectives are created in Jane Eyre and Hideous Kinky.

Charlotte Bronte was born in 1816 in Hamworth in Yorkshire. Her father was the vicar of the village she lived in. Her mother died when she was very young. With her two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth she was sent to a very strict boarding school where she was very unhappy. Both her sisters died of tuberculosis, which made her very upset. Jane Eyre was based on Charlotte Bronte’s own experience and is a fictional autobiography.  

Esther Freud was born in London in 1963 almost 150 years after Charlotte Bronte. She spent most of her childhood in Sussex, she was taken to Morocco when she was very young but says she can’t remember. Hideous Kinky was published in 1992, although it’s not an autobiography its base on her childhood experiences in Morocco.

Jane Eyre is set in the middle of the Victorian period where children had no rights and social class was everything. As the book goes on we see Jane grow from a rebellious and boisterous young girl to a sensible and determined woman. We see Jane move from place to place meeting and losing people. Although we do see Jane growing into a young woman we are only concentrating on the first 10 chapters in which we follow her childhood.

Hideous Kinky is set in the 1960’s, in Morocco .The book gives a view of life on the road to Morocco is put across through the eyes of a sincere but often distracted hippie’s five year-old daughter. As the small family seeks food, shelter and friendship wherever they can and their adventures unfurl, there grows between them a strange yet unshakeable bond.  

The contrast between the historical and social period in which the two books are set is stark, particularly with regard to the role of women. Jane Eyre lives at a time where women’s roles were subjugated to those of men and women had little rights. It was difficult for women to make their own way in the world, and for most women the expectation was that they would not work but instead would marry and have children.

In contrast Hideous kinky is set at the time where the women’s liberation movement was at it fore and women were suddenly given more economic, social and sexual freedom.

Consequently the author’s views of the world are very different.  

Another contrast between the two books is there setting. Jane Eyre is set in a seemingly cold, grey and stark England and the first ten chapters show Jane first living in the Reed household and then a Lowood school. Both of these are classic and sterile English institutions. Where as Hideous kinky is set in Morocco, a cosmopolitan hot and colourful country. The atmosphere in the book express by the author is one of space, light and freedom.  

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 Adult figures play a big part in both Jane Eyres and the narrator in Hideous Kinky’s lives.

In Hideous kinky, the narrator’s main adult figure and influence is her mum, although there is some other characters in the book that do have some effect on the narrator like Bilal.

Her mum is there with her all the way through the book. Her mum is the main reasons that there in Morocco, she has dragged her children around first to escape the busy and hectic lifestyle of London. When she arrives in Morocco she soon finds out ...

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