Discuss the image of the doubled female in Charlotte Bront's Shirley, Villette and Jane Eyre.
Discuss the image of the doubled female in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, Villette and Jane Eyre. The central theme of Jane Eyre, Villette and Shirley lies within the complex issue of the doubled female. Brontë persistently returns to this theme in order to vocalise her personal fears on the representations and expectations of the woman in a patriarchal society. As Jennifer Gribble suggests, this vocalising is apparent through, 'a recurrence of images and patterns that seem to define prevalent social and cultural beliefs and traditions.'1 In order to portray the strain under which women were placed in the nineteenth century, Brontë repeatedly fractures the emotional and physical state of her protagonists and in doing so 'explore(s) the potentialities and limits of a central reflecting consciousness.'2 This fracturing of the self creates the 'double female' in these novels, the female as consciously and emotionally split, either implicitly through the mirroring of the self by other characters, for example Caroline and Shirley or metaphorically, for example Jane and Bertha. Brontë seeks to illustrate in Shirley, Jane Eyre and Villette the impossibility of obtaining knowledge of self and of reclaiming self hood, faced by all of her female characters. In doing so, Charlotte Brontë viscously attacks not only patriarchy, but also the actual act of defining the woman, and suggests
"Austen creates intensely personal microcosms of intensely political macrocosms." Discuss in relation to Pride and Prejudice.
' "You have a very small park here," returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence.' (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice). "Austen creates intensely personal microcosms of intensely political macrocosms." Discuss in relation to Pride and Prejudice. Tanner, in his essay on Pride and Prejudice, wrote: "during a decade in which Napoleon was effectively engaging, if not transforming Europe, Jane Austen composed a novel in which the most important events are the fact that a man changes his manners and a young lady changes her mind." This quotation reduces one of the most enduringly popular 'classic' works of English literature, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, to an intensely personal tale of an individual relationship, utterly detached from the political context of the time. For many readers, particularly Austen's contemporaries, there is a tendency to emphasise this romantic, even mythical element to the plot. Isobel Armstrong, in her essay Politics, Pride, Prejudice and the Picturesque comments upon the "fairy-tale gratifications" of Pride and Prejudice, implying a view of Elizabeth as a Cinderella-like figure who, following a 'magical' moral transformation (in herself and Darcy) marries her very own handsome and rich 'Prince Charming' and lives happily ever after. This fantastical reading of the storyline implies a timelessness to the action, a sense in which romantic plot
Jane Eyre- Analysis.
Jane Eyre - Analysis Immediately the reader is positioned on Jane's side through careful novelistic craftsmanship. From the first page, Jane is oppressed, sent off while her cousins play. We learn through exposition from John that she is a penniless orphan, dependent on the heartless Reed family; indeed, social class will play an important role in the rest of the novel. She is also a sensitive girl given to flights of fancy while reading, but she also displays her strength in her defense against John. All the elements are in place for a classic "Bildungsroman," the literary genre originating in the German literally as "novel of formation" or, as it is generally known, the "coming-of-age" story. In the Bildungsroman, classic examples of which are Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, the young protagonist matures through a series of obstacles and defines his or her identity. The red-room has both deathly associations (red as the color of blood, the room's containing a miniature version of the dead Mr. Reed, and Jane's belief that she sees a ghost in it) and is a clear symbol of imprisonment. Throughout the novel, Jane will be imprisoned in more metaphorical ways, particularly relating to class, gender, and religion. Ironically, although John is the root cause of Jane's imprisonment here, the three
Elizabeth Taylor's Journey in Life: Analyzed by Erik Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development.
Elizabeth Taylor's Journey in Life: Analyzed by Erik Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development By Theories of Personality December 4, 2003 Elizabeth Taylor's Journey in Life Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most recognized and successful movie stars of our era: violet-eyed, luminously beautiful, although never the most gifted actress, she was the most magnetic; elebrity is her lifeblood; tragedies her life-long struggles, the public eye her constant companion. She knew no moderation - it was all or nothing. Whether good (two Oscars, the first-ever one-million-dollar pay check, and charity work), bad (health and weight problems, drug battles, and other tragedies), or ugly (eight failed marriages, movie disasters, and countless scandals), no triumph or setback was too personal for media consumption. Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London in 1932 to American parents. Her father came from a family of reasonably affluent midwestern art dealers and had moved to London in the late 1920s to set up an English branch of the business. and moving with him to the centre of his family's gallery business in St Louis. Her mother had enjoyed some success on the stage, so the world of Hollywood and that of a touring actress was familiar to her, but she claimed it up for her marriage and two children, Elizabeth and her older brother.(Morley, 1998). Until she was seven years
"With reference to at least two novels published after 1870, examine ways in which they disclose anxieties about male and/or female sexuality at the end of the nineteenth century."
"With reference to at least two novels published after 1870, examine ways in which they disclose anxieties about male and/or female sexuality at the end of the nineteenth century." Alex Coby, Physics III H.10. MODERN LITERATURE AND DRAMA Dr Siv Jannson The end of the nineteenth century was, like the end of the twentieth, a time filled with fear, anxiety and panic. All major issues in society at any time are generally represented in the literature of the time and this was certainly the case at the end of the nineteenth century. There were many reasons for anxiety; the collapse of empire, the rising Women's emancipation movement and the rise of the theories of Darwin and Freud, amongst others. The primary anxiety at the time, in my opinion, was the fear of 'perverse' sexuality, be it the empowerment of women and the 'decadent', or homosexual man. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson both illustrate this fin de siècle sexual anxiety to great effect, and it is on these two novels that I will concentrate. They approach these anxieties in different ways, and while Dorian shows the personal anxieties felt by the homosexual in fin de siècle England, Jekyll and Hyde exposes the anxieties felt towards the homosexual: As Showalter said, Jekyll and Hyde can be most convincingly read as a fable of fin de
Novels of the 1890s are different in so many ways from the novels of the rest of the Nineteenth-Century that they seem almost to belong to a different genre. To what extent would you agree with this claim?
TMA 06 W6186059 Sean Delahoy Option A 'Novels of the 1890's are different in so many ways from the novels of the rest of the Nineteenth-Century that they seem almost to belong to a different genre.' To what extent would you agree with this claim? Written in 1897, Stoker's Dracula exists as more than just a part of the Nineteenth-Century; it belongs to the period known as the fin de siécle, a French term used to describe the period between the end of one era and the beginning of another and the consequent anxieties and expectations that marked this change. In this period the Nineteenth-Century novel transgressed, adopting less secure, traditional methods to epitomise the instability of its time. The conventional styles and rules of realist fiction that had been developed throughout the century were being changed by novels such as Dracula in order to incorporate and emulate the turbulence that existed for Victorian society at the end of the century. Illuminating the fear and social apprehension of the unknown future in unrealistic, unconventional ways helped to capture the trepidation of what the turn of the century would bring from home and abroad. This removal of the rules that clarified the genre of the Nineteenth-Century novel makes the novels of the fin de siécle seem to belong to a
The Metamorphosis:The Potrait Of Kafka's Life
The Metamorphosis: The Potrait Of Kafka's Life By Vishal S Shah -- 4/01 The Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka is considered one of the few great, poetic works of the twentieth century. Addressing The Metamorphosis, Elias Canetti, a Nobel Prize-winning author, has commented, "In The Metamorphosis Kafka has reached the height of his mastery: he has written something which he could never surpass, because there is nothing which The Metamorphosis could be surpassed by - one of the few great, perfect poetic works of this century" (http://www.mala.bc.ca/~mcneil/m4lec5a.htm). There are many symbolisms and parallelisms used in the story. "[Kafka's] disturbing, symbolic fiction, especially The Metamorphosis, written in German, [not] only prefigures the oppression and despair of the late 20th century" but also is an account of the dramatic transformations that had occurred during his own life ("Kafka Franz", Funk?, 2000). This beautifully written masterpiece of Kafka's is clearly symbolic of his own life and nightmare-like life experiences he had with his father. "Suppose all that you have always valued in your life was shown to be an illusion. What if your precious beliefs, maxims, platitudes, and traditions were inverted and distorted beyond recognition? You suddenly realize that what is good is bad; what is beauty is foul; what is virtue, vice. What if all your points of
"Words don't come easy": Emotional Education in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Emotional Education in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice “Words don’t come easy”: Emotional Education in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Bettina Rad BA in English Studies University of Pannonia Author’s note: Faculty of Modern Philology and Social Sciences Institute of English and American Studies Consultant: Dr. Andrea Szabó F. Abstract This study sets out to investigate non-verbal communication, generally underestimated, with a view to the theme of emotional education in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I claim that body motions, paralanguage and self presentation occupy a pivotal role in how Austen’s heroine teaches her hero to express his emotions, faithful to the novel’s generic indebtedness to the female gothic romance. First, I will give the definitional framework of my analysis relying on G.W. Porter’s theory of nonverbal communication. Second, I introduce the categories of physical and aesthetic nonverbal communication. In the next section I provide a close reading of the nonverbal interactions of Austen’s main characters, such as body-language, gestures, postures, music, and dancing. As a conclusion, I claim, that nonverbal communication proves to be an integral part of the novel’s discourse; no wonder, it has served as a blueprint for generations of readers in “speaking without words”. “Words don’t come easy”:
Of the vampire tales to date, Bram Stoker's Dracula has unquestionably become the most popular and the most critically examined.
Of the vampire tales to date, Bram Stoker's Dracula has unquestionably become the most popular and the most critically examined. It constitutes, however, the culmination of a series of nineteenth-century vampire tales that have been overshadowed by Stoker's 1897 novel. To be sure, many of the earlier tales provide little more than a collective history of the vampire lore Stoker incorporated in Dracula, but Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's little known Carmilla (1872) is the original tale to which Stoker's Dracula served as a response. In Carmilla Le Fanu chronicles the development of a vampiric relationship between two women, in which it becomes increasingly clear that the lesbian relationship between Carmilla and Laura defies the traditional structures of kinship by which men regulate the exchange of women to promote male bonding. On the contrary, Le Fanu allows Laura and Carmilla to usurp male authority and to bestow themselves on whom they please, completely excluding male participation in the exchange of women, as discussed by Claude Levi-Strauss and Gayle Rubin. Stoker later responded to Le Fanu's narrative of female empowerment by reinstating male control in the exchange of women. In effect, Dracula seeks to repossess the female body for the purposes of male pleasure and exchange, and to correct the reckless unleashing of female desire in Le Fanu's Carmilla. In Victorian
Jane Austen's use of irony in Pride & Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion.
SHABNAM ABUBAKER EXTENDED ESSAY 2001 Q: JANE AUSTEN'S USE OF IRONY IN: PRIDE & PREJUDICE, EMMA AND PERSUASION. Irony is a humorous or mildly sarcastic use of words to mean the opposite of what is said. Irony can be used in a satirical, humorous or sarcastic manner. It can be used to indirectly put a message across to someone as a joke. In Austen's books the characters sometimes valued irony because that is how they earn their success and to some it just made their life worse. However the characters are not fully aware of the irony used. This in itself is another aspect of irony. So, the question is why does Jane Austen use irony so much? "To Jane Austen irony does not mean, as it means to many, a moral detachment", (Encarta online encyclopaedia). To her it was all about humour and fun. I have discovered that she uses irony in most of her works. Her mother "had a great sense of humour" (Brodie's notes 1990:7) and it was probably genetically passed on to Jane. The convention within which she lived and wrote demanded a certain code of conduct, and this influenced her writing a great deal. Her way of showing what she thought of this way of living is by being ironic without being cruel, satirical without being complacent. In most of her books I have noticed that quite a lot of the characters are snobbish and their lifestyle is very