Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
SANDRA M. GILBERT AND SUSAN GUBAR (ESSAY DATE 1979)
SOURCE: Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress.” In The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, pp. 336-71. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
In the following excerpt, Gilbert and Gubar propose Bertha Mason, Rochester’s secret first wife, as a double for the darker side of Jane Eyre. The authors interpret Bertha’s moments of lashing out as representative of Jane’s suppressed rage as well as Brontë’s own anger.
That Rochester’s character and life pose in themselves such substantial impediments to his marriage with Jane does not mean, however, that Jane herself generates none. For one thing, “akin” as she is to Rochester, she suspects him of harboring all the secrets we know he does...
[The entire page is 18869 words long]
Navigate
Related Topics
