Student Question

What Gothic stories, including novels, movies, or TV shows, are similar to Jane Eyre, and how do their elements compare or contrast?

Quick answer:

Gothic stories similar to Jane Eyre include Wuthering Heights, "The Yellow Wallpaper," Wide Sargasso Sea, and Rebecca. These works share Gothic elements like isolated settings and mysterious events. While Wuthering Heights features a brooding hero, "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Wide Sargasso Sea explore themes of madness and confinement. Rebecca parallels Jane Eyre with its mysterious mansion, echoing the protagonist's struggle with secrets and identity.

Expert Answers

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Jane Eyre has a solid place among its contemporary works, including those by the other Brontës. It also has had a lasting influence on literature, even inspiring retelling from a different perspective.

One way it relates to other works is through the combination of Gothic elements in a Romantic approach. The isolated setting, gloomy mansion, and mysterious events of Thornfield are Gothic elements. Within them is the dark, brooding Romantic hero of Edward Rochester. These aspects resemble prominent features of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

The mystery of the unknown force or person revealed to be Bertha Mason is also a prominent feature. Her madness and unjust confinement by her husband are echoed in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's later work, "The Yellow Wallpaper."

Bertha became the subject of a 20th-century retelling of or prequel to the novel. In Far Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys sets the story in the Caribbean and tells how Rochester came to marry his first wife (then named Antoinette), including the origins of her mental illness. This theme is amply explored in The Madwoman in the Attic.

Another 20th-century novel, set in modern times, is strongly modeled on Jane Eyre. In Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier also uses a gloomy mansion, Manderly, but the Romantic hero's first wife has died. The new wife, who is initially young and meek like Jane, struggles to understand the mysteries in the mansion, which likewise burns.

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