English 2130
Alex Sim
English 2600
Gretchen Scott
Readings: Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë & The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gillman
Word Count:
Within “Jane Eyre” and “The Yellow wallpaper”, both female writers themes focus on similar ideas in how women of the 19th century were manipulated and treated inadequately. Both authors’ stories have several similar characteristics brought to life through three female characters within each story including the fight for power through isolation and manipulation and the very different outcome of each woman. While both “Jane Eyre” and “The Yellow Wallpaper, explore the themes of isolation, male dominance,
Jane Eyre, Bertha and Jane all at some point within the texts face the same fate of being sealed in a room against their own will and are isolated from the outside world. The way, in which Brontë writes allows the reader to sympathize with Jane Eyre’s emotions, experience, including her isolation in the red room. Jane Eyre is a young orphan isolated from her parents due to their death, she lives with her aunt and cousins, she is abused by her cousin John and receives punishment for Johns actions as a young child Jane Eyre recalls that “I shall remember how you thrust me back . . . into the red-room. . . . And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing.CITATION Cha47 \p 35 \l 1033 (Brontë 35)” Locked into this empty room Jane Eyre becomes physically isolated from the world. Contrasted to Jane in The Yellow Wallpaper the difference is that Gilman’s Jane is trapped within the social world, of John, her “husband”, who also constantly manipulated Jane. He secluded her from the entire world, and he was known as the reason she went mad. If he had not forced her to sit in her room day as seen when Jane says, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition, if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus after day from the rest of the world,”CITATION Gil92 \p 60 \l 1033
English 2600
Gretchen Scott
Readings: Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë & The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gillman
Word Count:
Within “Jane Eyre” and “The Yellow wallpaper”, both female writers themes focus on similar ideas in how women of the 19th century were manipulated and treated inadequately. Both authors’ stories have several similar characteristics brought to life through three female characters within each story including the fight for power through isolation and manipulation and the very different outcome of each woman. While both “Jane Eyre” and “The Yellow Wallpaper, explore the themes of isolation, male dominance,
Jane Eyre, Bertha and Jane all at some point within the texts face the same fate of being sealed in a room against their own will and are isolated from the outside world. The way, in which Brontë writes allows the reader to sympathize with Jane Eyre’s emotions, experience, including her isolation in the red room. Jane Eyre is a young orphan isolated from her parents due to their death, she lives with her aunt and cousins, she is abused by her cousin John and receives punishment for Johns actions as a young child Jane Eyre recalls that “I shall remember how you thrust me back . . . into the red-room. . . . And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing.CITATION Cha47 \p 35 \l 1033 (Brontë 35)” Locked into this empty room Jane Eyre becomes physically isolated from the world. Contrasted to Jane in The Yellow Wallpaper the difference is that Gilman’s Jane is trapped within the social world, of John, her “husband”, who also constantly manipulated Jane. He secluded her from the entire world, and he was known as the reason she went mad. If he had not forced her to sit in her room day as seen when Jane says, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition, if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus after day from the rest of the world,”CITATION Gil92 \p 60 \l 1033