Preview

Compare and Contrast: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and James Joyce's Araby

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
830 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Compare and Contrast: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and James Joyce's Araby
Compare and Contrast: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and James Joyce’s Araby James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories developed chronologically from his youth to adulthood. Joyce attempts to tell a coming of age story through Dubliners. In particular, Araby is about a young boy who is separated from his youth by realizing the falsity of love. James Joyce’s Araby is a tale of a boy in Dublin, Ireland that is overly infatuated with his friend’s older sister and because of his love, travels to the bazaar, Araby, where he finally becomes aware of his childish actions. In this story Joyce emphasizes the main character’s reactions and feelings rather than the overall plot. When the boy’s quest for the ideal ends in failure, he moves closer to his adulthood. The boy’s experience or maturity is increased during his quest to find the perfect gift for the perfect girl. During his journey to the bazaar his loneliness and his desire for love is emphasized. In this coming to age story the boy transcends from his youth to adulthood.
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is also a coming of age story, where perspectives of innocence and experience are blended. Charlotte Bronte does a good job with reflecting the characters personality through her writing. Jane Eyre is written in first person in the point of view of Jane. Jane Eyre is the story of young orphaned girl who lives with her aunt and cousins, the Reeds. Jane is at a disadvantage with her lack of money, family issues and her social position. Even though Jane suffers many hard- ships she still seems to find love at the end of the novel. Love is a major part of the plot, which helps show how Jane Eyre develops as a woman throughout the novel. There is a passionate love between Jane and Rochester. This is seen as she admonishes herself for imagining a future with Rochester and her immediate reactions to aid him.
Both Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and James Joyce’s Araby define the passage from innocence to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    There are many obvious similarities between James Joyce’s, "Araby” and John Updike’s, "A&P.” “Araby" and “A&P" are both short stories in which the central characters are in love with women who don t even know it. Both short stories discuss the theme of boys entering maturity and manhood with which each young man leaves the last stage of his adolescence and steps into adulthood. Both of the narrators of John Updike’s “A&P” and James Joyce’s “Araby” are young boys who experience disillusionment in their ideals.…

    • 246 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    With age comes change. This is especially true for Jane in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre is a dynamic character that changes from a mistreated, spirited little girl to an mature, independent woman with her own values.…

    • 410 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Great Gatsby and Araby

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The protagonist of “Araby” fantasizes about growing up enough to attain the love of his friend’s sister. Because the young boy believes he is in love, he elevates himself above his peers. He isolates himself in his dark attic and watches his companions “playing below in the street,” their cries “weakened and indistinct ” (Joyce 24). Although he tries to ignore them, the voices of his childhood freedom still reach the boy no matter how much he tries to separate himself. The boy discounts “some distant lamp or lighted window gleam[ing] below” on his peers, abandoning the light of childhood while he exercises a feeling of superiority (Joyce 23). By distancing himself from his coequals, he embarks on a vainglorious quest to prematurely reach…

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre tells the story of Jane’s growth and development as she searches for a meaningful existence in society. Author Faith McKay said, “No matter what your family happens to be like…it affects who you are. It matters.” Jane is an orphan, forced to battle a cruel guardian, a patriarchal society, and a rigid social order. (Anderson, “Identity and Independence in Jane Eyre”) Jane has concrete beliefs in what women deserve, as well as obtainable goals for how she imagines her place in society as a woman (Lewkowicz, “The Experience of Womanhood in Jane Eyre”) and with self-growth, Jane Eyre was able to define herself as well as equip herself with wisdom and…

    • 116 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Araby is considered as one of the best short stories by James Joyce, a famous Irish novelist and poem. Araby (1905), told from the perspective of a young boy, belongs to Dubliners (1914) – the first set of James Joyce. Joyce is a very influential writer in the avant-garde of the early 20th century. And like many famous writers in 20th century, he did not have a smooth life. James Joyce wrote Araby in Trieste, Austria where he lived for quite a long time feeling there was no position for him, and frustrated with his frivolity of money, drinking habits and strained relationship with his brother. The collection Dubliners was a portrait of…

    • 4971 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jane Eyre, a Gothic novel by Charlotte Bronte, tells a story of a beauty and a beast. Jane Eyre grows up an orphaned girl in Victorian England who does not know love in her cruel aunt's household; after a few years her aunt sends her to a school where they abuse Jane further. After spending eight years as a student of Lowood and two as a teacher, she takes a nanny position where she meets Mr. Rochester, and sparks begin to fly. Bronte divides Jane's story into three significant sections, which have a different effect on Jane's life as seen at Gateshead, Lowood, and Thornfield .…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jane Eyre Essay

    • 413 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Jane Eyre is an orphan adopted by her aunt. Jane is treated very cruel by her aunt her three children. Her aunt, Mrs. Reed, never listened to Jane. Her cousins always tormented her because they knew she would be punished. Her aunt branded her as a liar.…

    • 413 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Diction In Araby

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The transition between childhood and adulthood is a time in one’s life where new ideas, perspectives, and feelings emerge. James Joyce hones in on this period of life and coming of age in his short story “Araby” which follows a nameless narrator as he explores new experiences and feelings. Through imagery, diction, and syntax, Joyce develops the main character into a teenager who is ready for the next step in his life; he wants to leave his childhood in the past and embrace this newfound feeling of love that he is experiencing. Through imagery, Joyce develops the boy and the new feeling of love he is experiencing. The diction Joyce uses establishes a tone throughout the short story. The syntax Joyce includes reveals the boy’s true thoughts about the girl, thus developing his characterization farther. Joyce is able to capture the essence of the transition to adulthood with these three literary techniques.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Eyre ; Bronte, Charlotte. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC. 1847, both young individuals are faced with numerous obstacles in an attempt to mature. Eventually, the characters both come to realizations that they need love in order to grow and mature. In a way, the characters are saved by love. Having both lost their ways, at the depths of depression, they make sufficient connections with loved ones which help them to complete their transformation into maturity.…

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frustration another prevailing theme in some of Joyce’s work has also been outlined in Araby. Everyday the boy would suffer with an infatuation with a girl he could never have. He even had to deal with his frustration of his self-serving uncle, which he and his aunt were afraid of. The absolute epitome of frustration comes from his uncle when he arrived late at home delaying the one chance of going to Araby. When the boy arrives at Araby to find out that all of the shops are closed his true frustration was reveled on the inside.…

    • 987 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cited: Birmingham, Meredith. “Jane Eyre An Adaptation of Charlotte Bronte 's Novel for Young Children”. Brontefamily. 1999. 17 November 2010 .…

    • 7010 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte portrays the life of a young girl named Jane Eyre and the cruelties she experiences and witnesses in her life. Jane lives at Gateshead the house of her late uncle, with Mrs. Reed, her aunt and three cousins: John, Georgiana, and Eliza. Her family at Gateshead treats her poorly, they abuse her and wonder why she stays with them at Gateshead. Soon they send her off to a school for girls where Jane is introduced to unfamiliar people and a diverse way of life. Three of the countless individuals that Jane encounters all have their own views of Christianity that affect Jane. The three, Helen, Brocklehurst and St. John, each provide Jane with a different understanding of religion and morality.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In James Joyce’s short story Araby he is successful in creating an intense narrative. He does this in such a way that he enables the reader to feel what it is actually like to live in Dublin at the turn of the century when the Catholic Church had an enormous amount of authority over Dubliner’s. The reader is able to feel the narrators exhausting struggle to escape this influence of the Catholic Church by replacing it with a materialistic driven love for a girl.…

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Set in the nineteenth century, Jane Eyre describes a woman’s continuous journey through life in search of acceptance and inner peace. Each of the physical journeys made by the main character, Jane Eyre, have a significant effect on her emotions and cause her to grow and change into the woman she ultimately becomes. Her experiences at Lowood School, Thornfield Hall, Moor house, and Ferndean ingeniously correspond with each stage of Jane’s inner quest and development from an immature child to an intelligent and sophisticated woman…

    • 2163 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    James Joyce's Dubliners is a collection of short stories that offers a brief, but intimate window into the lives of a variety of characters, many of whom have nothing in common beyond the fact that they live in Dublin. Men and women of all ages, occupations and social classes are represented in this collection. The stories in Dubliners are often about the ways in which these individuals attempt to escape from the numbness and inertia that their lives yield, and the moments of painful self-realization that follow these attempts. "Araby", "The Dead" and "A Little Cloud", stories included in Dubliners best portray the idea of the endeavours one must go on to find themselves.…

    • 1443 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays