INTER-TEXTUALITY “JANE EYRE” BY CHARLOTTE BTONTE AND “WIDE SARGASSO SEA” BY JANE RHYS

1. INTER-TEXTUALITY“JANE EYRE” BY CHARLOTTE BTONTEAND “WIDE SARGASSO SEA” BY JANE RHYS By Ann and Jennifer

2. Outlining our presentation 1. Summarizing “Jane Eyre” 2. Comparison in terms of themes 3. Detailed comparison between Jane and Antoinette 4. Extract Close Analysis

3. JANE EYRE Jane Eyre is a famous and influential novel by English writer Charlotte Bronte. It was published in London, England in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell".

4. Summary of janeeyre • JANE EYRE IS A YOUNG ORPHAN being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. • Mrs Reed, and her three children (John, Eliza and Georgiana) neglect and abuse Jane. They dislike Jane's plain looks and quiet yet passionate character. • One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. • While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs.

5. Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. • The school’s headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. • Brocklehurst announces to the school that Jane is “ a liar!” • Later that day, Miss Maria Temple, the youthful superintendent, is just and kind, allows Jane to speak in her own defense. After Jane does so, Miss Temple writes to Mr. Lloyd. His reply agrees with Jane's, and she is publicly cleared of Mr. Brocklehurst's accusation.

6. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. • The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher.

7. The narrative resumes eight years later. Jane has been a teacher at Lowood for two years.She advertises as a governess and is hired by Mrs. Alice Fairfax, housekeeper of the Gothic manor Thornfield. • Jane goes for a walk and aids a horseman who has sprained his ankle when his horse slipped on a patch of ice, who turns out to be her employer Mr Edward Rochester. • He repeatedly summons her to his presence and talks with her. • Mrs Reed suffered a fatal stroke due to John’s suicide. She asked to see her and handed her a letter from her father’s brother, John Eyre ,notifying his intent to leave her his fortune upon his death.

8. After Jane's return to Thornfield, after months of concealing her emotions, she proclaims her love for Edward, who in turn passionately proposes to her. • Following a month of courtship, Jane's forebodings arise when a strange, savage-looking woman sneaks into her room one night and rips her wedding veil in two. • During the wedding, the mysterious Mr. Mason and a lawyer step forth and declare that Rochester cannot marry Jane because his own wife is still alive. The wedding is cancelled, and Jane is heartbroken. • Although Jane loves Rochester more than anything else, she refuses to betray the God-given morals and principles she has always believed in and chooses to leave in the middle of the night.

9. Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. • St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. • St.John reveals that his uncle, who denied the Rivers children a share of his inheritance is in fact also Jane's uncle. St.John, his sisters and Jane are cousins.

10. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three newfound relatives. • St. John intends to travel to India to devote his life to missionary work. • At that moment she hears what she thinks is Rochester's voice calling her name, and this breaks her out of St. John's influence for a moment.

11. When Jane reached Thornfield, an innkeeper tells her that Rochester's mad wife set the house alight and then committed suicide by jumping from the roof. • Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary.

12. At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. • Rochester eventually recovers sight in one eye, and can see their first-born son when the baby is born.

13. JANE RHYS • postcolonial author • challenging the notion of England as a bastion of justice and fairness: • "England, rosy pink in the geography book map, but on the page opposite the words are closely crowded, heavy looking. Exports coal, iron, wool“ • Displacement  narrative moves  • internal monologue

14. SOME OF THE THEMES • Misanthropy: the hatred/ fear of mankind • Surrogate mothers: Christophine vs Bessie

15. Misanthropy • Both novels resemble in the way they explore the theme of MISANTHROPY • Childhood • Right at the beginning of the novel • Ignored by supposed mom/ resented by moms even • Both find solace in engaging with herself • “Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin- once I saw a snake. All better than people Better. Better, better than people” (P11) • With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened.

16. Christophinevs Bessie • Significance: they are comparable to surrogate mother of Antoinette/Jane Eyre. • both Antoinette and Jane Eyre could not benefit from marternal love, or rather being ignored by their mothers. • They open the girls’ ability to perceive the world.

17. Both of them help reinforce the main theme of the novels: • Christophine: race, culture, color, love, romantics, obeah and the dream world, mother-daughter relationship • Bessie: mother-daugher relations

18. Enlightenment at school “Well has Solomon said--"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.” (Jane Eyre)

19. Antoinnettevsjaneeyre Jane Antoinette • can assert notions of female individuality and self-respect  • Society of Christian virtues • divided between worlds of hating races • racial tension not only undermines any feelings of security  •  the immoral world view

20. Marriage Jane Antoinette • Emotional and spiritual satisfaction • "He put me off his knee, rose and reverently lifting his hat from his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible" (Brontë, p. 382) •  moral resurrection • Business transaction • Greed • "Everybody know that you marry her for her money and you take it all. And then you want to break her up, because you jealous of her. She is more better than you, she have better blood in her and she don't care for money — it's nothing for her" (Rhys, p. 152)

21. MORALITY AND SPIRITUALITY  Jane Antoinette • Faith •  preserve •  evoke temptation, not flee it • "Christophine, if he, my husband, could come to me one night. Once more. I would make him love me" 

22. The endings • Although both Antoinette and Jane Eyre suffer in their isolated, lonely childhood, they end up differently. • Antoinette is jailed in Thornfield for the rest of her life by Rochester while Jane Eyre enjoys a happy married life with Rochester • Ironically, if we take Wide Sargasso Sea to be prequel to Jane Eyre, both women end up differently but in relation to Mr Rochester.

23. JANE ANTOINNETTE • "Reader, I married him," • "I was in the room but I didn't hear all he said except 'I cannot interfere legally between yourself and your husband'. It was when he said 'legally' that you flew at him and when he twisted the knife out of your hand you bit him" 

24. CLOSE ANALYSIS • P115 line 16 till P117 line 16. • “In this room, I wake early … This cardboard house where I walk at night is not England.”

25. Questions for each group • Identify the recurring motifs in this extract • Comment on the recurring motifs that Rhys uses to dramatize the central issues of the plot.

26. Flames • Money, gold piece • Looking glass