Comparing the Quest for Self in Jane Eyre and Villete Essay -- compari

Quest for Self in Jane Eyre and Villete Why is Villette so disagreeable? Because the writers mind contains nonhing only hunger, insurrection and rage. Matthew Arnold, 1853. Matthew Arnold was certainly forthcoming about the defects of both Charlotte Brontes mind and of her novel. Indeed he was not alone in his reaction to her Anne Mozley in The Christian Remembrancer in April 1853 wrote in reaction to Brontes other great work of rebellion, Jane Eyre, that she had to throw away a protest against the outrages on decorum, the moral perversity, the toleration, nay, indifference to vice which filtrate her picture of a desolate woman (my italics). Mozley even went far comely to label Jane Eyre a dangerous book, a sentiment which Arnolds comments understand that he sh ard. Yes both Villette and Jane Eyre are pervaded by hunger, rebellion and rage but it is this very factor which allows Brontes protagonists to explore their own identities in, crucially, their own terms . That both Jane Eyre and Villette are first person narratives is highly important. Unlike Catherine Earnshaw, Maggie Tulliver and Isabel Archer, Lucy Snowe and Jane Eyre are able to unsex their own stories, and subsequently, to define themselves. As Tony Tanner stated, Janes narrative act is not so much one of retrieval as of establishing and maintaining her identity and this ignore easily be extended to Lucy. Indeed in Villette the importance of manner of speaking to proclaim identity, and therefore power, is demonstrated by Lucys inability to speak cut when she arrives in Villette I could say nothing whatever. Of course the agency of teaching Lucy to speak French falls to M. Paul demonstrating the masc... ...ion and rage. BBIBLIOGRAPHY The Brontes The Critical Heritage, ed. Miriam Allott (1974). Person, biography and Identity in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Tony Tanner in Teaching the schoolbook ed. S Kappeler. Jane Eyres Interior Design, Karen Chase i n Jane Eyre (New Casebook), ed. Heather Glenn. access to Villette (Penguin,1979), Tony Tanner. The Buried Life of Lucy Snowe and A Dialogue of Self and Soul theater of operations Janes Progress in The Mad Woman in the Attic, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (2000). Charlotte Bronte as a Freak Genius, David Cecil in Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyreand Villette (A Casebook Series) ed. Miriam Allot. Three Womens Texts and a Critique of Imperialism, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in The Feminist Reader ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (1997).