Their Eyes Journal 1

How is Janie's story/Bildungsroman similar/ different from Jane's?

Similar :

1. Their parents died very early, they were raised up by relatives.

2. They were both teased or bullied by peers.

3. They have desire of freedom.

    Both of they didn't realized what they really want and make changes until certain incidents happened—

To Janie, it's her grandma's and the failure of her first marriage.

To Jane, it's Miss Temple's leaving and the boredom of life at Lowood. 

4. They fought for what they wanted through their lives and didn't care other's judges.

5. They were both fulfilled in themselves in the end of the story.

Different :

1. There's also difference in the 3rd similarity (see the underlining sentence earlier): 


Jane is more determined than Janie, she took action (advertising to get a new job) right after her sense of changes in heart.

Janie didn't turn to the shift point until her big fight with her first husband Logan.

I think the reason for this is the difference of their living environment which influenced their disposition → see my following points.

2. Janie's grandma raised her up and cared for her, they inhabit a house in the backyard of a white couple, who were their master and treated them well.

Jane has lived by her aunt's through for a couple of year during her childhood; her aunt's family never treated her well.

3. Janie's teenage life was not as severe and strained as Jane's,

   Janie's temperament is more girly than Jane's.

• Janie went to school and played around with kids; she loved flowers, trees and anything beautiful in nature. She could feel sweetness of life and had dreams. She was not distant from guys and got her (first) kiss at sixteen. Basically, Janie was not a lonely and unhappy person through her teenager life.

• However, Jane was pretty much isolated from the society and people; she had fantasy rather than dreams which is her way to escape from the reality, she immersed herself into studies and school routines.

4. Jane had only one romantic relationship with one person and got married with him in the end.

Janie had three relationships with three men and 2 of them were dead, she was alone in the end.

Jane Eyre Journal 5

       I do think Bronte endorsing colonialist attitudes through her depictions of characters and events in the last part of novel.

1. From the depictions on St. John.

 

      The never-sun-set empire, as a strong colonizer, needed to get knowledge of the colonies and control them by setting rules for them, including the imposition of language, law and culture. “The missionary activity is one of the social practices through which the British established their dominance” (Pg.12)

Bronte gave efforts describing St. John’s greatness for scarifying himself going to India to do missionary job. She beautified St. John’s character and his missionary career, and this actually covered the nature of Britain imperialism’s cultural aggression. 

2. From Bertha’s image and her end in the story

      We have discussed Bertha's characteristics—savage, crazy, “pigmy intellect”, “contamination”, which are all negative compared to Jane's. 

      In consideration of Bertha's origin—as a Creole from a Spanish Town of West Indies (the colony of the U.K), she was totally a devil in Bronte’s description. Bronte does not pay sympathy to Bertha but only stands on Rochester’s side in the novel—Bertha is the beast and the one who gained a marriage by cheating. What’s more, she was locked up in Thronfield and ended up dead by jumping out of the roof.

     What interesting is, there was a rule that widows should sacrifice themselves in India. There was an opinion by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (an Indian literary critic and theorist) that “Bertha's suicide is constructed in a manner that reflects her inferiority through imperialism”[1] , and her self-destruction was an innuendo to Indian widow's sacrifice.

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[1] Issues of identity between Jane Eyre and Antoinette-Bertha in the books Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea http://www.helium.com/items/1067613-issues-identity-between-jane-eyre-antoinette-bertha-books-jane-eyre-wide