Who Is Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre Compared To Bertha Mason

Improved Essays
How does Jane Eyre compare to Bertha Mason and why is that significant? It is undeniably blatant that Jane Eyre, the eponymous character of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre and the secondary character of Bertha Mason evince several parallels between them, which is something that arguably affects and steers the plot of the novel. Although seemingly diametrically opposed to one another as much in behavioral traits as in physical appearance, these two figures seem to have a temporal, wide and relatively abstract rather than tangible or immediately perceptible similitude, apart from some conspicuous ones. In particular, Bertha appears to be Jane’s dark alter-ego, or more possibly, an exaggerated version of Jane. Therefore, by taking into consideration both women’s background, place in society, …show more content…
At first sight, Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason seem entirely dissimilar to one another, mainly due to their physical appearance, as well as parts of their background and social status. As far as Bertha is concerned, her background is communicated by Mr. Rochester to a shocked Jane who has just discovered the truth about his marriage to Bertha. In accordance with Mr. Rochester’s narrative, Bertha Mason was a “tall, dark, majestic” woman, daughter of a wealthy West India planter, of Creole

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Gender Roles In Jane Eyre

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages

    19th century critics portray Jane Eyre both as a feminist and Chartist manifesto. Through the heroine’s character, Brontë expresses how feminine power and independence are important, and they are seen especially during the moment when Rochester and Jane are married, and she becomes “her own mistress” (Brontë 246). She claims at that moment that she will not depend on him. If we look at the end of the novel, the gender roles are somewhat reversed, by Rochester depending on Jane to be his eyes and his hands. At a time when the simple word feminism was never heard, through Jane’s character Brontë expresses the notion that “women feel just as men do” (Brontë 77), and the fact that women cannot live a life that is forged into “stagnation” and “rigid…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mr. Rochester's wife, Bertha Mason, is filled with fire in the form of insanity. This causes her to attempt to burn anything that surrounds her, starting with Mr. Rochester's bed (in which Jane manages to extinguish). Overall, fire is a conspicuous symbol in Jane Eyre. The lack of it represents alienation and seclusion. A controlled fire can maintain a soothing force, but once it becomes unrestrained, it would cause harm and…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jane describes Bertha: “She took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror” (327). Bertha carelessly “threw” the veil on her head, suggesting her rejection of marriage and female oppression. Then, she “rent it into two parts” (327) suggesting Bertha’s refusal, and Jane’s inner refusal, to be imprisoned by marriage. However, Jane feels “bewildered” (328) and frightened after watching Bertha destroy the veil. This feeling is commented on by literary critic Maggie Berg in her criticism “Jane Eyre: Portrait of a Life.”…

    • 952 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    While, in some fashions Jane Eyre seems like a step back, portraying Bertha is such a negative light, in actuality it is a giant leap forward, for it brings forth questions that had been buried for far to long. While in some ways Jane Eyre is a racist and a novel insensitive to the mentally ill, it is just showing the harsh realities of many british madwomen and the taboo surrounding them. Overarchingly, I argue that Bertha is the most critical character in Jane Eyre and while her portrayal is rather negative, the effect of her beastly portrayal was positive in that it opened the eyes of ignorant readers. The spectacle that is Bertha Mason is largely important to the social impact of Jane Eyre on the…

    • 1812 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is an effort to become the ideal woman. In her personal life, however, Jane makes clear she would still rather be herself than put on this front. Jane internalizes “I would always rather be happy than dignified” (Bronte, 382). Bronte used the dual identities in combination with other character personalities to shed light on the hidden desires of women. Bertha is essentially the embodiment of this secret side of…

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Symbolism In Jane Eyre

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the protagonist’s life is a struggle; sometimes Jane has to lose something in order to gain something else. As the room shifts, “obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there,” the reader can see a representation of Jane’s internal struggle between good and evil shown through light and dark. Jane follows Mr. Rochester to the third floor of Thornfield, after Mr. Rochester asks if she is still awake. Unaware of the situation into which she is walking, Jane sees Mr. Mason, a friend of Mr. Rochester, laying lifeless on the bed with one arm soaked in blood.…

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She was kept in confinement away from prying eyes; some believed it was because she was Mr Edward’s mistress. However the lady turned out to be Mr Rochester’s wife!’ ‘Did Mr Rochester’s wife also perish in the fire?’ ‘No, ma’am, I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr Rochester ascend through the sky-light roof; we heard him call “Bertha!” We saw him approach her; and then ma’am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The new perspective justifies some of Bertha’s actions and shows the reader that although they may make her seem crazy, it is actually Rochester who pushes her to do them. Although there is a new perspective to look at Bertha under, many of her actions stay the same throughout the books. Her violence towards Rochester show her undying desire to break free from the force that is driving her insane. Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea remind its readers to consider the multitude of perspectives in a story before determining the absolute…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Harriet Jacobs and Bronte present women or womanhood as an ideology which has to be questioned. However, since the two women lived in two different historical periods, the ways in which womanhood and sisterhood are brought forward in both texts differ from each other. Jane eyre is the protagonist of the novel and describes the women around her as either superficial and as a product of capitalism, or as those who demand understanding and a certain degree of pity. For instance, when she first meets Mrs Fairfax, she immediately develops a certain liking for her and the description of Mrs Fairfax is quite simple and to some extent shy: “wherein sat the neatest imaginable little elderly lady, in widow’s cap, black silk gown and snowy muslin apron: eactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, […] there was no grandeur to overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; […]”(95). Miss Ingram, on the other hand, is presented as more extravagant and over the top: “she was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person , many brilliant attainments but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil […] she was not good; she was not original […]she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own […] she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her […]” (185-186).…

    • 428 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Edward Rochester, the later romantic interest of Jane and owner of the Thornfield estate, also has dynamic emotional relationships throughout this Bildungsroman novel. Rochester, a powerful, but unusual man uses his authority to assert his position through his relationship with Bertha and Jane Eyre. Bertha his first wife with whom he has an arranged marriage, primarily revolves around preserving economic stability. Due to unfortunate events, Bertha inherits insanity from her mother and during this time, it is considered inhumane to admit people to insane asylums. As a result, Rochester decides to condemn her by keeping her in locked the attic.…

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Comparison Essay

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Sooner later in the story, Jane Eyre described Bertha to Mr. Rochester “Fearful and ghastly to me—oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face….red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!" Jane Eyre was horrified by the fact that the first time she seen Bertha, the way Jane describe her, the red eyes and the savage face makes Bertha seem like an actual monster. Instead of describing her as a skinny, pale, week woman that which is how people who have been locked up in the attic for so many years should look like, Bronte chooses to describe her as a monster.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As Bertha’s brother then stands up to explain the story, Rochester tells Jane that he was fully aware of the fact that he had two wives and that he was afraid to tell her. Once Bertha makes an appearance and assaults Mr. Rochester by biting his cheek, Jane feels disappointed and dismayed. Her entire perception of Mr. Rochester has changed as she says, “Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was not what I had thought him” (Page 341). After building up a relationship with Mr. Rochester, Jane is left in desolation after finding out the truth about her…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Imprisonment in the Gothic genre encapsulates both the physical and mental. Imprisoned by societal conventions, characters are entrapped in the expectations of their time in both novels and this theme comes to serve as a plot device that drives the characters to act within their limited agencies, proving the theme of imprisonment to be central in both writings. While the instances of entrapment may not be explicit, they underpin characters’ struggles and the authors utilise the ideas of societal, physical, and mental limitations to show the strength and extend of characters’ journeys. As a literary convention, imprisonment in these Gothic novels allow for Charlotte Brontë to explore and dismantle the Victorian expectations of women while Angela Carter is able to warp traditional fairy tales to explore the emergence of second-wave feminism. Charlotte Brontë uses Bertha Mason as a foil to Jane Eyre, showing the reader and Jane what could happen should she chose to remain in Thornfield with Rochester.…

    • 1114 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Brocklehurst is the contradicting overseer of the institution and causes emotional distraught towards Jane, whereas Miss Temple motivates Jane with "precept and example" (180). Mr. Brocklehurst is a man who made a point to have nothing nice given to the Lowood students (including proper food and water), while later allowing his wife and children to visit the school decked out in glamorous attire. His overall hypocritical and mean spirit limited Jane in believing in not only herself, but also in the good of adult figures. The differences between Miss Temple and Mr. Brocklehurst aiding to Jane’s life are abundant and obvious. The most noticeable example is when Ms. Reed told Mr. Brocklehurst that Jane is a liar and cannot be trusted, so he tells the entire school that information too without figuring out if it was even true.…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bronte poses a large question with the addition of the character Bertha within the novel, even though “...a woman writer must examine, assimilate and transcend the extreme images of 'angel' and 'monster' which male authors have generated for her" (Gilbert 17). Bertha is considered essentially subhuman by the other characters in the novel, all due to the fact that she could not fit the mold of the “angel in the house.” This poses the question: are the expectations of women in Victorian society enough to drive women to insanity, eventually leading to an inescapable demise? Though this question does not have a specific answer, there are many symbols and ideas within Jane Eyre that add to the discussion. Bronte uses the character’s within her novel to portray how the “angel in the house” can lose her mind and become the “madwoman in the attic” due to the pressures of Victorian societal expectations placed upon married…

    • 1864 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays