JE: Setting Flashcards
Gateshead:
- “[They] looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group”
- Sentence structure used to highlight Jane’s confinement and isolation from an idealised Victorian family portrait -> actually separated from this image by punctuation.
-> Thus, Mrs Reed’s manipulation of femininity and
appearances for personal gain is exposed.
-> Brontë shows the intrinsic link between femininity
and power, and the ease with which these can be
controlled and manipulated, reducing the freedom of
young women like Jane.
Lowood: (+ Info on “Religion”)
1) “I learned the first two tenses of the verb Etre”
2) “Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection”
1) Lowood as a place where she learns “to be”!
-> Her narration turns from lamenting on things she
has not got, to her dreaming of what she can do.
2) Treatment at Lowood - almost worst than disease, destabilising idea of the school representing pure, benevolent Christianity.
Thornfield:
1) “the long gallery into which bedroom doors opened”
2) “the hall-door, which was half of glass”
3) “chests in oak or walnut”
1) Bluebeard imagery - gothic reference to/foreshadowing of concealed wife!
2) She can only see half of what’s going on.
3) “These relics [give] the aspect of a home of the past - a shrine of memory” - RED ROOM!
- As she ascends up through Thornfield, it is as if she goes up into her subconscious mind (Freud), revealing repressed, bad thoughts and memories.
- SHE NEEDS TO FACE THEM -> she is further along in the Bildungsroman - will she be stronger than she was before, and be able to cope? With the challenges (Bertha - in RR and here), as well as the journey in general?
