The governess’s first thoughts after seeing Peter Quint are to compare her situation to the plots of two popular gothic novels with romantic heroines, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre—the latter about a governess who marries her employer, which we know to be this governess’s fantasy. However, the effect of these references is not to make the governess’s story seem more like those novels, but just the opposite. The fact that she is inclined to see herself in terms of these gothic romances reminds us that this is not a romance; that those are fantasies rather than reality; and that even though we know that what we are reading is a work of fiction, it’s a work of realistic fiction.
The governess’s second
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Grose of Peter Quint’s appearance displays a strange mixture of attraction and repulsion. Even if we feel sure that Quint is a real ghost and not a product of the governess’s mind, we may still get the sense that the governess’s perceptions about Quint are not purely insightful and that, to a certain extent, the governess projects her own desires and fears onto him. Quint is clearly a foil for the absent master—similarly attractive, and at one time the master’s proxy at Bly, but emphatically not a gentleman like the master. We know that the governess fell in love with the master during their interviews, so we can assume that the master awakened sexual desires in the governess. However, the governess has no outlet for those feelings, because the precondition for winning the master’s approval is to endure his absence and not seek to communicate with him. She describes Quint as “tall, active, erect” and “remarkably” handsome, making it clear that she finds him attractive, but she also perceives him as aggressive and terrifying. We might infer that her frustrated desire for the master is what prompts her to see Quint as a sexual substitute, as someone who is attractive but, unlike the master, available. However, Quint’s sexual availability is also terrifying, because the social consequences of sex with a man like him would be so destructive. The governess’s fear of Quint’s sexuality (or her fear of her own desire for him) seems to manifest itself as a contempt for his status as a servant, and throughout the story she dwells on the dangers and evils of his lower-class, servile, ungentlemanly
In the short story “The Red Dress”, the most prominent character foils are suggested between Lonnie and Mary Fortune. Lonnie represents the epitome typical, mainstream female who is extremely interested and fanatic about the boys in the narrator’s high school. Unlike the narrator who frequently wears the old-fashioned red dress her mother sows for her, Lonnie was “light-boned, pale and thin, she had been a Baby Blue” (p.9) ever since she was born. Her fashion sense and style also reflects the modern, conventional “pale blue crepe dress, with a peplum and bow” which most of the girls the in the high school aspire to wear themselves. Despite having crooked teeth, because of Lonnie’s gorgeous, smooth dress, she remains effortlessly beautiful.
Through the death of Natan Ketilsson, Agnes’ sense of identity is fragmented by her status as a ‘murderess’. The notion that Agnes is now seen as 'an inhumane witch, stirring up murder' reveals her inability to reconcile her identity within society. Kent exemplifies society’s misperception of Agnes through the appearance of Rosa, deeming her as an outsider. Agnes is misperceived by the crowd gathered around her as the “Fjandi! Devil”, as she feels the ‘comfort’ of Rosa, ‘someone [she] recognised’. That presenting Rosa’s disappearance at the remark of the crowd, the only person she could recognise, Kent implies that society has ultimately betrayed Agnes at the cause of their own portrayals of her.
In Sedgwick’s A New-England Tale, Mrs. Wilson is the classic representation of a novel’s antagonist, especially in regards to how she treats protagonist, Jane Elton. However, it is the parenting, or lack thereof that has the greatest impact on the lives of Elvira and David Wilson, who despite being prohibited from engaging in sinful behavior, do just that. Sedgwick demonstrates that Mrs. Wilson’s salvation may have given her an authority over others, but when she failed to teach her children the ways of the Lord, her responsibility abandonment led to her children’s act of sin.
We will analyse, in this essay, the differences as well as the similarities which exist between Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself. We will see that they differ in terms of genre, the period of history in which they find themselves, the way the characters are presented and so forth. However, they share some of the main values concerning womanhood, race and some other aspects of life which they both treat in different ways and yet they do so in a specific aim. Charlotte Brontë and Harriet Jacobs present to us two texts which are both based in totally opposite moments in history. While many differences exist between the two texts, they have several aspects in common.
Both the stories of Equitan and Guigemar invoke the debate between selfish love and selfless love. The character Equitan embodies the principles of chivalry, where he is “much admired and much beloved in his own land” (Marie de France 13-14). Although he embodies the ideal man for courtly love, Equitan is selfish when he enters relationships. Equitan pursues the seneschal’s wife and they enter an affair with each other. This affair is comprised of physical attraction and has no moderation at all.
This analysis studies Phelan’s quest for attaining forgiveness and reconciliation rested on improving four important ongoing struggles, relationships, economic status, dependence, and depression. Upon the death of his child, Francis, completely shattered, unable to ever express the situations to anyone. Francis had just turned from “Father” to “Killer”, because “Gerald
She is “repulsive” to the Puritan society that rejects her, the “attractiveness of her person [undergoing] a similar change” (148). Her personal choices lead to public shame, consequently leading to
Charlotte Bronte’s last novel, Villette (1853), tells the story of Lucy Snowe, our narrator, who is particularly unforthcoming with information about herself and as a result, characters like Headmistress Madame Beck and Lucy’s eventual lover, M. Paul Emanuel, resort to spying on Lucy in order to learn more about her. Lucy Snowe, too, uses surveillance to learn more about the people she is with. It’s important to acknowledge these moments of surveillance because “there are more than 175 occasions when Lucy or other characters in the novel observe individuals while assessing their character” (May 51) which help Lucy become her own person. Therefore, surveillance becomes a prominent part of Villette and has been a topic of discussion for many
Her love for the master does not make her insane, but the way she acts upon that love does. In describing the Governess’s first meeting with the master, Douglas says that “he struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a favor” (James 4). This shows that the Governess is at once infatuated with the master. She thinks he is perfect and describes him as angelic, which proves she is in fact in love with him. Her obsession with his beauty stop her from reasoning rationally where he is concerned, and this translates to her behavior around Miles and Flora, who are his niece and nephew.
As a matter of fact most frequently critics have looked at how prejudicial her mother’s philosophies have been for our character, and attributed to Editha Mowbray the “fallness” of her daughter. In her essay “The return of the prodigal daughter” Joanne Tong contemplates how “Mrs. Mowbray pays too little rather than too much attention to her daughter” (2004: 475) the outcome of which is a misunderstanding of her position in society with regards to the strict laws of etiquette and feminine ideology in eighteenth century England. Cecily E. Hill also blames Editha for Adeline and Glenmurray’s extramarital affair and their inevitable moral condemnation, and instead of accusing the lovers she sees Editha as the soul villain of the novel. Contrary to the typical concept of a mother who provides a safe education to Adeline, she experiments with dubious theories that ultimately foreground her daughter’s tragic
In the gothic novel The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates, physical places such as the Bog Kingdom and the city of Princeton are contrasted by means of specific details and motifs. However, the author explicitly contrasts the interpreted places in the book, such as the appearance of parallel events and the reality of those same events, by means of parallelisms and connectivity. Specifically, the contradiction of appearance and reality are made most evident in the journeys to the Bog Kingdom by Annabel Slade and her demon lover Axson Mayte, Amanda FitzRandolph and her demon lover, and Todd Slade. The first major turning point in the novel occurs when Annabel Slade is standing face-to-face with her soon-to-be husband and suddenly flees with, or
The protagonist from “The Turn of the Screw”, is perceived to be despearate as she tries to achieve her dream but her personal pride leads her to an unstable condition. The author depicts the Governess believing that to attain her goal of gaining attentionby her employer, she must be a hero. Therefore, she invents lies about seeing her predessors haunting her pupils. Nonetheless, the more times James makes the Governess mention the ghosts the more she believes they are real and they, “want to get them (the children)” (82). The Governess is blinded by making it appear she sees the ghosts that she looses herself in her own lies leading her to an unstable condition of not knowing what is real or not.
The abnormal way in which these sexual anxieties are presented permits the discussion of these apprehensions. The supernatural renders Lucy inhuman — her twisted face resembles “The coils of Medusa’s snakes ” (Stoker 250) — and as such, the sexual and moral dangers she posits in her independence are punishable by the four men. The same men who once desired nothing more than her pure affections are those who persecute her to the grave, for Lucy now personifies the destructive morals of the transgressive female. The violence employed in their fight against the vampire, in addition to their destruction of Lucy’s egregious body, demonstrates that male anxieties and fears often transform into hatred towards that which questions their masculinity.
In the city of Athens, a group of craftsmen come together to decide who will play the characters in the “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of of Pyramus and Thisbe.” They will be performing this play for the Duke and Duchess on their wedding day. Peter Quince, the carpenter, is the man in charge who will lead the “actors” and assign the roles to each person. Bottom, , is the overly optimistic and over confident character in this scene. He is quite impatient to see what part he got and overly enthusiastic to begin the performance.
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.