BERTHA MASON

BERTHA MASON

In “Jane Eyre”, the character, Bertha mason is presented as a representation of uncontrollable passion and madness and her marriage to Mr. Rochester is indicated as the primary conflict of the novel written by Charlotte Bronte.

Bertha Mason is a wealthy creole woman and beautiful, later who has become violent. She lives locked in a secret room of Trornfield. There are many servants in that house, but only the servant, Grace Poole is allowed to serve Bertha and allowed to open that secret room. Bertha sees only this lady since she had locked in that room. She is not allowed to go outside. Her life is locked in the darkness of that room.

The reader recognizes Bertha only through the perspective of her husband Edward Rochester.In one sense it indicate the dominance of male voice. Women are not allowed to introduce themselves before the society instead; they are known by the name of her husband or her father. Her madness may be the reason for not allowing her to come forward.

Rochester first met her at a ball she attended with her father and her brother, Richard and visited the Mason family.He decided to marry her only for wealth by the compulsion of his father. His father knew everything about mason family but he didn’t tell it to his son. He looked only at the wealth of Bertha Mason. Rochester was unclear about what kind of madness his wife suffers from when it reached at its peak. Her insane, violent behavior becomes frightening to behold. Rochester never loved her. But he attempted to save his wife from the fire. But Bertha perishes after she throws herself off the roof , leaving her husband free.  

               

Antoinette Cosway

Antoinette Cosway

The character Antoinette, in Wide Sargasso Sea, written by Jean Rhys, derives from Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre. Bertha Mason, a mad woman in Jane Eyre is replaced as Antoinette. Rhys describes the earlier life of Bertha Mason and describes how she became a mad person in the novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

It is described from the Antoinette’s side in which the reason for her madness is clearly depicted. We can see the misunderstanding of Rochester, that her madness was in her blood and later it breaks down their life. Rochester starts doubts on Antoinette after receiving the letter from her half-brother Daniel Cosway. She is unknown about all these and wondered of her husband’s hatred felt despair.

In her childhood she lived in Coulibri estate in Jamaica with her mother Annette, her brother Pierre and three Black servants. She lived in a Black dominated society. Antoinette is white. So she gets ridiculed and had no friends at that time. People consider Antoinette’s family as outsider. She was called as ‘white cockroach’ by the Black children who irritated and disturbed her. We can see the trouble and agitation of her earlier life. She led an isolated life from her childhood onwards. Later she had a life in a convent.

When she was at marriage, the faith never supported her even there too. She had to marry a man with different of her taste, culture and custom. It distressed her a lot. She might have thought that marriage would be a favouring one for her. But it happened reversely. So it led her to insensibility.

Rochester is not a good partner for her. He never loved her. He married her only for wealth.so Antoinette is not satisfied with her husband’s attitude. She never gets the love and care from her husband that she very much desired for. Meanwhile Rochester has doubts on her after receiving a letter from her half-brother Daniel cosway, claiming that Annette Cosway had been insane and promiscuous and Antoinette had an illicit sexual relationship with her black cousin Sandi Cosway. But Antoinette is unknown about this. She never understood the reason for Rochester’s hatred. All these pushed her into madness which is not in her blood as Rochester misunderstood. Her circumstances created her madness. Ignorance and restriction from a happy life made her mad person. There is no way for confusing how a women like  her with lots of trouble in her life became a mad person.

A Room of One’s Own

A Room of One’s Own

               A Room of One’s Own written by Virginia Woolf is considered as a landmark of twentieth century feminist thought. It analyses how the literary history have included the women in it and the struggle of women as artists by evaluating the social materials that are required for the writing of literature such as leisure time, privacy and financial independence. Woolf says that these conditions were unavailable for a woman in the Elizabethan era, which pullback the creative genius of women at that time.

               The imaginary setting of this essay invites into a discussion on the topic of Women and Fiction.  Her thesis is that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. For adopting this thesis she presents this essay through a partly-fictional narrative. She analyses the mental process of an imaginary narrator, who is searching for the same topic.

               The narrator starts from Oxbridge College, where she realizes the different educational experiences available to men and women. Then the day at British library brings the truth that every scholarship has written for men. The fictional character Judith Shakespeare is created for highlighting the how a highly intelligent woman has suppressed because of lack of opportunity.

               Woolf says that the gender consciousness of both women and men pullback the creative genius. Men derogate women to maintain the dominance in the society whereas women become angry about their inferior status. Woolf proposes that a real genius should possess an androgynous mind so that their writing will reflect both male and female. 

Menie Muriel Dowie

        Menie Muriel Dowie was born a British writer who was born on 15 July 1867 at Liverpool, United Kingdom as the daughter of James Muir Dowie, a merchant, and Annie Dowie.

            

       Her first novel Gallia was published in 1895. But it caused some controversy regarding the depiction of sexual relationships in the novel and then Dowie was marked as one of the new women writers. She published two more novels, The Crook of the Bough (1898) which is a satirical story describing contemporary attitudes to women in Turkey, and Love and His mask (1901) about the Boer war

         

        Dowie married Henry Norman in 1891 and their son Henry Nigel St Valery Norman was born in 1897. Norman discovered his wife’s affair with Edward Arthur and thus he divorced her in 1903. Meanwhile Dowie settled down on a farm in England and became well-known cattle breeder. In 1928 she seperated from Fitzgerald and emigrated to the United States in 1941 because of the war in Britain. Menie Muriel Dowie died in Tucson, Arizona in 1945, aged 77.