夏洛特·勃朗特.ppt

Charlotte Bront? Life Experience Characteristics of Charlotte’s Works Detailed Study of Jane Eyre Life Experience Their mother died when Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and their brother Branwell were children; the two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died young. Branwell was a drug addict and an alcoholic whom Charlotte, Emily, and Anne nursed through his collapses, his psychosis, and his final days. The devoted sisters found support and companionship in one another; at night, they read their novels and their poems to one another. Their society did not encourage women to fulfill their talents. The twenty-year old Charlotte wrote to Robert Southey, the poet laureate, for his opinion about writing. “Literature cannot be the business of a womans life, and it ought not to be. ” Men and women had separate “spheres” and duties, with woman’s sphere being the house, family, and self-sacrifice. Characteristics of Charlotte’s Works The two distinctive characteristics of her work are the closely observed factual details and the extravagant adventures of the spirit in a fantasy world. Her constant theme is the struggles of an orphan girl. Detailed Study of Jane Eyre Plot: It records the experience of a fragile, friendless girl struggling in a hostile society, which could have reflected Charlotte’s own painful experience as governess. Autobiographical elements are recognizable throughout Jane Eyre. Jane’s friend Helen Burns’s tragic death from tuberculosis recalls the deaths of two of Charlotte’s sisters, Maria and Elizabeth. Jane Eyre is the first governess in Victorian literature. She possesses a sharp wit, a strength of will, and a capacity for love that differentiate her fundamentally from the general female characters of contemporary women novelists. Charlotte was among the first women novelists to claim equality between women and men in the right to declare their love. It is Jane who declares her love to Rochester before he makes his sentiments clear to he