The Mad Woman In The Attic And Jane Eyre

One the one hand brontë s madwoman is a tragic figure a literary manifestation of jane s own feelings of oppression.

The mad woman in the attic and jane eyre.

The 1966 parallel novel wide sargasso sea by jean rhys serves as a prequel to brontë s novel. A nuisance and an impediment to this beautiful love story between jane eyre and mr. She is described as the violently insane first wife of edward rochester who moved her to thornfield hall and locked her in a room on the third floor. The madwoman in the attic the most well known and problematic character in jane eyre is rochester s first wife who is almost always referred to by her maiden name of bertha mason.

In some ways brontë s decision to merge the identities of the angel and the monster in the two primary female characters of her novel can be seen as a personal statement about the conflict between passion and passivity in her own life. Her life turns upside down when she discovers right before her wedding that her lover has an ex wife a madwoman hidden in the attic and flees narrowly escaping from committing to a sinful relationship. It is the story of mason from the time of her youth in the caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to england. To my young mind she was nothing more than a plot device.

Bertha mason is a fictional character in charlotte brontë s 1847 novel jane eyre. Rhys s novel re imagines brontë s devilish. One of the most fascinating characters in literature is the mysterious mad woman confined to an attic in jane eyre. I have read and re read jane eyre many times and i m embarrassed to admit that i had never paid much attention to this spectre of a woman lurking in the shadows until much later in life.