Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Female Gothic
In Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre, and “Lois the Witch”, they all briefly talked about female friendships. Back then, women are not supposed to express their opinion in front of men. Therefore, it is important to have a friend to accompany with, share thoughts and feelings, and more importantly, get our back when we are in trouble. In these three novels, the authors promote true friendships that friends actually care and support each other. In the movie that we watched today, Helen was a friend that Jane Eyre met at Lowood School. She was the only one that she could be lean on and share feelings with. Even though she was just a friend of Jane for a short period of time, I believe she is the one who keeps Jane working hard for herself in some extent. However, there are also times when women do not support women when Lois’s aunt and Faith accused Jane of being a witch. Lois had no friends that support her at the moment and ultimately ended up to death from a hanging.
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Te,
ReplyDeleteI do agree that with the time setting in these stories, that Jane Eyre and Louis the Witch needed strong but HONEST relationships with other women in order to be successful. I do feel though as if neither of these characters truly had strong friendships with any of the other women in the stories. Jane says that her closest and only true friend is male and is Mr. Rochester. I do agree with you about Louis. We see that Louis has no friendships and no one in her life. She is lonely and this is repeated numerous times throughout the story. It is also repeated that she has no friendships except with the sailor and Hugh Lacy, both of which are male.
I agree as well, women during this time had almost no rights and were thought of as a person to take care of the family and to do certain tasks that were required to make that happen without ever questioning it. Throughout the novels all of the main characters had friends who they could rely on because the men were not there to help, I think this allows the women of the novel to grow stronger as a character and gain a sense of freedom once they were able to get away from the grapse of society and men.
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