Rochester, husband of Bertha, in Jane Eyre, plays the major role in both the works while Bertha has been given minor place in the Charlotte’s novel in comparison to Antoinette’s place in Wide Sargasso Sea. Through the novel Wide Sargasso Sea Antoinette is many times called Bertha. “…………. Then I said sharply. Bertha, are you asleep, are you ill, why don’t you answer me? Certainly I will my dear Bertha, not Bertha tonight. She said. Of course, on this of all nights you must be Bertha” (Rhys 123)
Victorian writers also confronted issues like poverty and depression. Charles Dickens introduced the life of poor and depressed people to public in his works like Oliver Twist (1838) and David Copperfield (1849). He sketch the pictures of hunger and thirst. Charlotte did it in Jane Eyre (1847) while Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights (1847) Rhys created such type of atmosphere in Antoinette’s family. She shows then financially damaged and mentally disturbed.
Narrative conventions of Victorian …show more content…
This also enables us to read groups of novels from a specified period as coherent system of signs. David Lodge provides useful comparison between contemporary fiction and Victorian fiction in his Working with Structuralism : The fundamental principle of aesthetics before the modern era was that art imitates life, and is therefore in the last analysis answerable to it: Art must tell the truth about life, and contribute to making it better, or at least more bearable…………….. The basic premise that art imitated life prevailed In the west from classical times till the late eighteenth century. It was temporary