Appereance

As we were talking in class about how appearance is such a strong theme in Wide Sargasso Sea, it got me thinking about how that people choosing to get married to someone too much based on appearance is still a large problem today. How many times do you see people fall for each other based on all the superficial attractions and not take the time to figure out if there is anything else to that person and if they are compatible in that way. It makes me wonder if the divorce rate would decline at all if more people stopped looking at the artificial and got to know each other and made sure there was more that we were attracted to then just the outside appearance. Referring back to the books, since most of Jane Eyre it talks about how Jane was particularly beautiful, does that mean that the experience of marrying Bertha based solely on appearance has taught him to look beyond the physical appearance and see the inner beauty in Jane? It seems to be part of his journey in becoming a better person that eventually allowed him to end up with Jane and “live happily ever after”. It also leads me to wonder if he had met Jane before he went through the experience with Bertha if he would have considered her as a potential mate as he wouldn’t have been overcome with her beauty like he was with Bertha.

Writing about her own life?

There have been several references in the footnotes about parallels between Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte’s life. It was noted that Lowood was patterned after the school she attended and that Helen Burns was thought to be a representation of her sister that died of consumption. Also we have mentioned numerous times in class how Bronte was a governess as well so that she has some firsthand experience. These factors combined made me wonder how much of the rest of the story reflects Charlotte Bronte’s life as well. In fact when I looked into it, there is a picture on her Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bronte) page of the first edition of Jane Eyre and it calls it an autobiography.  To me this could simply be the fact that the voice of the novel is Jane Eyre herself telling us about her life, but alludes to the fact that there are at least pieces of the story that are derived from Bronte’s own experiences. There are also several references to some of her other works that say she took experiences from her life that she used to build those novels as well. I find myself wondering as I read each part of the novel if it has something to do with Bronte’s life. For example did she have a Mr. Rochester?