Revision of Master Narratives within Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea Es

To be able to discuss adequately how the master narratives of Bronte and Rhys snip are revised, one must start understand what those master narratives were and what the social vagary of the time was. From there one will be able to discuss how they were revised, and if in fact they were revised at all. Bronte is known as one of the first revolutionary and challenging authoress with her schoolbook Jane Eyre. The society of her time was male dominated, women were marginally cast aside and treated as trophies for their male counterparts. Their main role in life was to be a mother and a wife, Literature cannot be the business of a womans lifethe more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it. A quote from a letter Robert Southey wrote to Bronte. A clear sign of the mentality and opposition Bronte was up against. A womans proper duties of course being to tend and wait on her masters every whim and need. Women during Brontes time had no clear voice, no ne that was of any merit, they were a silent category of society, silenced by their male oppressors. Brontes book was in fact create verbally before the first womens rights movement had happened, yet it puts forward an image of an independent strong example, of a passionate and almost rebellious nature. A character refusing subservience, disagreeing with her superiors, standing up for her rights, and venturing creative thoughts. I put forward that Bronte throughout her text not only revises the themes of male power and oppression, but reconstructs them also. The text is a female bildungsroman of its time, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly tackling the patriarchal view of women.Immediately from the start Brontes character Jane is different. She is an orphan, mis-treated and despised by her family. She has no clear social position, is described as less than a servant and treated like one. A protagonist who one would assume had no characteristics worth aspiring too. Jane is disp layed perfectly in her hiding behind the curtain. She is placed by a window, which beyond is icy and cold, contrasting immensely from the inside of the rear and warmth. A clear statement of the icy coldness of the family she has been put to live with, and her fiery and passionate nature which we discover th... ...ing novels of their time. They both revise aspects of their era, that would rarely, if ever, have been moved(p) on. Wide Sargasso Sea having the double revision of challenging Jane Eyre, as well as social beliefs. The devices that connect the two texts also rupture the limit point between them. Although this rupture completes Rhys text, it results in a breakdown of the integrity of Brontes. As much as Brontes text was revolutionary of her time, so too was Rhys. magazine changed and what was once revolutionary became simplified and unbelievable. The fact remains, that without Jane Eyre, there would be no Wide Sargasso Sea, the two texts are mutually exclusive, and barel y as revolutionary now as when they were written.-Gordon, Lyndall, Charlotte Bronte A passionate life. (London Vintage, 1995)-Margaret McFadden Gerber, Ed Frank N Magill, Critical Evaluation, Masterplots, Vol 6, (1996)-Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (LondonPenguinFirst Published 1847) -Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, (LondonPenguin1966) -Ellen G Friedman, Breaking the Master Narrative Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea, in Breaking the Sequence Womens Experimental Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989,