“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will . . .”

                                            –from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Introduction

While Jane Eyre was published in 1847, the author Charlotte Bronte introduced readers to an endearing young heroine who embodies all of the stages of the hero’s journey that are typically more closely associated with male protagonists rather than female.  In spite of her lonely and isolated childhood at both Gateshead Hall and Lowood School, Jane Eyre becomes a young woman who is assertive, intelligent, and kind, and who in the end saves a brooding gentleman from the despair of his own arrogance and sorrow.

The Task

As you proceed through the following webquest, you will become familiar with some of the important elements often associated with a study of the novel, Jane Eyre.  Read carefully through the steps included in the process of this quest, but essentially I have gathered material for you to peruse in the following areas of Victorian England and of the setting associated with Charlotte Bronte.

• The Victorian Age
• Bronte Country
• The Byronic Hero

The Process

Navigate through each of the following sites to paint a clearer image of the life and literature of Victorian England.

Step One– From the following website, choose an article from each of the following categories:

• Social Issues
• Political Issues
• Religion
• Science
• Gender Matters

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/bronteov.html

Assignment:  After gathering ideas and information from the site, write and answer two questions per article for each of the three levels of questioning.

Step Two– Part A.  Listen to the radio broadcast (about 7 minutes) discussing a travelers imaginings as she tours Bronte Country. 

http://savvytraveler.publicradio.org/show/features/1999/19990109/literary-heaven.shtml

 Step Two–Part B.  Browse through the information provided on Wikipedia about Yorkshire.  Read, in particular, the sections focused on culture, landscape, and cuisine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire

 Assignment:  Pretend you have from breakfast through suppertime to enjoy the area of Yorkshire, her history, her food, and her countryside.  Create a brochure or flyer entitled  “Walking Tour: A Day in Bronte Country” that describes how you might spend your day. 

Step Three–Read the article on the website below.  http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/CHARACTE.htm

Assignment:  Take notes in bullet form regarding the specific characteristics of the Byronic Hero. 

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.                       

–Henry David Thoreau

Join your classmates as we continue to build and strengthen our vocabularies.  Let’s work together to be better prepared for the vocabulary quizzes and tests.

Choose the PoeticLicense  link in the sidebar for more information.

Mansfield uses her story, “The Garden Party,” as a tool to express her feelings about the chasm between social classes.  In her story, she eloquently presents the differences between the upper and lower classes.  The two parties are as drastically different as night and day.

Mansfield starts the story off in the early morning right after breakfast.  It’s a fresh day in the “early summer” and the household is busy planning for a garden party.  The morning is perfect and the characters and setting almost surreal.  Mansfield allows us to experience life as the upper class characters experience it.  It is bright and cheerful, just like the spring day.  The sweets and lilies and servants keep life happy for Laura and her family.  Mansfield’s season choice of early summer puts us in a certain mindset of life beginning, of excitement, and of readiness.  We experience the “daisy plants” and “roses” growing in the garden and the “blue [sky]…veiled with a haze of light gold,” and Mansfield plays on our own memories of new days and summer happiness.  We are pulled into the surrealism of the scene, ready to accept this way of life as standard, nothing less than normal.

As the story progresses, we get to know Laura.  We accept her readiness to help.  She claims to “love having to arrange things” (and in the end we see that she actually may arrange things “better than anyone else” as she believes she can.)   We relate to her love of exotic things.  She can hardly bear covering the exquisite “karakas” that remind her so much of a “desert island.”  We begin to touch on her naivety.  She blushes and flusters when she must actually start to arrange the party things.  But then she falls into step.  She finds that she quite likes the workmen.  She even wonders why couldn’t she “have workmen for her friends rather than the silly boys she danced with?”  Why would she want to trade her friends in for workmen!  She must be very naïve!  She pretends for a while to be a “work girl,” admiring the “chock-chock of wooden hammers” while also admiring the workmen.  But then the phone brings her back from her day dream and she goes back to normalcy. 

Our little world of cream puffs and band music is momentarily shaken.  The house gets news that a man has died!  Laura automatically wants to call off the party.  She doesn’t want to bother the “poor woman” with a band.  Laura is distraught.  A party!  With a man dead!  But then her family reminds her that he was simply a “drunk”—a worker who met his end.  A nice distraction comes in the form of a hat from her mother.  She takes the trinket from her mother and puts on a happier face.  She is now distracted. And then she puts on her hat and goes to the party and forgets the whole business.  The party is over and Laura expresses her happiness at being with “people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.”

As night falls, Laura remembers the man—the man who lived in the pitiful little “cottages.”  She suggests that she could take the food left over from the garden party to the widow and her children.  As Laura steps into the night she leaves her world and enters another.  One that is scary and horrifying but also “wonderful.”  She encounters “dark people” at the house but doesn’t register anything specific about them.  She sees Mrs. Scott, the widow and leaves her basket of food.  Then she is ends up in the room with the dead man and she realizes that her life is not the only life.  She sees him “sleeping,” “dreaming.”  He is “happy.”  Perhaps Laura realizes that this man lived his life and earned his food and took care of his family.  He worked, he worked himself to death, as Laura has never really done.  She finally sees that life is not parties and hats and pretty, expensive flowers.  It is so much more.  Her ending words—“isn’t life”—express her new knowledge of the world and also her lack of explanation.  She sees more than her existence.  The surreal life she knew crumbles but she isn’t as horrified as her family would guess; she is “[marveled].”

Mansfield uses many elements to present her case.  She enchants the reader with beauty and season and extravagance.  Then she allows the reader to come back to reality, just as Laura comes into reality.  Mansfield probably reaches a much broader audience of Roaring Twenties readers, obsessed with new products of industry and of transportation and of leisure, with this handsome story than she possibly could have if she had simply spoken her troubled feelings or preached her agitation.  Perhaps her readers will pick up on Laura’s big heart as she reacts to a man’s death and offers the band a drink and shares food with those in need.  Perhaps her readers will snap into reality just as Laura did and realize that life isn’t all daisies and roses.  It is something more—something to be shared and cherished and lived.  Hopefully Laura won’t forget this when she goes back to her home, to her family.  She apologized for her silly hat, her extravagant dress, after all, but she was all too willing to go on back with her brother.                               

Personal Critique 

I think I got pretty close to the significance of Mansfield’s story.  I detected the clash between social structures and the “blinders” blocking the family’s world, as Foster did.  But I did, unfortunately miss out on the bird theme.  I noticed the surreal environment, but I didn’t see the importance of the mother as Foster did.  I did notice how important the hat was, how it seemed to transform Laura from distraught to ready to mingle with extreme speed, but I missed the fact that it was from her mother, that it was bringing some of her mother with it.  It seems to have brought some of her mother’s blinding abilities, actually.  I didn’t quite pick up on the going to hell thing.  I kind of like to avoid thinking of something so terrible, I would rather think of her simply “leaving her world and going to another.”  But now I realize I should have seen that it wasn’t simply another world, but hell.  Ouch.  I picked up on the growing up less innocent part of Laurie, but not the destined to go back to her mother and act just the same illustration.  I think I did pretty well with this essay.  I did well on a detail analysis, like I would have done for Language and Composition.  But, I did not do so well on connecting the story to other works of literature, like I will do next year.  So, in other words, I dropped the bomb.  Better brush up on my mythology!

4.)Challenges and trials: Upon journeying across the sea our heroine encompasses many obstacles. His companion on the quest is the amnestic Dory, who constantly tests his patience. They are both on very different quests but need each other to succeed. Marlin is trying to find his son, while Dory is just trying to find something to hold on to and a sense of belonging. Together they barely escape the jaws of a shark; become trapped in the belly of a whale; fight off a deep sea predator after dropping the mask (Marlin’s only clue to finding Nemo) into a deep abyss; and escape the near entrapment by a school of deadly jellyfish-their greatest challenge.

5.)The real reason to go there: Besides the obvious, finding his son, the quest for Marlin allows for much personal growth. After following the East Australian Current, Marlin learned a lot about himself. He learned that if he continues to live his life in constant fear, he won’t really ever live at all. Even though challenged by many losses, Marlin also realized that he couldn’t live in the past and he had to move forward. He finds he also can’t hid in his sea anemone forever. He learns a lot about being a father as well. He learns he cannot shield Nemo from experiencing the obstacles life throws at him. He also learns that as much as it hurts him, he must let his son grow up. Marlin plunged into the great unknown and faced his greatest fear to save his son, and in the end, himself as well.

            Harry Potter is a fictional sensation sweeping the nation… actually, it’s encompassing the entire globe. Some love the novel; these fans will stand in line for hours dressed in pointy hats and round glasses just to get their hands on the newest book as soon as possible (please don’t ask me how I know).  Others hate it; they also will occupy long hours camped-out in front of the local Barnes & Noble.  But, they are boycotting the book and all things Harry, claiming the novel to be terribly wicked.  “Potter Fever,” regardless of your feelings toward the novel, is undeniable.  I’ve often wondered what makes the Potter series so intriguing, so readable.  Why do so many people relate to this book?  And then I came across the “Yes, She’s a Christ Figure, Too” chapter in Foster’s How to Read Literature like a Professor, I thought to myself, “Christ figure… Who represents a Christ figure?”  And then it dawned on me.  Harry Potter.  “Wait,” you say, “He’s a wizard, a boy wizard who goes to school and plays fictional sports and gets into all kinds of magical trouble.”  He can’t be a Christ figure.  No long beard.  No white, billowing robe.  He isn’t even a carpenter!  But actually, he can be a Christ figure.  Let’s think back to the story.  Throughout the books, Harry fills almost every single one of Foster’s “You Might Be a Christ Figure” qualifications.  He has a close group of friends.  He even builds an “army” in one book to fight the evils threatening wizarding society and carry on all things good.  Harry teaches his followers, I mean friends, his ways.  Not quite ways to live a good and straight live, like Jesus taught his followers, but important all the same.  He’s often shown experiencing all types of physical and mental harm and torture.  Harry may not walk on water and isn’t often thought of with his arms outstretched, but he does use humble forms of transportation.  Young Harry isn’t aloud to use the same ways of transportation the older, qualified wizards use, so he is forced to travel in a more humble matter.  He even manages to change water into wine in one of his “transformation” classes.  One major theme in the book is Harry’s acceptance of those the wizarding community believes to be lower life forms.  A major teaching of Jesus is acceptance of those others ridicule.  Much of Harry’s life is lost to the wizarding world, just like much of Jesus’ life is lost to us today.  Harry even experiences a fall from public grace, much like the one Jesus experienced during his life.  He goes from being famous, respected, even adored, to being hated and scorned, written and talked badly about.  Throughout most of the last Potter book Harry is noted to be in hiding, wandering through varies fields and meadows and forests, through the wilderness.  At one point, Harry’s closest friend even completely turns his back on him.  Sounds a little like a familiar bible story, doesn’t it?  Markings on the hand are also a very serious symbol associated with Jesus Christ.  In one of the books, Harry’s hands are forever marked with a nasty brand—a brand which represented his failure to succumb to societal views and his determination to save those around him from evil and death.  Harry was marked at a very young age with a lightening bolt-shaped scar.  Jesus didn’t have a funny scar on his forehead.  But he was destined from the day he was born to be the one who would save his people from certain demise.  And so was Harry.  From the day he got that peculiar marking on his forehead he was destined to fulfill a standing prophecy and save the wizarding community from the horrible evils of the “Dark Lord.”  Like Jesus Christ, Harry must come to terms with his predestined arrangement.  Perhaps he wasn’t quite as graceful as Christ in his gratification, but in the end he resolves to do the right thing and sacrifice himself for the well being of others (even those within his world who ridiculed and hated him).  He walks bravely, but shakily towards certain death.  And then he’s down.  He’s done.  The wizarding world is saved, but Harry Potter is dead (and hoards of dedicated fans are left heartbroken and teary-eyed).  But then, just when it seems that the great Harry Potter is lost forever, he rises again and is alive.  Resurrection, anyone?  Harry isn’t 33 years old or good with children and his celibacy isn’t exactly a huge issue (all associations of a Christ figure), but his story is very closely related to the Christ story.  Now I understand its readability.  Rowling took a story that many people across the world hold dear and believe to be true, one that countless others have at least heard, and created an extremely creative best seller.  I bet she goes to bed with an ironic chuckle every night thinking of all those people who refuse to read a single one of her books, books that actually contain a figure of the savior they believe it offends, all without a hint of irony.  So, decide for yourself is Harry Potter a simple parody, an adaptation of  a classic piece of literature or is it Rowling’s idea of a parable, created to help a new generation understand and connect to our own salvation?