Posted by Michelle on December 04, 19102 at 18:49:19:
In Reply to: Villete by Charlotte Bronte??? posted by Bethy on December 01, 19100 at 14:53:16:
Hi Bethy,
If you want a comparison of Jane Eyre to Lucy Snowe, here goes:
Jane Eyre: small, pale, and slender, with green eyes; inwardly restless and feisty although outwardly poised ; knowledgeable from 6 years as a student and 2 as a teacher at Lowood school for girls ; loves Mr. Rochester with a pion
Lucy Snowe: not beautiful, pale, calm, cool; independent, detatched, observant, teacher of English at Villete school for girls, falls in love with professor of literature M. Paul Emnanuel although she thinks him ugly and masterful.
Lucy Snowe is in many ways an older, wiser, and embittered form of Jane Eyre. She sees people and events with more coolness than Jane Eyre, who is naturally a warmer person. Even Lucy's love relationship with M. Paul is a milder, calmer one than Jane's with Mr. Rochester.
In both novels there are foils (opposites) for the main characters- you said that you already know everything about Jane Eyre, so I won't go into to much detail about that...Jane's childhood foil was the quietly diligent and religiously fervent Helen Burns, whose calm nature countered Jane's warm impulses. Mr. Rochester's foil is undoubtedly St. John Rivers with his handsome looks and his cold demeanor. In Villete, Lucy Snowe finds her opposite in Genevre, the beautiful but shallow and snobbish French girl attending the school. M. Paul's foil is found in Dr. John Graham Bretton who is tall, fair, well-built, handsome, kind, gentle, well-tempered, and caring towards even strangers. This contrasts sharply with M. Paul, who is short, skinny, black-haired, ugly, a control-freak, and purposefully mean to people on occasion. Also, in both novels, the main character encounters some form of ghostly superstition. Jane meets what she thinks is her uncle's ghost in the red room, and later on meets Bertha Mason at midnight. Lucy repeatedly encounters the Nun - a ghostly apparition that both she and M. Paul meet at night.
Any more questions feel free to e-mail
Yours,
Michelle
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