Female Intertexuality In Jane Eyre

Female sexuality and its representation has been the primary concern of this research while applying each of the approaches to proves that du Maurier’s work builds on Jane Eyre but the portrayal it grants to feminine sexuality and identity renders her work a narrative of modernity on its own. Several critics have analyzed the intertexuality between the two novels. However, this study builds what has been said before to dwell on the not yet exhausted topic of feminine sexuality. Nungesser is one of the critics who have presented a comparison between the novels to conclude that both works bring an air of freshness and novelty to the traditional female Gothic plot, the novel of development and the fairy-tale narratives. Nonetheless, Nungesser

Critics such as Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik have not dismissed the analogy between du Maurier’s narratives and her own sexual orientation. Although her narratives are classified as part of the female Gothic subgenre, du Maurier deploys a masculine point of view in the novels succeeding Rebecca like My Cousin Rachel and Scapegoat for example. Du Maurier tends to display her dissatisfaction with the categories of Gothic writing as female or male through her own stories. Rebecca is a female but her behavior and preferences are those of male something which parallels du Maurier’s own feeling of being a “boy in the box” (Horner and Zlosnik 67). Therefore, du Maurier’s own sexual development and whether her narratives were capable of venting her dissatisfaction can be studies along the course of her different female Gothic writings which start by adopting a feminine point of view but appear to opt for masculine one in later

Although Jane Eyre is not her first novel, Bronte’s shift point of view from male to female is interesting regardless of the genre to which each novel belongs. Moreover, even when keeping to the female Gothic subgenre Bronte’s Villette can be noted for the change in the mood towards marriage and the depiction of desire between the female characters of the novel. The fairy-tale of blissful love that takes center stage in Jane Eyre shows quite an optimistic view of an egalitarian marriage for love, a theme which undergoes a drastic change in Villette where the protagonist Lucy Snow refrains from marriage at the end of the narrative. In addition, Villette displays openness towards the female-female relationships that contrasts with the reserved mode in Jane Eyre. These changes give rise to a question of Bronte’s own view of same-sex relations and the marriage plot which propose an extension to the discussion of this thesis utilizing the queer