Miss Temple And Hellen Burns: A Literary Analysis

In both cases the women seem to connect outer beauty with good morals and a kind person. In Jane Eyre, Miss Temple and Hellen Burns are praised by Jane just as much for their beauty as they are for their kindness and goodness. Bella can’t understand, in Twilight, how it is possible for people so beautiful and pleasing to the eyes to appear to be rejected by society, like there is some inherent goodness associated with their beauty. I believe it is this contrast that makes both their decisions to look past the superficial outer appearance more noteworthy.
Jane says to Mr. Rochester’s face that she believes him to not be handsome and if we go off her past assertions towards “ugly” people we would be led to believe that he has a terrible moral

While the danger surrounding Mr. Rochester is ultimately just Jane’s misunderstanding of his marital status and how her marrying him would affect how society sees her, as well as Mr. Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, and the dangers she poses, these dangers are easily cleared up by Jane refusing to marry Rochester and running away from Thornfield. She is able to create a new life, and she is no longer threatened by Bertha’s murderous and seemingly jealous tendencies. However, in Bella’s case Edward will always be a danger to her. He is a very real monster and there will always be a part of him that wants to kill her and eat her blood. Beyond that, even if his vampirism were somehow removed, there would always be more vampires out there. This is typically a trait found more so in male gothic, the idea that the horror is real and can’t be ultimately

On one hand it is written from the limited point of view of the curious female, who in both cases appears to be rewarded for her curiosity with trust from her male “other”. Both men are seen as a mystery that needs solving, and there is emphasis in both novels on looking beyond the surface to see the person underneath the cold and unloving facade. However, the central conflict in Twilight is one that cannot be solved by Bella’s ability to look past Edward’s “faults” and love him as he is, the central conflict turns out to be a very real horror that doesn’t allow for a nice clean happy ending like the ones you would typically find in a traditional female gothic. This leaves the reader feeling uneasy and it makes it hard to invest into the love story between the two protagonists. If Twilight had tried to stick to either being a female gothic love story, or being a male gothic horror story where Bella would have just had to overcome the dangers that vampires posed to her, it would have been a much more engaging and believable story. Instead we are left with characters who we can’t relate to, and a plot with no clear resolution. Thus making Twilight, a difficult story to not only invest your whole self into but also a story that is hard to believe even when you get past the fantastical