{"id":251,"date":"2017-03-21T16:44:09","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T16:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=251"},"modified":"2020-08-31T20:37:58","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T20:37:58","slug":"bronte-prejudiced-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2017\/03\/21\/bronte-prejudiced-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Bronte Prejudiced or Not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just want to start off by saying that I love Jane Eyre<\/em>, however I do recognize that there are some major problems, particularly regarding race, within the novel. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I am white, or maybe it comes down to my obliviousness, but it wasn\u2019t until I read Spivak\u2019s Postcolonial Criticism<\/em> that I saw the racial flaws in this novel. Though I noticed that Bronte emphasized the differences between dark and light, I always took it for the literal sense; never did I think to apply this contrast to the characters too. I am not arguing against Spivak however, I am curious as to whether her argument is taken slightly to an extreme. For I originally assumed that dark literally meant dark\u2014as in mysterious, ominous, or gloomy\u2014thus, I wonder whether Spivak racialization of the word is more of a personal projection of her own experience as a woman from a formerly colonized country. But perhaps I am being racially ignorant here.
\nAlso, this is a little bit of a chicken or the egg situation, but was dark originally meant to mean the above words listed, or did these new definitions and implications come from racial tensions? Spivak, in her criticism accuses Bronte of being racist, but if that was the belief of the time is it still racist? I struggle to choose a side, because while I will always side with anti-racism, it is a prove fact that prejudice is learnt not inherent, so therefore the environment of Bronte\u2019s time would affect her writing. Despite all that happens with Bertha Mason, I disregarded the character’s race, but perhaps, again I am being obtuse and\/or \u201ccolorblind\u201d in not comparing her difference in race to the protagonist\/narrator. However, if these are the beliefs of the time, are they intentionally prejudiced or is this just a reflection of the time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just want to start off by saying that I love Jane Eyre, however I do recognize that there are some major problems, particularly regarding race, within the novel. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I am white, or maybe it comes down to my obliviousness, but it wasn\u2019t until I read Spivak\u2019s … Continue reading Bronte Prejudiced or Not?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2837,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138876,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2017","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2837"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}