The woman writer and the nineteenth century literary imagination.
Crazy person in attic novel.
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Well as it turns out the crazy old lady in the attic is not a novel but a novelette 15k words and it was a good read it was not a thriller it was a bit of drama and a telling of things that had happened in the past which had been totally oblivious to the young girl who grew up there.
The book purports to tell antoinette s side of the story as well as rochester s and to account for how she ended up alone and raving in the attic of thornfield hall.
The readers only meet bertha when she is in the depths of madness having been confined in the third story attic of thornfield for nearly fifteen years and there is not enough interaction between her and the other characters to demonstrate any angelic behavior.
Even though jane eyre is a revolutionary book for its time and relevant even today it has some elements that are problematic like confining women into only two possible boxes.
A common theme in novels is the role of the insane women made famous i believe by the mad women in the attic in jane eyre.
In wide sargasso sea bertha mason is portrayed as being a false name for antoinette cosway.
The gardner family in the colour out of space have nabby gardner nahum gardner s wife who goes crazy as a result of exposure to the colour and is locked in the attic where she becomes even more strange.
The real life attic that was the inspiration for a section of jane eyre where mentally ill character bertha mason is confined before she commits suicide is now open to the public.
The madwoman in the attic bertha has become especially famous in literary criticism because her situation supplied the title and central theory of a major 1979 book of feminist criticism sandra gilbert and susan gubar s the madwoman in the attic.
Same thing also happened with thaddeus one of the sons.