Publication details
The Clash of Two Worlds : Birth of Monstrous Doubles
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The Clash of Two Worlds: Birth of Monstrous Doubles. This paper examines the techniques of doubling and mirroring in the context of the nineteenth century. Female writers of this era were not allowed to address certain sensitive issues publicly; they needed to create dark monstrous doubles in order to express their anxieties. This paper focuses primarily on the role of doubling in Charlotte Brontë's canonical masterpiece Jane Eyre and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's gothic tale “The Yellow Wallpaper”. It attempts to go beyond the obvious parallels between Jane Eyre and her dark double Bertha and Jane the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” versus the mysterious woman behind the tapesatry and it aims to provide a deep analysis of the doubling based on Camille Paglia's model of western culture. It also draws information from Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea where she depicts the early moments of marriage between Mr Rochester and his wife Bertha. In her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Paglia introduces two binary worlds, Apollonian and Dionysian. The former is associated with rationality, order and male superiority, the latter stands for chaos, nature and femininity. The Victorian century can undoubtedly be associated with the image of the Apollonian world. It represents a very hostile environment for female characters that are forced to conform to its patriarchal views of true womanhood. To follow the codes of Victorian femininity, female characters need to deny their anger and sexuality and these repressed feelings symbolically become the embodiment of their doubles. Their identity is fragmented into two parts, one that is socially acceptable and one that represents the true Dionysian world where femininity is described as a powerful force that awakes anxieties in men. Women authors apply the technique of doubles in order to revolt against male dominated society and reveal the true monstrous nature of femininity. |
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