Narrative Ways of Worldmaking in Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre' and Jean Rhys's 'Wide Sargasso Sea'

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: MA Hauptseminar: Cultural Ways of Worldmaking, language: English, abstract: Within this paper, the 'worldmaking' of Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre' (1847) and Jean Rhys's 'Wide Sargasso Sea' (1966) is compared. This is especially fruitful because the fictional worlds of these novels are connected: In 'Jane Eyre', Mr. Rochester has a hidden wife called Bertha Mason. Wide Sargasso Sea casts this character as its protagonist and covers her journey from childhood into adulthood, when she becomes a part of Jane Eyre's world. After an introduction of Nelson Goodman´s term 'worldmaking' and several of its characteristics, the worlds of these two novels are compared, focusing specifically on the respective selection of characters, perspectivization and the semantization of space.