Research Information System
International Journal of Literature and Arts, vol.2, no.6, pp.252-257, 2014 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
The aim of my article is to uncover the deep semiotic relation existing between Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and George Sand’s Indiana (1832), highlighting the proto-feminist elements that characterize both novels and drawing a comparative analysis of the two plots centered on the difficult journey of initiation of two young women physically and emotionally imprisoned by the laws of patriarchal society. Both novels follow a track of self-discovery through a progressive and circular development that shows below the surface plot, affirming social conventions, a submerged plot encoding rebellion. Through a semiotic analysis of the deep structure of the two novels my article intends to reveal a three-stage development of the protagonists, strictly connected to their progressive awakening to romantic and physical love. Moreover an analysis of the isotopic structure of the two texts will show how the dichotomy Nature vs. Culture undermines the two plots, from the micro to the macro levels of the texts. The conflict between Nature and Culture is at the origin of other thematic and figurative isotopies: love vs. marriage, physical vs. spiritual love, freedom vs. slavery, faith vs. religion, Creole vs. English, dark vs. light etc. These isotopies underline and support in both novels a distortion of the formalized conventions of love, highlighting the thematic conflict between woman’s individual desire and the limits set to her within a patriarchal society.