This piece of artwork entitled “The false Mirror” was created by Belgian artist Rene Magritte. The concise outline firstly drew my attention. With the aid of its title, the meaning of this art becomes straightforward: to illustrate that our eyes are false mirrors which don’t reflect real word. Firstly, we observe the world subjectively. This means that we only observe what we are willing to observe and choose to ignore others. In addition, in this painting, the sky view is reflected in an unusual size. This also implies the unreality of the world. The World tends to be a product proceed by our minds. Our background and experience affect our perspective toward the world. For an individual, the world is a unique product of his imagination.
The dark pupil rest at the center of the bright sky. This strong contrast can easily draw audiences’ attention. In my perspective, this dark pupil represents blind spot in our life. There is always something that we are unaware of or misunderstand. Those are blind spots in our life, and it prevent us from finding the real world. Furthermore, in most cases, when we have limited knowledge about an event or have misunderstandings about it, we still assume we have known about it and seldom voluntarily study it.

In the essay “The Other Side”: Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, the author Michael Thorpe compares these two literary works through a unique angle. In Jane Eyre, Bertha is only a poor ghost. The existence of Bertha more likely serves to the purpose of adding gothic element and winning sympathy for Rochester, as Thorpe states. It’s reasonably not to provide completed background for a minor character. While Thorpe argues that Jane Eyre is a more “dated” work because of its radical prejudice. In Jane Eyre, Rochester blames Bertha’s Creole blood for her madness. One’s geometric background doesn’t lead to his madness. It’s a total prejudice. Jean Rhys made up this flaw in her work and provides sufficient details to explain Bertha’s abnormality. Jean even give reasonable explain to Bertha’s unusual behavior, for example, she didn’t remember when she attacks her step-brother. This suggests that she is not mad but fragmental.

In addition, I was surprised at how similar Antoinette and Jane are. Both of them have terrifying childhoods. Bertha is locked up in the attic, while Jane is once locked in the red room. Furthermore, both of them struggle with their identity. Their experiences are such similar, while the finales are almost opposite. I believe Antoinette doesn’t have access to the resource which can support her resistance, such as education. While Jane is lucky enough to be educated and become independent.

The alert woke Xiaoyan up. It’s Monday again. Fifteen minutes passed when Xiaoyan was prepared for her commute to Baruch. She didn’t notice the pouring rain until she reached the first floor of the building. Getting wet was not a wise idea. She decided to return and grab an umbrella. That’s a bad beginning of a day, probably she should get up earlier next time so that she didn’t need to worry about time.  She left the building and walked toward Brooklyn Bright 6 train station. When Xiaoyan passed the Court, she saw a group people lined up and waited to enter the build. They must take part in a jury. It’s a scene that Xiaoyan frequently saw, thus she didn’t feel surprised. Then she got on the train. There are seven stops from 23rd street, Xiaoyan got a chance to relax. After checking the time, Xiaoyan noticed Sallie who sat next to her. Sallie processed to take out her mascara and started making up. Sallie turned her face to Xiaoyan as if she found someone observing her, then turn back. She must be a student, Sallie though her. When she was a student, she also seldom made up. Now, it’s hard to get through a day without makeup when she got used to it. When the train was on 14th street, it got crowded since many people transferred in this station. Fortunately, there was only one stop left. Left the station, Xiaoyan walked straight toward Baruch Campus.

In the file To Walk Invisible, Charlotte Brontë was revealed as an ambitious character. Unlike her sister Emily, Charlotte was dissatisfied with being a governess for her entire life and she first came up with the publishing plan. Several scenes impress me. In one scene, Anne asked Charlotte, did she still write. Charlotte replied that pen frightened her, “it threatened to make real world seems pointless and coldness”. It reveals that Charlotte was in despair about this man-dominated world, which provides few opportunity for women. For her brother Branwell, several opportunities that allow him to become an artist were offered to him even though he was not as talent as his sisters. While he ended up spoiling those opportunities. Being unable to publishing her works make the writing become pointless. Recognition and appreciation from the outside world motivate us to insist on what we passion about. It’s understandable that people ultimately lose their passion when reward never exist. Another scene also impresses me. Charlotte decided to talk to her publisher in person to clarify misunderstands. It’s surprising that the publisher gladly admitted that their most successful writers were women. In my opinion, the publisher chose to admit it because they didn’t want to abandon their profit-generator. Women were still in disadvantage. As it reported earlier, some media has doubted that Bells were probably women since their name were protogynous, which mean they could be either male names or female names. If their real gender were exposed, there is no doubt that Bronte sisters would become the target of criticism.

I agree with the idea that “the liberation of an individual from the authority of his parents is one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development”. Liberating from the authority of parents is a process that everyone will undergo. In the early stage of life, as Freud states, parents are the initial source of belief. In other words, we once lived under the shadow of our parents, and our behaviors and beliefs are the results of their influence. In this stage of life, children remain absolute dependent under the sole authority of their parents. While when children mature, children begin to criticize and even rebel their parents. Indeed, the authority of parents is challenged at these moments. These behaviors help children develop the idea that their parents are also normal person instead of perfect models, and they will ultimately develop as individuals who are totally independent of their parents.

While, I don’t understand the concept of Oedipus complex, which was mentioned earlier by some of the classmates. At least for me, I never bring my family members into the fantasy of secret love affairs. Probably I never think about this before I accept the idea that this kind of behavior is immoral. Or probably this theory is only applicable to mother- son relationship since Freud mentions that “In this respect, the imagination of girls is apt to show itself much weaker” when he talk about the boy’ hostile impulses towards his same-sex parent.

In Whiteman’ poem, he pointed out that even though we born in the world with the identical way, our life paths will never be identical. Literary art such as poem allow us to access other’s life experience, and they are like “perfume”, which inspired our spirit. While, the author oppose to “take things at second or third hand nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books”. He suggests us to explore the world by ourselves instead of through the eyes of others. Those literature works are only the hints which highlight various possibilities waiting for us to explore. The meaning of life is discovering and developing self through various experience.
In different stages of life, we will have different interpretations of “myself” upon our experience. It makes our identity even more untranslatable. “You will hardly know who I am or what I mean”, as the author states, nobody was able to fully translate another. While, in the end of the poem, the author still hope to inspire and guide his offspring by his unique experience.

In our life, there always are certain principles that we stick to. As Emily wrote in her poem, “the soul selects her own society, then shuts the Door”, those principles are unchallengeable. For Jane, this principle is her understanding of marriage. When Jane realized that she fell in love with Mr. Rochestor, she disapproved the potential marriage between Rochester and Blanche since they seemed don’t love each other. When she got engaged and people around her showed disrespect toward this unequal marriage, she insisted that marriage is the bond in the basis of love instead of wealth and class. Jane stuck to her principle when St. John asked her to marry him. Following the call from her soul, Jane turns back to the person she loved and married Rochester. From the way Jane deal with her marriage, we can observe that she is as stubborn as a stone.

In the first 12 chapter of Jane Eyre, we observed the oppression Jane experienced. There is not only physical oppression，such as abuse in Mrs. Reed’s house and harsh environment in lowood，but mental oppression. A vague future is the worst oppression. In that society, few opportunity and choice are available for women. For most women, they had to be tied in households. Meanwhile, Jane desired liberty and the only choice for her was becoming a governor. Even though Jane remained silence when she experienced physical oppression, Jane transformed her silence into action and language when she faced the crucial decision in her life. As Lorde wrote in her article, “you’re never really a whole person if you remain silence, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.” For example, when Mr. Lloyd visited Jane after she returned from the red-room, Jane indeed declared that she didn’t want to live with her poor relatives even though they might treat her nice. She wanted to go to school since that’s the only way to pursue liberty. Also, Jane has become a teacher in lowood for two years. After Miss Temple left the lowood, the sense of settlement also disappeared. Jane soon realized that “she was tired of the routine of eight years” and decided to find another job. It’s clear that Jane understood what kind of life she desired and she will never remain silence when her life is diverging from the desired path.

Xiaoyan

In the article The Gothic: Overview, it states that “the Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts…” I spontaneously made a connection between the Gothic literary arts with contemporary horror fiction. I was once a fan of horror fiction. Reading horror fiction was an experience of challenging your imagination. The settings vary from ancient castle to underground tunnel. The narrative can be a human or an unknown species like a vampire. In the imagery world of horror fiction, everything is possible.

Darkness and unknown dangers are sources of fear. In ancient, our ancestors faced so many phenomena that couldn’t be explained, such as a tsunami. Therefore, Poseidon and other Greek Gods were created. In other words, fear inspired our imagination. Horror fiction aims to convey a sense of fear. Reading horror fiction is not only for entertainment or escaping from reality but sometimes for inspiration. I still remember a scene from Twilight, the narrative is a vampire and he preserves a youthful appearance. In order to live in human society, once he graduated from a high school, he will move to another town to start over his high school student life. This scene astonished me. Even though vampire has eternal life, they eventually will repeat their life tracks. For the human, the limited lifespan will encourage us to pursue various experience and think about what kind of life is indeed meaningful for ourselves.

According to The Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas, in enlightenment era, the idea of men are created equally was firstly introduced and became the mainstream. Many philosophers also began to argue that men are created equally regardless of their race and gender. Those arguments provided the footstone for movement such as the abolitionist movement in America and the women right movement around the world. Before the enlightenment, women were trapped in the domestic environment since it’s hard for them to get engaged in the society. The Enlightenment Movement provided such opportunities. The “saloon” became the stage where women demonstrated their talent and intelligence. Women successfully proved that they were competent to other roles besides housewife. But, those were insufficient to bring up the wave of women right movement. Firstly, women right was not the mainstream of Enlightenment movement. Secondly, the general role of women didn’t change until the Industry Revolution.  During the Industry Revolution, women were able to escape from domestic environment and worked in factories. Active engagement in society and relative financial independence are the keys to make a difference. However, we cannot deny that the first step is always the hardest. Without their efforts during the Enlightenment Movement, it would take much longer to entitle all human being indeed equality.

Xiaoyan Lin