Females Depicted in Gothic Fiction A Comparison Between Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and Stephen King's "Christine"

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 10,0, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: It may seem questionable to analyze the depiction of women in two novels, both classified as completely different genres from different time spans - "Jane Eyre" as the so-called "Bildungsroman" in England 1847 in contrast to "Christine" published in the USA 1983. Yet there are communalities concerning their writing elements that both utilize. They have overlaps with the Gothic genre, using Gothic Fiction elements in their novels and in consequence, offer a great opportunity to become objects of investigations for this term paper. Initially, I will give a brief overview on the subject matter of females being depicted in Gothic fiction. Then "Jane Eyre" will be put into context by shortly elaborating the women's role in the Victorian Age to consider the historical and socio-economic aspects of the novel. Afterwards, I will conduct the text analysis and in the second main part I will work with the same structure on "Christine". In the end, I intend to prove in the conclusion that it is clear as bell how the two authors' depiction of women differ although they both write Gothic novels.