ABSTRACT

Cinderella expectations engendered by Jane Eyre's American progeny. Rhys imagines the implications of American fairytale expectations, bringing nationalism and cosmopolitanism together. Like the traditional Cinderella, Antoinette seeks the support of a magical helper to secure love and happiness by getting a night with the man she wants: "But Christophine, if he, her husband, could come to her one night. Neither Christophine nor Antoinette can overcome the racist, colonial pressures of the West Indies in the 1840's. If Antoinette demonstrates the constraints of a regional American mindset, Rochester models the dangers of cosmopolitanism. The heroic changeling in Jane Eyre inspires women writers on both sides of the Atlantic to create larger-than-life female bildungsromane that work out ideas of citizenship. While Anglo-European narratives attempted to sketch the new Eve as a cosmopolitan heroine, North American narratives coalesced around a distinct variation of the Cinderella paradigm and sketched significantly more nationalistic heroines.