The Age of Uncertainty

(1) In “The Age of Uncertainty: Britain in the Early-Nineteenth Century,” David Eastwood refers to one of Robert Southey’s complaints about the age: “The new wealth of Britain was, for Southey, bought at the price of a Mephistophelean pact which morally debases as it materially rewards” (Eastwood 102).

The reality of that “pact” could be seen as masked at times through forms of idealism/idealization/glorification/idolization (essentially, romanticization) of some, while projecting the debasement onto social, political or ethnic others. Compare such projection in Belinda with a similar circumstance/process in our contemporary world.

(2) In “The Age of Uncertainty: Britain in the Early-Nineteenth Century,” David Eastwood argues, “The uncertainties of early-nineteenth-century Britain were, ultimately, the consequences [of] a profound struggle to understand the public and the private meanings of the transformation which British society was experiencing” (Eastwood 115).

While Eastwood refers to large-scale societal transformation, such transformation also obviously impacted people individually, and may be seen as not limited to socio-economics. Compare or contrast any aspect of transformation as a thematic issue in Belinda and Jane Eyre, with special attention to the central female protagonists Belinda and Jane.