A Senior Capstone Experience by Delaney Runge ’24

Submitted to the Department of English

Advised by Dr. Elizabeth Foley O’Connor

Contributor Biography: Delaney graduated from Washington College summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English with minors in Education Studies, Creative Writing, and Journalism, Editing, and Publishing. During Commencement weekend, she was awarded the George Washington Medal, the English department’s the Emil J. C. Hildenbrand Memorial Award and Maureen Jacoby Prize, and the Student Government Association Jonathan A. Taylor Jr. Leadership Award. During her time at Washington College, she worked as a copyeditor for The Elm, Editor-in-Chief of The Pegasus, and a writing center tutor. Additionally, she served as the President of Zeta Tau Alpha, sang as a soprano in Wacapella, and was a member of the Libby and Douglass Cater Society and Phi Beta Kappa. Currently, she works in the Phillips Library at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, MD as the Library Services Coordinator. 

Description: Throughout the literary canon, there are many novels that call back to one another in order to discuss ideas that may have been overlooked previously. A prominent example of this kind of literature is Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). This thesis argues how Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are connected and by reading them in tandem, they shed light on the realities of class, race, and place for Jane and Antoinette/Bertha and how these concepts function. It explores how these novels show the vastly different outcomes of these two women of the literary canon due to their portrayed identities. While Jane can defy her origins in society, Antoinette/Bertha is not able to achieve the same due to society’s perception of her as an Other. 

Read Delaney’s SCE here: