Disrupting Dominant Discourses: : Hybridity in Jane Eyre and Get Out

Abstract: This study examines the theme of hybridity in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre and Jordan Peele’s film Get Out. Both the narrative text in the novel and the script with visual elements of the film use the concept of hybridity through Gothic motifs: a mad non-white woman in the attic in Jane Eyre and a psychological place in Get Out, where members of a white family hypnotise black people in order to exploit their physical capabilities. This is employed to disrupt dominant discourses of authoritative class, revealing the ways in which these discourses are constructed through the exclusion of certain identities. Bertha Mason, the Creole wife of Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre, and Chris Washington, the African American protagonist of Get Out, both embody a sense of hybridity that challenges established norms of individuality and representation. Through a comparative analysis of these characters, this essay argues that hybridity serves as a means of exposing and subverting the power structures that reinforce presiding stereotypes of othered characters. By deconstructing these sovereign discourses, hybridity creates space for alternative voices and perspectives that are often excluded from ascendant literatures. Ultimately, this essay accentuates the importance of inspecting the intersectional identities of characters in literature and film, as a means of challenging prepotent discourses and promoting social justice.