Do you believe in destiny?

When I was young, I didn't believe in destiny. But lately, I've started to believe in it little by little. Perhaps this is one of the signs that I'm getting old. In particular, I believe that I have met two women in my life.

The first woman is my wife. Of the 4 billion women on the earth, she and of the 4 billion men, I happened to meet as a landlady and a tenant in an small apartment in China. At the first moment I saw her, I thought my life in the future could never be the same as before.

The second woman is Bertha Mason. As an IBDP Korean A teacher, I have been studying her most of the time for 16 years. In Jane Eyre, a 19th-century English novel, she appears as a mad Jamaican woman who interrupts the love of Jane, an English woman. I think she is badly underestimated so far.

Jane, the protagonist, goes up to the third floor of Thornfield and declares that men and women are equal. However, when she meets Rochester a few months later, she quickly turns into a submissive woman. She is afraid that Rochester will abandon her as a poor, plain orphan. And in the end, she thinks that she has found her true happiness by devoted herself to Rochester.

On the other hand, Bertha continues to resist Rochester even though she has been confined to the attic in Thornfield for eight years. I think that the basis for evaluating Jane Eyre as a novel about "the life of an independent woman" is not because of Jane, but because of Bertha. And if there's an inevitable reason why I became a literature teacher, I think it's to rediscover her value.

I'm now drawing a short cartoon about Bertha Mason. The conti just finished, now I'm going to draw the original images, and I'm going to redraw it on the computer again. It's going to be a long and complicated process. But I'll enjoy every minute of drawing her. I love both women of my destiny.