"The honest Popish superstition"

A book, in the author's words, "about nineteenth-century anti-Catholic discourses and how Charlotte Brontë portrayed Roman Catholicism in her novels" has been published in Great Britain this summer and it has now arrived to the United States. The book is named "Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic Discourses. The Case of Charlotte Brontë" and the author is Diana Peschier. The book is edited by Palgrave-Macmillan and a sample chapter, the introduction and the index, can be read here .

The information in the publisher's web is the following:

Description

By the middle of the nineteenth century much clearly gendered, anti-Catholic literature was produced for the Protestant middle classes. Nineteenth Century Anti-Catholic Discourses explores how this writing generated a series of popular Catholic images and looks towards the cultural, social and historical foundation of these representations. Diana Peschier places the novels of Charlotte Brontë within the framework of Victorian social ideologies, in particular the climate created by rise of anti-Catholicism and thus provides an alternative reading of her work.

Contents

Introduction

The Construction of an Anti-Catholic Ideology in the Nineteenth-Century: Sexuality, Gender, Patriarchy and the Discourse of Fear

Forgive me Father: The Perception of the Sacrament of Confession as a Means to Control and Debauch Young Girls and Women

The Danger of Gliding Jesuits and the Effects of a Catholic Education

Lifting the Veil: A Nineteenth-Century Perception of Nuns and Convents

Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic Discourse in the Brontë's Local Newspaper

The Perceived Anti-Catholicism of Charlotte Brontë's Novel, The Professor

Jane Eyre: Anti-Catholic or Anti-Christian Novel?

Shirley: A Social Novel

The Priestcraft of the Book: Representations of Catholicism in Villette

Conclusion: A discourse of Fear Engendered by the Rise of Roman Catholicism in Mid Nineteenth-Century England

Bibliography and Sources

Index

Author Biographies

DIANA PESCHIER is an independent researcher in Nineteenth-century literature and religion

'This book provides much-needed insight into the widespread anti-Roman Catholic prejudice of mid-nineteenth-century England and highlights the gendered nature of this discourse. It offers a useful context in which to view attitudes to Catholicism in Victorian literature, especially in the novels of Charlotte Brontë.' - Christine Alexander

Categories: Books, Scholar, Charlotte_Brontë