Spirituality in Charlotte and Emily Brontë

Two scholar approaches to spirituality in the Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë's Villette:

The current issue of Literature and Theology publishes an article about the use of the Bible in Wuthering Heights:

Literature and Theology
Volume 20, Number 3, September 2006
‘Vain are the thousand creeds’: Wuthering Heights, the Bible and Liberal Protestantism
Simon Marsden
Lancaster University

Abstract: This essay reconsiders Emily Brontë's place within the theological history of the early nineteenth century. I argue that there is a complex system of biblical hermeneutics embedded within the narrative of Wuthering Heights. In the first part of the essay, I locate Brontë within the key theological and denominational contexts of her family life. In the second part, I offer a comparative reading of Wuthering Heights and Friedrich Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith and argue that Brontë's use of the Bible is founded upon a liberal hermeneutics that privileges personal, intuitive experience of the divine over traditional canonical authority.

This month another book that explores metaphysical issues in the victorian literature is published:

Possessed Victorians. Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century Mystical Writings

Sarah A. Willburn
Ashgate Publishers. Series: The Nineteenth Century Series

In her absorbing study of nineteenth-century mystical writings, Sarah Willburn formulates a new conception of individualism that offers a fresh look at Victorian subjectivity. Drawing upon extensive archival work in the British Library, Willburn analyzes séance accounts, novels about mediumship, and metaphysical treatises to make important connections between contemporary writings on mysticism and fictional works.
Willburn presents the theories of compelling characters such as Newton Crosland and Lois Waisbrooker and provides exciting new readings of well-known texts by Charlotte Brontë, Eliot, Martineau, and Corelli. An understanding of the Victorian fascination with mysticism, Willburn argues, leads to a better appreciation of cultural constructions of the citizen in England and of the public sphere. She introduces two key concepts against the backdrop of popular mysticism: "possessed individualism," a model for Victorian individualism based on spiritual possession, and "extra spheres," which complicate the traditional binary opposition of public and private. Together, these formulations urge us to rethink our views of Victorian political economy and gender as they pertain to mystical and religious practices.

We have been told that Charlotte Brontë's appearance is focused mainly around Villette.

Categories: Scholar, Journals, Books, Charlotte_Brontë, Emily_Brontë, Wuthering_Heights, Villette,Victorian_Era