Scholar Brontë. An update

A paper, a thesis and a talk:

Victorian Literature and Culture (2007)
Volume 35 - Issue 1 (March 2007) 57-79

CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE OF SLAVERY IN JANE EYRE
Sue Thomas
La Trobe University

POSTCOLONIAL READINGS OF Jane Eyre have often highlighted the historical occlusion of West Indian slavery in the novel. Carl Plasa, for instance, argues that Penny Boumelha points out that by her reckoning there are “ten explicit references to slavery in Jane Eyre. They allude to slavery in Ancient Rome and in the seraglio, to the slaveries of paid work as a governess and of dependence as a mistress. None of them refers to the slave trade upon which the fortunes of all in the novel are based” (62). While Jane Eyre's allusion to slavery in the seraglio is indeed the most precise historical allusion in the novel, critics working with general schemes of slave and imperial history have not been able to identify or unpack its topical reference to an anomalous moment in the history of British abolition of slavery. Like all of Jane's references to slavery, however, this allusion gains considerably in importance when read against that history, as I will demonstrate in this essay. I will also elaborate the generic and more broadly historical intertextuality of Jane's Gothic narratives of identification with the slave. By doing so, I disclose further meanings of slavery and empire in Jane Eyre, as well as the ways in which Gothic and heroic modes become a means, for Brontë and her characters alike, of articulating fraught racialized identifications and disavowals. Jane's growth of religious feeling, which Barbara Hardy has influentially suggested is taken “for granted” rather than demonstrated (66), is, I argue, grounded in her consciousness of the tensions between slavery and Christianity as they are played out in domestic and imperial spheres at a particular historical moment. That historical moment may be established through Brontë's allusions to slave rebellions and charters, and to a particular edition of Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion.

The Dissertation comes from The Louisiana State University:

Byron and "Scribbling Women": Lady Caroline Lamb, the Brontë Sisters, and George Eliot

Millstein, Denise Tischler

Looking first at Byron’s canon, I trace the evolution of the Byronic heroes offered in his poetry, arguing that these heroes are the culmination of images of the poet as he interacted with and was interpreted by his female reading audience. Working with his readers, Byron fundamentally altered his poetic heroes to suit changing public opinions about himself. In later chapters, I show how this image continued to evolve as the Byronic hero was co-opted, adopted, and adapted in the novels of female authors across the nineteenth century, especially Lady Caroline Lamb in Glenarvon, Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights, Anne Brontë in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre, and George Eliot in Daniel Deronda. How female novelists interpreted the Byronic hero as the century wore on was dependent on which images of the poet they had access to including: the real man Byron, the heroes of his poetry, his myth, or some amalgam of the three. All five female novelists demonstrate a measured and typical, though different generational response, offering various levels of imitation, revision, and rejection in their novels. Ultimately, this project shows the enduring legacy and importance of Byron, his myth, and the Byronic hero to “scribbling women” throughout the long nineteenth century.

And a talk:

Francis O'Gorman, ‘Emily Brontë and the Problem of Not Having a Personality’, University of Chester, public lecture, 24 January 2007

Categories: Scholar, Talks