Brontë Scholar (III)

More recently presented Brontë-related Ph.D. dissertations:

'The secret history of books': Invitations to intimate reading in Victorian literature (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte) by Jennifer Sampson

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
DATE 2006
ADVISER Helsinger, Elizabeth; Hadley, Elaine
SOURCE DAI-A 67/09, p. 3415, Mar 2007

Abstract
This dissertation argues that the texts of mid-Victorian writers strive, though anxiously, to educate their readers in how to uncover what Thackeray termed 'the secret history of books' through intimate reading. Intimate reading is akin to the twentieth century practice of close reading in its focus on analyzing detail and in its presumption that the text has hidden meanings that interpretation can uncover, but it also seeks to know the writer behind the text by imagining his/her mental and physical processes of writing as well as the context in which composition occurs. Texts that encourage intimate reading assume a space of writer's and reader's coexistence that I have termed synglossic space---where the writer's fantasy creates the reader as present when he writes and the reader believes she sees the writer behind the text, creating it as she reads. Such fantasies are not always of sympathetic readers; synglossic space can also encompass an author's fantasies of negative response where the proximity of the reader suggests menacing closeness. As Victorian mass production of literature threatens to alienate authors from their work and audience, writers create texts that evoke the professional and physical labor of composition and, significantly, of the auxiliary professional roles (critic, agent, and secretary) that contribute to bringing literature into public view. Such exposure imaginatively overcomes the spatial and temporal disjunction of writer and reader by revealing the hidden links (of people and processes) that join them. The chapters explore how Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson use their texts to blur the lines between the intimate and the professional; analysis is not figured as an impersonal act but as one evoking camaraderie or even the erotic. Brontë teaches her critics how to read her work by casting them as lovers; Dickens invites readers to join him in scorning the secretary who might block a reader's view of the author's process whereas Thackeray urges his readers to see the secretary as a mutual friend; and Tennyson mourns a professional loss as well as a personal one in In Memoriam, eventually instructing readers how to respond like his departed friend and agent.

Surviving the windless calm: Remedies for boredom in Bronte, Chekhov, and West (Emily Bronte, Nathanael West, Anton Chekhov, Russia)
by Angela Silva

ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY (NEW YORK)
DATE 2006
PAGES 159
ADVISER Ganter, Granville
SOURCE DAI-A 67/08, p. 2977, Feb 2007

Abstract
Studies of boredom help elucidate a problem that not only threatens the young and the old, but also the broader spectrum of society, which camouflages its boredom in frenzied activity or in the stasis of apathy. Boredom is explored in this dissertation in order to examine the remedy that elucidates some of the controversies surrounding the literary texts of three diverse authors. Could Emily Brontë have been tempted by Romantic notions of passion? Or was she warning nineteenth-century British women about the dangers of that kind of abandon? An examination of Wuthering Heights locates boredom on both sides of the axis. The dilemma is acknowledged---not resolved---as both pursuits ultimately lead to a loss of self and the boredom that follows it. Instead, a remedy for the boredom that either destroys or anesthetizes is suggested by Brontë's attention to the pedagogical development of the child subject in her novel. Anton Chekhov also advances cognitive---not social---remedies in Three Sisters, as the mental abilities that facilitate leisure are also ignored in turn of the century Russia. As Chekhov departs from traditional dramatic forms to stage a play in which 'nothing happens,' he unwittingly identifies a modern disorder. His cure for the type of boredom that is not symptomatic of Seasonal Affective Disorder reveals a balance in life between work and leisure. Finally, as Nathanael West demonstrates at the beginning of the twentieth century, boredom is not confined to the European continent. An examination of boredom in The Day of the Locust also reveals a call for cognitive rehabilitation. Although Homer Simpson is an amoral character, he is the only character in the novella capable of the mental effort that saves him from the boredom that indicts the rest of his society. Finding the individual responsible for her boredom---and its remedy---is an ethical consideration that reveals West's faith in a modernist aesthetic. Observing this usually overlooked psychic crisis in literature, not only unravels the meaning behind what has today become lost in cliché, but it may also unlock age-old literary debates.

Feminine conceptions: In defense of Victorian feminism (Bronte, Charlotte, Eliot, George) by Robin Pelata Stone

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON-CLEAR LAKE
DATE 2006
PAGES 68
ADVISER Mieszkowski, Gretchen
SOURCE MAI 45/02, p. 582, Apr 2007

Abstract
Jane Lyre by Charlotte Brontë and Middlemarch by George Eliot, novels by women authors of the Victorian Era, are successful feminist works because the authors presented women as independent, strong, intelligent, and moral---even more so than some of the men---in a time when women's lives were limited and predefined by the very society they lived in. Focusing on the three main areas of life that 19th-century women struggled with most, class, money, and the power of patriarchy, this thesis establishes that these authors boldly and bravely presented their heroines in such a way as to make possible their works' mass acceptance, absorption, and assimilation. Because Brontë and Eliot created novels palatable to 19th-century readers, their heroines furthered the cause of women.

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