Scholar Update (I)

An update with recently presented Ph.D. dissertations:

Educating the self: Critical reflection in the novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot by Kathleen Conway

SCHOOL ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY (NEW YORK)
DATE 2007
ADVISER Maertz, Gregory
SOURCE DAI-A 68/02, p. 235, Aug 2007

Abstract
Many recent critics have argued that the novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot depict the heroine as shamed into compliance by a representative of the dominant male culture. According to this reading, this final phase of the heroine's education, always leading to marriage, wipes out earlier signs of independence or rebellion. Other critics argue that the novelists subversively resist the patriarchal hegemony they illustrate. However, while female characters in nineteenth-century British novels by women usually marry and often marry males of authority, the heroines are not forced into submission. Instead, I contend that Austen, Brontë, and Eliot, in Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Jane Eyre, Villette , and Middlemarch, depict protagonists who grow into conscious mature women by actively participating in a process of self-education and self-determination based on experience and thought. According to John Dewey, 'Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends constitutes reflective thought' (How We Think 9). Austen, Brontë, and Eliot write novels about women coming of age and struggling to understand what they see and do through independent reflection. Although the heroines do not experience life or examine assumptions in the same manner (the dreams and visions of Brontë's characters, for example, are sources of data for reflection that are not mentioned by Austen), they all do participate in critical reflection. In fact, this process of reflecting on her experience, of actively examining all sources of information, helps the heroine shape her adult self and informs her decision to marry a particular male. By measuring the character's reflection against Dewey's definitions of reflective thought and of faulty thinking, I show how the heroine develops into a self-directed adult. The novelists' depiction of their characters' critical reflection brings into focus an important aspect of the female self.

Seed of fire: Immanence in cinema and the novel (Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Orson Welles) by Sean Desilets

SCHOOL TUFTS UNIVERSITY
DATE 2006
PAGES 151
ADVISER Edelman, Lee
ISBN 978-0-542-84825-4
SOURCE DAI-A 67/08, p. 2791, Feb 2007

Abstract
This dissertation considers the status of presence in representation through a comparative study of subjectivity in Victorian novels and films from the first part of the twentieth century. It argues that the only mode of reading that can do justice to rigorous representational approaches to presence is one that interrogates the internal logic of texts rather than 'decoding' them. The first chapter reads Charlotte Brontë's Villette theologically, suggesting that the relentless deconstructive characterization of Lucy Snowe is an expression of an ascetic understanding of selfhood, an expression of humanity's inevitable estrangement from the divine. The second chapter, on Daniel Deronda, describes the tension between Eliot's realism and her rhetorical inheritance from British romanticism. Switching genres, Chapter Three suggests that Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc stages a mutually-destabilizing confrontation between photographic representation and martyrdom. The fourth and final chapter analyzes Orson Welles's noir films for their attempts to integrate an understanding of history with stylistic methods that seem to privilege particularity over continuity.

Younger sons, bastards, and devils: Revising patriarchy through models of balanced authority in Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, and William Thackeray (Pierre Bourdieu) by Thomas Patrick Dow

SCHOOL LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
DATE 2006
PAGES 380
ADVISER Clarke, Micael M.
ISBN 978-0-542-62932-7
SOURCE DAI-A 67/04, p. 1348, Oct 2006

Abstract
Connected by their un-enfranchisement, Charlotte Brontë's William Crimsworth, Edward Rochester, and Louis Moore all endure inferior status, employ various strategies to rise above their station, and later enjoy patriarchal authority. Emily Brontë's Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw as well as Thackeray's Redmond Barry and Lord Bullingdon, Rawdon and Rawdy Crawley, and Henry Esmond evidence this same pattern. These un-enfranchised male characters, whether younger sons, bastards, or dispossessed heirs, factor significantly into the novels' indictment of unjust patriarchal customs. Together these characters reveal a pattern in each author's work toward envisioning a viable alternative type of patriarch. These un-enfranchised male characters assume leadership roles in a moderated form of patriarchy that retains its male leadership, yet is marked by moderated and increasingly balanced authority. Bourdieu's habitus and field theories enrich my reading of the Brontës' and Thackeray's experiments with the un-enfranchised male character as a moderate alternative to the rigid brand of patriarchy against which they struggle. Central to Bourdieu's habitus and field concepts is the notion that great tension exists at the intersection of a durable habitus promoting the status quo and an evolving field encouraging change. This tension is key to appreciating the type of social commentary achieved by these novels as a group. These benevolent 'gentle' men patriarchs offer viable alternatives to more traditional, rigid patriarchs because they remain within the range of possible alternatives as defined by a slightly altered, yet not radically changed patriarchal habitus. My extended analysis of these novels traces the evolution of a character type, the un-enfranchised male. Though their un-enfranchisement results from a variety of causes, these characters are marginalized by a traditional patriarchal culture, rise above their station as a result of their talents, hard work, and perseverance, and by novel's end, enjoy positions of authority. More important than the pattern itself is what it reveals about the type of alternative model of patriarchy proposed in these texts: it is viable and hopeful. Ultimately, un-enfranchised male characters serve a vital role in the moderate type of patriarchy proposed by these texts, a still male-centered social order headed by 'gentle' men patriarchs.

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