Brontë Studies. Volume 34, Issue 2

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 34, Issue 2, July 2009) is already available online. It is a special number edited by Patsy Stoneman and containing the proceedings of the colloquium: Staging the Inner Self: Charlotte and Emily Brontë and Jean Rhys held at the University of Toulouse-II in March 2008. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial : pp. iii-iv(1) Author: Stoneman, Patsy

Articles

Auctorial (Im)Postures in Emily Brontë's Diary Papers
pp. 93-106(14) Author: Trapenard, Augustin
Abstract:
The rhetoric of Emily and Anne Brontës' Diary Papers is closely examined in order to assert that these texts notably fashioned Emily as a speaker, a woman and a writer, creating a blurred ethôs of secrecy, defiance and fiction that prevented any intrusive reader from authorizing her.

From Shrine to Stage: Inner Space and the Curtain in Jane Eyre
pp. 107-116(10) Author: Borie, Charlotte
Abstract
Jane Eyre is punctuated by the figure of the curtain, the role and value of which constantly change and adapt to the phases of Jane's progress towards the knowledge of her own identity. Modulating the value of the inner space it encloses, making it hover from shrine to stage, the curtain shows and hides, reveals the character's intentions and behaviour and frames the strategies at stake in the interactions that build Jane and Rochester's relationship.

Arctic Spectacles in Jane Eyre and Villette
pp. 117-126(10) Author: Lanone, Catherine
Abstract
Much has been written about Charlotte Brontë's fascination with fire, but less attention has been paid to the way in which ice functions as a symbol of feminine resilience in her work. In Jane Eyre, as Jen Hill has shown, the Arctic provides a dream space, turning Jane into an explorer who may overcome the blank desert of social inferiority and emotional starvation. This paper also addresses the more ambiguous traces of Arctic imagery in Villette, where Lucy Snowe resists obsessional spying and copes with an icy landscape of absence by creating an aporetic narrative space of her own, mapping her life but leaving significant blanks and 'syncopes', to use Clément's concept.

'Portrait of a Governess, Disconnected, Poor, and Plain': Staging the Spectral Self in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
pp. 127-137(11) Author: Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence
Abstract
This paper looks at the way Charlotte Brontë deals with the feminine ideal in Jane Eyre. As she plays upon a heroine comparing herself to other models of femininity, the novel brings to light the significance of visual culture in the construction of the romance between Jane and Rochester. However, Charlotte's use of Gothic stereotypes ultimately discredits images of ideal femininity. The figure of the ghost, which marks Jane's invisibility throughout the novel, eventually enables her to evade Rochester's grasp and, in so doing, male authority.

Charlotte's Transvestites
pp. 138-146(9) Author: Bertrandias, Bernardette
Abstract
Patricia Beer's view of the significance of costume in Charlotte Brontë's novels points the way to a further analysis of the representations of ambivalent gender identity, and even of the staging of a recurring masquerade, in which woman's aspirations to develop a masculine persona are projected; but while the masks allow the secret dream of androgyny to surface, they also confirm its limited, if not altogether delusory nature.

Inside Out: Jane Eyre on the Victorian Stage
pp. 147-154(9) Author: Stoneman, Patsy
Abstract
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is now valued as a subtle retrospective narrative of its heroine's inner life, but its melodramatic elements proved enticing for the Victorian popular stage. This paper describes the eight stage versions of Jane Eyre which appeared on the British and American stage between 1848 and 1882, and argues that the conventions of stage melodrama turn Jane's story 'inside out', translating it from inward analysis to soliloquy and dialogue, from a private 'autobiography' shared with the discerning reader to a public declaration of grievance delivered in a voice, as Dickens put it, 'audible half a mile off'.

The Other Stage: from Jane Eyre to Wide Sargasso Sea
pp. 155-161(7) Author: Maurel, Sylvie
Abstract
The paper focuses on Jean Rhys's rewriting of the story of the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre. Taking as her subject the mad woman's early life in the West Indies, Jean Rhys transforms Charlotte Brontë's wintry romance into a tropical romance, or liberates the romantic material that is suppressed in Jane Eyre. In doing so, she reworks Bertha, the unspeakable figure of otherness, into an unnameable self, and creates a new, albeit elusive, stage for the inner self.

Professor Ian Jack
pp. 162-162(1) Author: Smith, Margaret

Reviews pp. 163-183(21)

Correction pp. 184-184(1)

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