Brontë Studies, Volume 34, Issue 3

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 34, Issue 3, November 2009) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Articles

Mr Wise and Mr Wood: Two Brontë Bibliographers in Harmony. Part 1
pp. 185-208(24) Author: Duckett, Bob
Abstract:
An account of an exchange of letters in 1917 between the bibliographer, Thomas J. Wise, and Bradford's City Librarian, Butler Wood, concerning the compilation of A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of the Members of the Brontë Family (1917) edited by Wise. Wood, the Bibliographical Secretary of the Brontë Society, compiled an earlier bibliography in 1895 and carried out research for Wise. Despite Wise's later fall from grace, the two men had a high regard for each other at this time. This exchange of correspondence gives an interesting insight into the process of bibliographical research at that time, the result of which has been of lasting value. A few other letters are also featured.

Melting Miss Snowe: Charlotte's Message to the English Church
pp. 209-219(11) Author: Armitage, Nicholas
Abstract
Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Brontë's heroine in Villette, paints an unflattering image of Roman Catholicism. But Charlotte distanced herself from Lucy, something that should perhaps encourage us to see the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the novel as at least partly a literary device. Lucy's identification of Catholicism with Sentimentalism appears to be mirrored by her own identification of Protestantism with Reason, such that Charlotte may be saying that in their different ways, both understandings of Christianity romanticize self-sacrifice. Her message seems to be that the true gospel is neither of these, but a liberty which is paradoxically better demonstrated by the Catholic Paul Emanuel than by the Protestant Lucy herself.

How Lucy Snowe Became an Amnesiac
pp. 220-233(14) Author: May, Leila S.
Abstract
This essay is an attempt to refute the thesis of Nicholas Dames's book of 2001, Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 1810-1870, as it applies to Charlotte Brontë's Villette. Dames sees Lucy Snowe, the long-suffering narrator of the novel, as the victim — or the perpetrator — of an extreme case of amnesia that constitutes 'the death of memory'. I argue that Dames's thesis involves a misreading of the role of memory in Charlotte Brontë's novel, a novel that, perhaps more than any other Victorian novel, is about long-term memory in all its detail and painfulness. I further argue that Dames's error is partially motivated by an over-emphasis on his part of the role of phrenology in Villette.

Arctic Spectacles in Jane Eyre and Villette
pp. 220-233(14) Author: Cadwallader, Jen
Abstract
Although a number of Brontë scholars have studied the many similarities between Jane Eyre and fairy tales such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, one significant difference between the novel and its fairy-tale influences is Jane's physical plainness. This essay examines Jane's appearance specifically as a contrast to fairy-tale heroines such as Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Beauty in her version of 'Beauty and the Beast'. As a contrast to the fairy-tale beauties invoked throughout the novel, Jane's plainness takes on the dimension of social critique. This essay demonstrates, through an examination of the significance of female beauty in Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia and in nineteenth-century renditions of Beauty and the Beast, that Charlotte uses plainness and beauty to condemn an upper-class system of values which, by emphasizing the importance of a woman's appearance, limited her ability to develop selfhood and achieve autonomous action.

Three Quartets: the Rossettis, the Mendelssohns and the Brontës
pp. 247-254(8) Author: Emberson, Ian M.
Abstract
The article presents a comparison of the childhoods of three early nineteenth-century families: the Rossettis, the Mendelssohns and the Brontës. In each case there were four exceptionally gifted children, fairly close in age, talented in more than one branch of the arts, and interacting with one another. They were all somewhat apart from their immediate surroundings, and yet ultimately managed to blend different cultural influences into outstanding achievements. There is also a consideration of the link between their childhood activities and the work they produced as adults.

A Brontë Reading List: Part 3
pp. 255-262(8) Author: Ogden, James
Abstract
This is the third part of an annotated bibliography mainly of essays, either in scholarly and critical journals, or as chapters in books, 2003-2008. The first and second parts are published in Brontë Studies, 32:2 (July 2007) and 33:3 (November 2008).

Recent Acquisitions at the Brontë Parsonage Museum
pp. 263-268(6) Author: Dinsdale, Ann

Reviews pp. 269-278(10)

Categories: Brontë Society, Journals, Scholar