Bored Females

More scholar books with Brontë mentions:

The Female Gothic
New Directions
Edited by Diana Wallace and Andrew Smith

Palgrave Macmillan
12 Nov 2009
9780230222717
240 pages

This rich and varied collection of essays makes a timely contribution to critical debates about the Female Gothic, a popular but contested area of literary studies. The contributors revisit key Gothic themes - gender, race, the body, monstrosity, metaphor and motherhood - to open up new directions for criticism, while two essays on Scottish and Welsh Gothic represent the latest work in these new areas. Writers discussed range from central figures such as Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Bronte, and Angela Carter, and neglected figures like the authors of the 'Northanger novels', to writers who are rarely discussed as 'Gothic' such as Iris Murdoch, Toni Morrison and Iain Banks. An Introduction surveying criticism on the Female Gothic and an essay on the institutionalisation of Gothic Studies provide invaluable contextualisation. Contributors: Kirsti Bohata, Carol Margaret Davison, Lauren Fitzgerald, Anya Heise-von der Lippe, Avril Horner, Alison Milbank, Robert Miles, Meredith Miller, Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Andrew Smith, Diana Wallace, Angela Wright, Sue Zlosnik.

Beautiful Boredom
Idleness and Feminine Self-Realization in the Victorian Novel
Lee Anna Maynard

McFarland & Co.
ISBN 978-0-7864-4555-4
198pp. softcover 2009

This volume explores boredom as a possible force for good in the Victorian novel. Boredom in these works is an important means through which female characters are able to achieve a greater sense of self-awareness. In her discussion of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" (1847), George Eliot's "Middlemarch" (1871-72), and Henry James' "The Portrait of a Lady" (1881), the author examines both the deleterious and restorative aspects of boredom and shows how this subtle theme has continued to be used by more modern authors.

Chapter 1 is titled Avoiding the Boring: Boredom, Beauty, and Narrative in Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Scholar