Brontë Studies. Volume 35, Issue 1

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2010) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Articles

Jane Eyre and the New Testament Parable of the Mustard Seed
pp. 1-6(6) Author: Hochberg, Shifra
Abstract:
Editors of Jane Eyre have glossed the term 'mustard-seed' — an endearment used by Rochester to describe Jane after she has agreed to marry him — as a reference to Shakespeare's fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I argue that the term also alludes to the Parable of the Mustard Seed, which appears three times in the New Testament and which Charlotte Brontë undoubtedly knew. The metaphoric language describing the Kingdom of God in the parable provides an important subtext to the theme of moral redemption and to the recurring bird and tree imagery in Jane Eyre.

'That Peculiar Voice': Jane Eyre and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, an Early Wesleyan Female Preacher
pp. 7-22(16) Author: Henck, Karen Cubie
Abstract
References to the plain appearance of Charlotte Brontë's heroine in her first published novel, Jane Eyre, link the character to Wesleyanism, a movement which extended the priesthood of all believers to women and granted them access to the pulpit during the late eighteenth century. The Brontë sisters came under the influence of this movement in their childhood, through the Wesleyan theology of their father's Haworth parsonage. As the autobiographical writings of one Wesleyan preaching figure, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, make clear, this tradition that shaped Charlotte Brontë and her views about gender linked women's choice of plain dress to John Wesley's expectation that all Wesleyans publicly voice their spiritual experience. This essay explores the relationship between the life and theological concerns of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, an acquaintance of Charlotte Brontë's father, in order to expose an important clue to the source of Jane's 'peculiar voice', which, as Rochester claims, 'renews hope' and 'sounds so truthful' (JE, p. 432).

Abandoning and Re-inhabiting Domestic Space in Jane Eyre, Villette and Wide Sargasso Sea
pp. 23-29(7) Author: Lydon, Susan
Abstract
In Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Villette and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, patriarchs often fail to provide safe homes for women. Patriarchal homes in these novels are largely either non-existent or presented as dangerous places that threaten the female protagonists who must choose either to suffer abuse or leave home, abandoning their roles as angels of the hearth. Curiously, these novels all invert the typical Victorian notion of home, the notion that women were expected to sacrifice female autonomy for the safety and protection of a home defended by a male, as characterized, for example, in John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. Rather, homes in these novels are menacing places that serve as catalysts for female agency. Each female protagonist will need to seek refuge outside a traditional home at some point in the novels in order to survive. In Jane Eyre and Villette, Ferndean Manor and Lucy's educational establishment represent a revised version of Victorian domesticity where women have greater personal agency rather than a return to a traditional domestic space.

Gender, Conflict, Continuity: Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) and Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins (1893)
pp. 30-39(10) Author: Cox, Jessica
Abstract
The New Woman fiction of the fin de siècle brought into conflict patriarchal and feminist ideologies, challenging widely held assumptions about gender roles and the position of women. Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins is an important contribution to the genre, and engages with a number of the key issues that concerned feminists at the end of the nineteenth century, including marriage, the education of women, the double standard, male licentiousness, and the wider issue of social purity. These are also key themes in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — published nearly fifty years before Grand's seminal New Woman text. In this essay, I consider Anne Brontë's text as a forerunner to the New Woman fiction of the fin de siècle, through a comparative examination of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Heavenly Twins.

Vigny's Kitty Bell, Eugène Sue's Mathilde and 'Kitty Bell'
pp. 40-56(17) Author: Heywood, Christopher
Abstract
The tales 'Kitty Bell' and 'Giulio and Eleanor' appeared as interpolations in the serial 'Mary Lawson by M. Eugene Sue', published in The London Journal , a penny weekly, during 1850/51. Handwriting and other clues identify G. W. M. Reynolds as the compiler of this novel from three manuscript sources, and as the pseudonymous correspondent 'K.T.' whose letter to Charlotte, claiming 'Kitty Bell' as a 'paraphrase' of Jane Eyre, has prompted the theory that 'Kitty Bell' was a plagiarism of the novel. The name Kitty Bell and associated topics appear among the works by Alfred de Vigny and Eugène Sue that contributed to Charlotte's literary formation. In that context, this article develops the view, first advanced by Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick, that Charlotte wrote 'Kitty Bell' as a first attempt at the subject of Jane Eyre. 'Giulio and Eleanor' emerges as her matching sketch for The Professor.

Mr Wise and Mr Wood: Two Brontë Bibliographers in Harmony. Part 2
pp. 57-79(23) Author: Duckett, Bob
Abstract
This paper is presented in two parts; the first part was published in Brontë Studies, vol. 34, no. 3, November 2009, pp. 185-208. The correspondence continues here.

Reviews pp. 80-94(15)

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