Ophthalmoscopy, Amely Bölte, Freud and Neo-Pagans

More Brontë-related scholar papers:

Ophthalmoscopy in Charlotte Brontë's Villette
Katherine Inglisa
Journal of Victorian Culture
Volume 15, Issue 3, December 2010, Pages 348 - 369

This essay re-examines the representation of scopic conflict and discipline in Charlotte Brontë's novel, Villette (1853), within the context of the reconfiguration of the eye during the 1850s. Villette is pioneering in its representation of an ophthalmoscopic conception of the eye, as an organ which could be looked into by medical practitioners as well as looked at. This notion of the eye was only possible after Hermann von Helmholtz's invention of the ophthalmoscope in 1850. Villette is thus one of the first literary responses to the newly visible living retina. This essay argues that in light of the novel's emphasis on a penetrable, legible eye, the critical emphasis that scholars have placed on surveillance as a disciplinary model in Villette is overstated. Visual exchanges are described not in the disembodied abstractions of panopticism, but with references to a violent lexicon derived, in part, from the novel terminology of ophthalmoscopy. The prominence of opthalmoscopy points towards a remedial narrative in which diagnosis is succeeded by surgical intervention, and ultimately the restoration of sight. M. Paul Emanuel is the principal emblem of this visual practice: a merciless autocratic ophthalmologist who brings pain but also palliation. Villette's remedial narrative is organized around three devices designed to respectively look into, perforate, and enhance the human eye: the ophthalmoscope, the stylet (an instrument used in eye-surgery), and spectacles. This analysis adopts a historicist approach to re-contextualize Brontë's imaginative depiction of optical technology and perception within the mid-century emergence of ophthalmology.

A German Jane Eyre?: Amely Bölte and the English Governess Novel
Elisa Mülller-Adams
Women's Writing
Volume 18, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 103 - 120

This article examines the influence of English literature and English women authors on the governess novels by the German author and women's rights campaigner Amely Bölte. Following Norbert Bachleitner's argument, who read Boumllte's novels about governesses as examples of the productive reception of Jane Eyre (1847) and Shirley (1849) in Germany, this article analyses how Bölte, who between 1839 and 1851 lived and worked as a governess and translator in England, while being in very close contact with the literary scene in London, used the genre of the English governess novel, “translating” it into the German context in order to develop her own form of the social novel to promote women's rights and thus allowing her to find a voice in the political discourse. The article first examines Bölte's early texts, Louise oder Die Deutsche in England (Louise or a German Woman in England, 1846) and Visitenbuch eines deutschen Arztes in London (Visiting Book of the German Doctor in London, 1852). The analysis of these texts shows how Bölte, who was especially impressed by the English female social novel, experiments with the possibilities the figure of the governess can offer her to illustrate women's struggle for economic independence. In these texts, Bölte's German governesses in England seem marginalized in more than one aspect: as working middle-class women, they cross boundaries of gender and class; as foreigners, they have to assert their own national identity. In the later novels Harriet Wilson (1862) and Elisabeth oder Eine deutsche Jane Eyre (Elisabeth or a German Jane Eyre, 1873), which were both written after Bölte's return to Germany, Bölte develops her use of the genre further, now choosing a German setting and a German context. In these novels, Bölte uses the governess to illustrate her demand for a better female education and to condemn the marriage of convenience. By referring to English governess novels such as Jane Eyre—texts her readership was familiar with and approved of—Bölte could promote her feminist programme of the economically indepent woman without alienating her readership, thus keeping a balance between emancipation and convention.

Freud's uncanny: the role of the double in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights
Morteza Jafari
Victorian Newsletter, 2010, Numb 118, pages 43-53

Many literary works employ the theme of the double or doppelganger, a device which enables us to examine and explore the conflicts of the personality. The double expresses the opposition between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, reason and instinct. Freud argues that, through the double, one is able to extend oneself; having a doppelgänger meant that one was indestructible. For example, in Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason acts as a double for Jane, representing two sides of one Self; similarly, Isabella Linton's docile and meek character casts her as a double for the passionate Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. Sigmund Freud's 1919 essay, "The Uncanny," offers important insights on this topic; as a direct response to the psychiatrist...

And a Kindle download:

Witches and Devilry in Wuthering Heights: A Call for Neo-Pagan Perspective
Jamie Freeman
File Size: 70 KB
Publisher: Amazon.com; 1 edition (April 29, 2011)

Neo-Paganism is a growing religious movement in America, England and around the world. As such, Academia has a unique opportunity to watch and record a culture come into being. The Neo-Pagan perspective comes out of a rich history interlaced with mythology (both world mythology and our own foundational myths), magick and history. Not only is literature being written by Neo-Pagans, but their methods of discourse, history and theology can be used to evaluate and examine other texts. Charlotte Brontë’s (sic) novel Wuthering Heights can benefit from such an exploration, showing the mythical side of Wiccan origin in a fiction written before the Murrayite debate.
This paper applies cultural analysis to well-documented literature in an attempt to provide new insight for those within the culture, and without. It is a call for Neo-Pagan perspective in literature as a viable model of evaluation, and enlarges the scope of Neo-Pagan theology and philosophy beyond the foundational texts to search for meaning within the culture of the Western canon. Utilizing an exploration of Adian Kelly’s “Foundational Myths” as the framework for New Historicism, the paper examines Brontë’s novel from the perspective of a Wiccan practitioner awash in a sea of differentiated meaning from mainstream culture. Using sources such as the Malleus Mallificarum and “commonly accepted knowledge” of The Burning Times, Wuthering Heights is explored from the sacred marriage of Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw, of Cathy’s empowerment as a High Priestess Witch, and of Heathcliff’s demonic possession of Cathy’s mind. The paper concludes with the value of such evaluation, and how it might be applied to other works of literature to develop of canon or perspective of Neo-Pagan literature. 

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