Brontë Studies. Volume 36, Issue 3

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2011) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

'I chose to keep silence': Textual Self-Effacement in Agnes Grey
pp. 213-223(11) Author: Howgate, Sally
Abstract:
In Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë creates an absent identity by writing her heroine's propensity for self-effacement into the text. The narrator's silence and reserve are propounded by the social invisibility contingent on the role of governessing in the nineteenth century. Anne Brontë establishes a mental conflict in her protagonist caused by the alternating states of self-assertion and self-effacement. This tension of subjectivity, although engendering resentment, anger and guilt in the face of societal inequalities, nevertheless enables a constant redefining of the self. The struggle of the psyche is integral to the act of narration; Anne Brontë's textual play between self-effacement and that which I have identified as an 'assertion of interiority', constitutes a sophisticated and original manipulation of the narratorial conventions of Bildungsromane. Agnes Grey has been underrated and misinterpreted by critics for too long. This study seeks to demonstrate the power of Anne Brontë's art in creating an enduring impression of a simple and uncomplicated heroine who manages, at the same time, to narrate a text that seethes with all the duplicity and complexity inherent in psychological conflict.


Knowledge Economies in Agnes Grey
pp. 224-234(11) Author: Wagner, Tamara S.
Abstract:
The article contextualizes Anne Brontë's novel Agnes Grey (1847) in terms of the dynamics of exchange characteristic of a knowledge economy. It revisits and discusses the central issue of the heroine's growth from an impressionable child reflecting established and socially reinforced norms to a facilitator of new ways of thinking and being. It is shown that her own often difficult trading in an economy in which knowledge — even if not linked to, or determined by, middle-class financial independence — is the capital that enables individuation and the formation of a holistic human being. Embedding Agnes within the context of the nineteenth-century patriarchal knowledge industry makes possible not only a nuanced understanding of her own emotional and epistemological processes; rather, it also substantially contributes to questioning the often applied generic category of the Bildungsroman to Anne Brontë's narrative.


Negotiating Distance and Intimacy in Female Friendship in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 235-246(12) Author: Dutoi, Karen
Abstract:
Helen Huntingdon's friendship with Milicent Hargrave in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has received scant critical attention, yet their complex relationship challenges stereotypes of proper feminine behaviour and addresses the difficulties of negotiating the need for friendship and the desire for privacy. Despite their similar situations of being married to abusive husbands, Helen and Milicent do not confide their sorrows to each other nor provide each other counsel. Their friendship is strained by their different ways of handling their reprobate husbands and is characterized not only by affection and intimacy but also by distance and silence.

'Landscape living': Yoshida's Arashi-ga-Oka and the Frost/Fire Heart of Emily Brontë's
pp. 247-254(8) Author: Catania, Savour
Abstract:
This paper argues that Yoshida's 1988 film version of Wuthering Heights, called Arashi-ga-Oka or The Hill of the Storm, excels in analogizing the frost/ fire strife from which Emily Brontë moulds the tragic lovers' hearts. For Yoshida distils Emily Brontë's landscape characterization to its elementally oxymoronic essence by likewise rooting it in the fiery/frosty fluidity of such Gondal figures as the outlaw Douglas. Arashi-ga-Oka revisions Wuthering Heights in terms of its elemental vision of love as deadly fire and ice.

The Professor and the Modern Experience of Work
pp. 255-262(8) Author: Butterworth, Robert
Abstract:
In The Professor, Charlotte Brontë captures what the experience of middle-class work in the modern world is like. She presents the many strains it entails: workplace politics, relationships which may be both superficial and complex, the stress and other psychological effects it involves. She thus underlines how much her protagonist must go through as he attempts to make his way in life.

Physiognomy and the Treatment of Love in Shirley
pp.263-276(14)  Author: Tytler, Graeme
Abstract:
Charlotte Brontë's Shirley has been shown to manifest something of the influence exerted on European literature and culture by the physiognomic theories of Lavater and his successors from the late eighteenth century onwards. Although this influence may be felt in some of Charlotte's methods of personal description, the interest of physiognomy here derives chiefly from its function in the presentation of her main characters as observers. This may be noted, appropriately enough, with respect to the delineation of the love relationships. Yet one striking thing about observation in the narrative is how often attempts to interpret, or claims to be able to interpret, the eponymous heroine's state of mind from her outward appearance prove to be futile or wrong-headed. At the same time, it is in part thanks to such instances of physiognomic incapacity or uncertainty that the author ingeniously manages to weave a plot so intricate that it keeps the reader guessing to the very end.

'These are not a whit like nature': Lucy Snowe's Art Criticism in Villette
pp. 277-288(12)  Author: Petermann, Emily
Abstract:Lucy Snowe, the first-person narrator of Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette, is outspoken in her criticism of art, whether painting, literature, drama or music. The passages in which she comments on works of art illustrate her aesthetic principles, which are based on (a) a preference for the realistic and simple over the artificial and ornate; (b) an identification with character; (c) a belief that surfaces should give insight into deeper truth. Lucy's art criticism is significant for the way it reflects on her own narrative, as a demonstration of the principles at work in the text as a whole.

An Analysis of the Causes and Effects of Sickness and Death in Wuthering Heights
pp. 289-298(10) Author: Bloomfield, Dennis
Abstract
A major part of the literary criticism of Wuthering Heights has dealt with sickness and death but the focus has almost exclusively been directed to the psychological, emotional and socio-economic implications of the diseases. Descriptions of the characters' diseases are examined and diagnosed in the light of present medical knowledge. This paper shows how Emily Brontë has used illness, injury and death exclusively to direct and advance the plot. Building on the early Victorian view of illness as a societal value system, Emily Brontë used it as a metaphor to direct the reader's interpretation of the personality of the characters and their importance in the story.

Nancy Garrs: An Obituary 
pp. 299-300 (2)

Reviews
pp 301-306(6)  

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