Female Identity, Upbringing and Forgery of Identity

New Brontë-related scholar papers or thesis:

Using French to construct British female identity : Defoe's Roxana, Brontë's Villette, and Fowles' The French lieutenant's woman
Toste, Jenny
California State University, Fresno, 2014

This thesis uses a narratological approach to explore how female identity in British literature is constructed through the use of French. It primarily explores how John Fowles uses French in the postmodern novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman to dramatize Sarah Woodruff’s existential journey toward authenticity. In refraining from defining who Sarah is, Fowles gives her the freedom to continue to pursue her true self, both now and in the future, offering her continued authenticity in her female identity. In order to appreciate Fowles’ accomplishment with identity, this thesis first studies the use of French in Daniel Defoe’s eighteenth-century novel The Unfortunate Mistress (“Roxana”) and in Charlotte Brontë’s Victorian novel Villette. In Defoe’s work, France provides the opportunity for Roxana to change her identity and become a mistress seeking wealthier and wealthier men, which leads to her moral demise. Roxana becomes trapped, though, by her definition as a fallen woman and becomes a warning to other women, as well as to Britain in its relations with France and construction of national identity. In Villette, Lucy attains a new, successful identity in French-speaking Belgium as she learns to balance Reason and Feeling, dramatized by her respective use of English and French language. Although Lucy achieves an authentic identity, her potential is limited by her final definition as a widow and school director.

 "Make a Man of Him": The Question of Upbringing in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Bondesson, Rebecka
Linköping University.2014

Behandlar synen på barnuppfostran i Anne Brontës The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Argumentet är att huvudkaraktären, till skillnad mot de traditionella idéerna rådande i 1820-talets England, antar ett progressivt förhållningssätt till barnuppfostran. Det visas även att romanen presenterar en möjlig bakgrund till hennes långt framskridna idéer vad beträffar erfarenheterna som har influerat hennes utveckling. Ytterligare en dimension tillförs uppsatsen i och med ett didaktiskt kapitel som behandlar frågorna varför och hur man bör använda sig av The Tenant of Wildfell Hall i undervisningen av Engelska i den svenska gymnasieskolan. 

The forging and forgery of identity in G.K. Chesterton’s The Club of Queer Trades and Charlotte Brontë’s VilletteBethany Dahlstrom
The Victorian,  Vol 2, No 1 (2014)

Perhaps one of the most interesting topics in modern society is how someone’s identity comes to be developed and defined. This is not a concept that is exclusive to the 21st century, however, and at the beginning of a fight for women’s rights in the 19th century, literature emerged which cultivated the on-going idea that identity is something that is malleable. This is seen in G.K. Chesterton’s Sherlock Holmes-esque The Club of Queer Trades and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. In these novels, the reader is introduced to two characters, male and female respectively, who establish for themselves an identity that seems to change and fit whatever suits their needs in the moment. In this paper, I seek to examine how each character both forges their identity, and, through deception, creates a forgery of their identity, questioning how this process carries over into modern society.