Finding Freedom and The Afflicted Imagination

A couple of new Brontë-related theses:

Finding Freedom for Jane: A Reading of Subjugation, Shame, and Sympathy in Charlotte's Brontë Jane Eyre
Rebecca Shaver, Clemson University
Master of Arts (MA) -05-2016

Abstract
In an investigation of Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre, Jane clearly desires liberty in the form of social belonging or freedom, and makes the active choice to pursue it, but finds that liberty is ultimately best won not by an antagonistic battle, but instead through subjugation by those of a higher class than herself. As a social inferior, the mere association with a higher-class family name (whether that is through employment, marriage, etc.) is enough to set Jane's eye on the ultimate goal of total autonomous freedom through social climbing. Jane actively participates in subjugation as a means to elevate her state in society, evident through choices of language. This language ranges from inhuman equations to magical creatures to derogatory social labels, but functions in the same way throughout the novel. I assert that Jane is fully active in her pursuit of a place in society. It is paradoxically through assimilating to the language and culture of the higher classes and referring to herself as an inferior that Jane takes back her power. By acknowledging her inferiority through her language, either to herself or by participating in conversations with (or active silence toward) social superiors, Jane actively wrests conversation to her advantage.

The Afflicted Imagination’: Nostalgia and Homesickness in the Writing of Emily Brontë
James Thomas Quinnell
Doctoral thesis, Durham University.
March 2016

Abstract
This thesis discusses homesickness and nostalgia as conditions that ‘afflict’ to productive ends the writing of Emily Brontë. Homesickness and nostalgia are situated as impelling both Brontë’s poetry and Wuthering Heights. To elucidate these states, close attention is paid to Emily Brontë’s poetry as well as Wuthering Heights, in the belief that the poetry repays detailed examination of a kind it rarely receives (even fine work by critics such as Janet Gezari tend not to scrutinise the poetry as attentively as it deserves) and that the novel benefits from being related to the poetry. Building on the work of Irene Tayler and others, this thesis views Brontë as a post-Romantic, and particularly post-Wordsworthian, poet. Much of her writing is presented as engaging in dialogue with the concerns in Wordsworth’s poetry, especially his ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’; her poetry and prose eschew Wordsworth’s ‘simple creed’ and explore ‘obstinate questionings’. In so doing, they follow his own lead; Brontë brings out how complex the Romantics are.
Chapter one focuses on the idea of restlessness as stirring a search for home. Chapters two and three, on Catholicism and Irishness respectively reflect on ways in which Emily Brontë used contemporary national debates in exploring imaginatively states of homesickness and nostalgia. The conceiving of another time and place to find a home in these chapters is developed in chapter four. This chapter considers Brontë’s internalisation of a home in her imaginative world of Gondal and argues for Gondal’s relevance. An imaginative home formed in childhood leads into chapter five which discusses Emily Brontë’s presentation of childhood; the chapter contends that Brontë imagines the child as lost and homesick, and rejects any ‘simple creed’ of childhood. Chapter six, which starts with the abandoned child in Wuthering Heights, focuses on the the novel as stirring a longing for home. The inability to find home, and particularly the rejection of heaven as a home, leads into a discussion of the ghostly as an expression of homesickness in the final chapter.