Experience, Personal Correspondence and Gender

Two theses and a contribution to a conference. Brontë scholars in 2017:

Experience Makes Life--Jane Eyre’s Attitude Towards Wealth and Love
by Ai-Ping Zhang, Xiao-Xue Jin
2017 3rd International Conference on Education and Social Development (ICESD 2017)

Every piece of literature works is created from life or the writer’s experience. Jane Eyre,
is one of the most representative works, which attract experts to study it. Jane Eyre the character in Charlotte Bronte’s novel in some ways reflects the woman writer’s experience and life attitude, but more positive and independent. In this article the writer compares Jane Eyre with Charlotte Brontë and describes how Jane’s attitude towards wealth and love comes from her life experience and how it’s important to modern women. 

The Progressive in the Personal Correspondence of Charlotte Brontë
Author: Pennock, Barbara
2017-08-31
Leiden University

Studies on Charlotte Brontë have focused on her personal life (Peters, 1975; Thörmahlen, 2012), her letter writing (Brontë, Smith ed., 1995–2000) and her work as an author. Her novel Jane Eyre (1847) was even included in a study investigating the use of the progressive during the nineteenth century (Arnaud, 1998). Although Arnaud’s study incorporated both novels and personal correspondence of contemporary authors, it excluded her letters. This thesis examines Brontë’s usage of the progressive in her letters exchanged with four members of her social network. Moreover, the investigation considers other contexts, such as formal and informal relations, as well as the gender of the recipients. Instances of the progressive were measured in terms of density, a method of normalization. This study finds evidence which supports the notion that the author’s use of the ‘be +-ing’ construction was likely to have been influenced by her second social network. Moreover, it indicates that her usage became more systematic during the final period of her life. The gender comparison shows that she used most progressive forms in letters addressed to women, than to men. Such usage of the construction correlates with female progressive usage of the nineteenth century (Arnaud, 1998, p. 131). However, the low use of the progressive in letters to men might indicate that Brontë adopted male ‘linguistic behaviour’ (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2009, pp. 114–115) as a result of her work as an author and her interaction with multiple social networks.

Gender Roles in Jane Eyre, Dracula, and Middlemarch
Author: Buijsman, Simone
2017-08-31
University of Leiden

Abstract: This thesis discusses Victorian gender roles in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Victorian Era had strict ideas about gender roles, which can be seen in the literature from that time. Jane Eyre is the earliest novel that is discussed and it presents a complex view of masculinity and femininity. It might seem, at first glance, that the characters are mostly conforming to the gender roles, but it becomes clear that the lines between both genders are blurred. This is also the case in Middlemarch, where meddling wives and insecure husbands destroy their own marriages and happiness. This nuanced view of both male and female characters defies the rigid gender roles of the time. Dracula, on the other hand, is focussed on femininity rather than masculinity. Manliness is still important in the novel, but the main focus is on the transformation women undergo when they are turned into vampires. The perfect woman turns into an evil seductress when she is bitten by Dracula, and her misdeeds are harshly punished. This black and white view of femininity, or gender in general, is absent in the other novels.