Marriage, Madness and Landscape

More recent Brontë-related theses or essays:

Marriage and the position of women in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
by Michaela Dlouhá, 2018
Charles University in Prague

The thesis aims to explore the position of women in the Victorian era, particularly with regard to marriage, and to see how this is reflected in these two novels - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The theoretical part explores the legal and social situation of women in the early nineteenth century and the practical part firstly analyses the novels separately to see how both authors reflect the realities facing women of the era. The last section of the practical part offers the overall comparison of the two chosen novels and examines differences and similarities in the central messages and in the final achievement of independence, equality and justice.

Mad or Misunderstood? A Study of the Different Portrayals of Mr. Rochester's First Wife in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea
by Hedd Törntorp
University of Lund, 2018

Jane Eyre (1847), written by Charlotte Brontë, remains a classic, 170 years later. Mr. Rochester’s secret wife locked away in an attic, Bertha Mason, is the antagonist in the novel. However, in Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) written by Jean Rhys around a century later, the character has been rewritten as Antoinette Cosway. This essay examines how Bertha and Antoinette are written and investigates the aspects that come into play in the authors’ different portrayals. This research is combined with biographical and historical criticism. The authors’ lives and own words are discussed in relation to their works, while at the same time carefully separating biography from fiction. The essay also discusses how Wide Sargasso Sea is written as a response to the racial and colonial themes in Jane Eyre. The changing conception of mental illness from the 19th to 20th century is also considered, as are the responses of various critics. The essay will illustrate how the characterization of Bertha and Antoinette responds to the cultural contexts from which the novels arose.

Characters and landscape: Towards new expressions of subjectivity in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
by Jessica Valentina Herrera Avelin
Universidad de Chile, 2017