Child Neglect, Hermeneutics and Postcolonial Feminism

Recent scholar Brontë-related works:

The depiction of orphanhood and child neglect with their impacts on the protagonists of The Lost Child and Wuthering Heights
by Jacob Stanjura
Advisor: Tereza Topolovská
September 2018

This bachelor thesis focuses on the depiction of the psychological impacts of orphanhood and child neglect on the protagonists of The Lost Child and Wuthering Heights. The theoretical part introduces the two authors, Caryl Phillips and Emily Brontë, whose works are to be discussed, as well as it analyses the psychological research conducted on orphaned and neglected children. The practical part then offers an interpretation of the two novels with its relevance to the emotional instability evinced by orphaned and neglected children.

Wuthering Heights in Context: Hermeneutic Singularity in Traditions of Narrative
by María Valero Redondo
Advisor: Julián Jiménez Heffernan
Universidad de Córdoba, UCOPress

Re-Imagining the Victorian Classics: Postcolonial Feminist Rewritings of Emily Brontë
by Yannel Celestrin
Advisor: Martha Schoolman
Florida International University, 2018

Through a post-structural lens, I will focus on the Caribbean, specifically Cuba, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, and Roseau, and how the history of colonialism impacted these islands. As the primary text of my thesis begins during the Cuban War of Independence of the 1890s, I will use this timeframe as the starting point of my analysis. In my thesis, I will compare Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights. Specifically, I will examine Condé’s processes of reimagining and rewriting Brontë’s narrative by deconstructing the notions of history, race, gender, and class. I will also explore ways in which Condé disrupts the hegemonic and linear notions of narrative temporality in an attempt to unsilence the voices of colonized subjects. I argue that Condé’s work is a significant contribution to the practice of rewriting as well as to the canon of Caribbean literary history. I argue that the very process of rewriting is a powerful mode of resistance against colonizing powers and hegemonic discourse.