Woman's Powers and Lowood

New Brontë-related  papers just published:

“Woman’s Powers” and Emily Dickinson’s “Queens”: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot in 1861–1862
Marjorie Stone
Women's Writing, 22 October 2018

In an 1862 essay on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Chartist poet and critic Gerald Massey challenged Thomas De Quincey’s 1847 pronouncement that “Woman” would never produce a “great poet”, artist, musician, philosopher, or scholar. Under the running title “Woman’s Powers”, Massey pointed to “Mrs. Browning” as “the greatest woman-poet of whom we have any record”, “fiery little Charlotte Brontë” creating stories spell-binding as the Ancient Mariner’s, and George Eliot, “almost a prose Shakespeare”. Androcentric literary traditions segregated by genre and nation have obscured the extent to which 1861–1862 marked a generational watershed in British women’s writing, as critics took stock of two recently deceased major authors alongside a third who had recently demonstrated her formidable powers. Following EBB’s death in 1861, she was frequently linked with Brontë and Eliot in English and American periodical clashes over woman’s literary powers, intertwined with debates on woman’s nature, education, and political rights. All three British women writers profoundly influenced Emily Dickinson, who entered her most prolific period in 1861–1862. As Dickinson’s periodical contexts and literary elegies suggest, her famous tribute to EBB and George Sand in 1861 – “Women, now, queens, now!” – also registers her response to Brontë and Eliot.

The Providential Impact of Lowood on Jane in 'Jane Eyre'
Journal of International Social Research . Aug2018, Vol. 11 Issue 58, p83-89. 7p.
Author(s): Gülüştür, Erol; Bolat, Eren

 This paper specifically focuses on Jane's experiences and maturation at Lowood Institution. Through the school, the reader can grasp a great sense of Jane's views and comprehend its pivotal role in the phase of independence and a frame of mind that the heroine undergoes. With its contribution to Jane, it yields rich opportunities to almost every stage of her life. The heroine's rejection of old conventions and adaptation of a manner of rebellion give credence to her mind and oncoming aspirations. While being a bildungsroman and delineating the traumas of a frustrated and alienated girl attempting to find a remedy in life, the book points the heroine gets intellectual and matures physically and psychologicallyin the course of time.One of pivotal moments-probably the most important major turning point for her is the one she steps into Lowood which will be a central, unifying and integrating phase whereby her life will revolve and the faces and experiences that appear there remain compelling andconsequently their force is felt by Jane deeply and effectively. On a larger view, her challenge and determination enacted at this stage of her life function as a transformation of mechanism that may incite assertive social, ethical and psychological outcomes. Therefore, the article aims to delineate Lowood, seemingly having negative connotations, and its constructive impacts and consequences on the protagonist with its causes.