Religion, Spiritual Vision and Role Models

Some new theses published with Brontë-related content, all of them someway or other related to religion:

Anne Brontë the Universalist: Religion and patriarchal subversion in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey (2019)
by Ardyn Tennyson
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-current. 721.

Anne Brontë (1820-1849) was an English novelist and religious poet, the youngest of the literary Brontë siblings. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë wrote some of the most esteemed novels of the Victorian canon. Children of an Anglican minister, the Brontës were accustomed to clerical life and the conventions of nineteenth-century religious observance. Anne’s faith, however, was unique and radical, an unorthodox form of Christianity called Universalism, which held that all human beings would be saved, not just those chosen by God. This thesis examines her two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in the context of her belief in Universalism. Brontë’s faith motivated and justified her rebellion against Victorian abuse of power: instead of obeying unjust cultural conventions, which implies submission to authority, she uses her faith to subvert traditional patriarchal structures in favor of supporting not only women’s rights, but the rights of all living beings.

Charlotte Brontë's Spiritual Vision
by Andrew James Weiler, University of WindsorFollow
2019

In this thesis, I explore the Victorian poet and novelist Charlotte Brontë’s remarkable understanding of scripture and powers of analysis. As a daughter of the notable reverend Patrick Brontë, Brontë’s dissenting feminist views of the Bible are particularly significant. Although Brontë demonstrated a lifelong belief in God, and in the individual’s right to develop and maintain a direct relationship to God, personal tragedies in her life shaped the ways in which she interpreted scripture and informed her ideas regarding the spiritual realm. As the number of personal tragedies increase, Brontë’s spiritual vision, which migrates from one novel to the next, becomes less tethered to a specific denominational view but more individualistic, bold and inclusive of other religions and belief systems. By examining her spiritual vision at different stages in her life – encapsulated within each novel – I hope to illuminate how her faith fluctuated. This study will examine the effects of personal loss and physical disconnection from her mother (Maria Branwell) on a quintessentially dissenting feminist lay theologian, suggesting her overall message to Christian women, and later, women of all religious backgrounds and beliefs, of the dangers inherent in allowing men to mediate their relationship, knowledge and understanding of the divine.

Role Models for Religion in Jane Eyre
by Daniella Rachel Dyckman
Stern College for Women
Yeshiva University
May 7th, 2019