Identity Economics in rural England

 A new article and a dissertation, all Brontë-related:

Identity Economics in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: An Empathetic Inquiry into Psychoanalysis

Ashfaque Akhter (Department of English, Islamic Arabic University, Dhaka, Bangladesh) and  Ahmed Tahsin Shams (Department of English, Notre Dame University, Dhaka, Bangladesh)

SCHOLARS: Journal of Arts & Humanities, Vol. 4 No. 2 (2022)

This paper aims to connect the interlocking ideas of how social signifiers psychologically develop utility function, theorized by George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton, in characters like Heathcliff, the protagonist of nineteenth-century English fiction Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Heathcliff's motivation is a desire born out of circumstantial consequences, for example, to be with Catherine in life or wealthy like Linton's family. This paper pinpoints how only material wealth fails to give a sense of belongingness in Heathcliff's life, which he aimed at achieving in the second half of his transformative journey. In addition, this paper attempts to reason for the absence of identity in Heathcliff’s decision-making process, which means a lack of empathy or belongingness in Heathcliff’s ambition. This research leads to a hypothesis that if Heathcliff had been brought up in an empathetic environment, the readers would not have perceived such degradation of mental health as abusive actions that he performs. Through a qualitative inductive method, this paper analyzes the aspect of identity economics that focuses on empathy. Thus, this paper gives insight into how material wealth without empathy only amplifies, particularly Heathcliff's violent nature, thereby leading the protagonist to an end where peace is a hallucination like Catherine’s ‘ghost.’

(Re)painting the portrait: the creation of the collective imagery of the Brontë siblings’ victorian rural England

Caroline Navarrina de Moura

Tutor: Kathrin Holzermayr Lerrer Rosenfield

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Instituto de Letras. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras.

This dissertation intends to explore the formation of the collective imagery of the Brontë siblings within the themes of the Gothic literature from the period between 1832-1855, more specifically in the Branwell’s and Anne Brontë’s, selected poems and Agnes Grey, respectively, contextualizing with Emily’s and Charlotte’s literary works. The methodology is, thus, the detachment of the literary passages in which contains one of the three Gothic conventions that refer to religion, male and female representations, and interpersonal relationships among characters through the point of view of critical theory, which, in this case, stands for the knowledge through interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions. To what the recollection of their creative process is concerned, the works of professor and theorist Pierre-Marc de Biasi’s The Genetics of Texts (2010) and professor Dick Van Hulle Textual Awareness A Genetic Study of Late Manuscripts by Joyce, Proust, & Mann (2007) are used to support the discussion. In order to discuss the Gothic element, the classic work of professor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s The Coherence of Gothic Conventions (1986) is used to converse with the work of professor Jarlath Killeen’s History of Gothic Gothic Literature 1825 – 1914 (2009). Finally, in order to discuss social relations and relations of meaning involved in their creative process, the works of professor and critic Donald Francis Mckenzie Bibliography and The Sociology of Texts (1986) and professor and critic Alison Milbank’s chapter “The Victorian Gothic in English Novels and Stories, 1830 – 1880’, in Jerrold E. Hogle’s The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (2002) are used as support. Gordon (1984) affirms that the Gothic frame fragmentate the narrative in order for readers interpret and reach the central issue of the Gothic exposure. Considering that the literary pieces of the Brontë siblings are also decentred worlds, by analysing them together, it is possible to create the image of the representation of reality in which they were inserted, completing the Pillar Portrait with Branwell’s image as a metaphor.