The new issue of
Brontë Studies (Volume 50 Issue 1-2. January-April 2025) is
available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:
Editorial Introduction
pp 1-6 Author: O'Callaghan, Claire
Depathologising Excess in Wuthering Heights
pp 7-21 Author: Krauze, Olivia
Abstract:
This article re-evaluates the semantics of excess in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). By looking back at the variants between the original edition of 1847 and the 1850 edition, which was extensively revised by Charlotte Brontë, it tracks Emily’s development of her own vocabulary and conception of excess in the novel. It argues that in contrast to contemporary socio-medical narratives of excess, which continued to perceive its manifestations in definite physical terms, Emily shows an interest in more abstract representations of excess as affect. Anchoring this approach in eighteenth-century sentimental fiction, the article goes on to present the ways in which Emily moves beyond this tradition and its regulating discourses on feeling and offers instead a view of excess as energy and opportunity, both on the level of narrative and the text more broadly conceived. The article thus positions Wuthering Heights as a major mid-century cornerstone in the literary process of depathologising excess..
‘An invisible world and a kingdom of spirits’: A Spatial Reading of Fairies, Spirits and Eschatology in Jane Eyre
pp 22-36 Author: Lewis, Ariadne
Abstract
While Jane Eyre’s (1847) spatial aspects are well documented, the spatiality of spiritual concepts in the novel remains unexplored. Using a Bakhtinian chronotopic framework, this article spatially distinguishes between the novel’s depiction of fairyland, the Christian afterlife and the Christian spiritual world, arguing that Jane rejects the idea of living in the first two in favour of the latter. Jane begins with a childhood belief in and fear of both the fairy realm (or ‘Faerie’) and the afterlife, but she must confront Mr Rochester’s desire to live with her in Faerie and St John Rivers’s insistence on taking her to heaven with him. Jane’s resistance to these ontological and spatial conceptions of the world culminates in her long-distance spiritual communication with Rochester, which allows Jane to reject both Faerie and the afterlife in exchange for a spiritual world contemporaneous to the physical world she so longs to enjoy.
‘I never asked to be made learned’: Happy Reading and Pathological Interpretation in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
pp. 37-51 Author: Choi, Jiwon
Abstract:
The Victorian tendency to pathologise allegedly unproductive pleasure reading was due to the hermeneutic hierarchy that underpins the rise of twentieth-century bibliotherapy, a medical approach to prescribing books to patients. Despite its psychopathological benefits, Victorian pleasure reading was denounced as intellectual idleness. Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) captures the historical shift in the concept of happy reading, which fluctuates from a pathological object of correction and betterment to the independent projection of knowledge. This article explores how positive feelings contributed to Brontë’s imagination of reading practices even before the term bibliotherapy was coined. The protagonist, Lucy Snowe, represents a non-normative reader who advocates reading for pleasure, thereby challenging the social construction of intellectual disability. Brontë’s novel thus illustrates the tension between professional intellectuals, who pathologise leisure reading, and Lucy, who resists the ruse of productivity and overturns the marriage plot to secure, at least partially, her reading habit for happiness.
Catherine Earnshaw’s Ghost Story: Wuthering Heights as Narrative of Female Revenge
pp. 52-67 Author: Nikravesh, Negeen N.
Abstract:
In centring the ghost story within Wuthering Heights (1847), this article highlights the subversive power of Catherine Earnshaw. By haunting Heathcliff and influencing his crimes against the Earnshaws and Lintons, the article suggests that Catherine avenges herself on the patriarchal culture that led to her demise, ensuring the same fate will not befall her daughter. Catherine’s spectre gains a level of agency more often permissible in the short story genre, and it plays a pivotal role in the greater female agency associated with late nineteenth-century women’s ghost stories. By examining Catherine’s spectral power and enduring presence, the article reconsiders the extent to which Emily Brontë grants her heroine agency, influence and control. Furthermore, by reading the novel as framed by the popular Victorian ghost story, this article positions the novel’s supernaturalism as deeply transgressive, enabling Brontë to question and revise the limitations of female identity.
Experimentations with Narrative Voice: The Gothic and the Desire for Social Reform in ‘The Story of Willie Ellin’ and Jane Eyre
pp. 68-76 Author: Roberts, Chloe
Abstract:
‘The Story of Willie Ellin’ (1853) remains a neglected facet of Charlotte Brontë’s repertoire. However, the fragment can be interpreted as another demonstration of Brontë’s writing style, demonstrating stylistic links with Jane Eyre (1847) and her juvenilia through the the core theme of child abuse. ‘Willie Ellin’ combines Gothic features with brutal realism, creating an imagined world in which societal failings can be criticised. Through the voice of the genderless ghost and the third-person narration of the abused protagonist, Brontë constructs a voice for the marginalised children of Victorian society while also demonstrating an understanding of the gendered restrictions of female authors. This article analyses Brontë’s narrative voices and draws comparisons to Brontë’s Jane Eyre and ‘The Foundling’ (1833) as well as Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ (1852), and finds that Brontë used the Gothic in order to create a social commentary that would not be subjected to the same gendered criticisms that her earlier novels received.
‘Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation’: Expressing Grief Using Gothic Devices in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
pp. 77-90 Author: Hui Ling Koh, Carina
Abstract:
This article presents a new analysis of approaching grief in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), arguing that Brontë’s meticulous deployment of Gothic devices is a testing ground for competing discourses of grief to co-exist. Through analysing Lucy Snowe’s unreliable narration of her life and protracted mourning and grief, this paper argues that the Gothic in Villette incorporates not only religious approaches to grief in the narrative but also cultural and literary discourses of grief from the early Victorian period. By further reading Villette against Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Shirley (1849) and Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ (1850), this article concludes that Villette is undoubtedly haunted by questions of grief, loss and death for which Brontë has no answers for.
‘The most likely location for Wuthering Heights’: Gothic Tourism, Material Culture and Brontë Country
pp. 91-105 Author: Gurteen, Matthew Ethan
Abstract:
This article argues that two texts by Rowan Coleman, The Girl at the Window (2019) and The Diabolical Bones (2020), adapt and transform Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and contribute to the ‘afterlives’ of the Brontës lives and work, which centralises Brontë Country—an area spanning the West Yorkshire and East Lancashire Pennines—and its material objects. Textual afterlives, the article proposes, reinforce an existing and largely negative tradition of Gothic ‘literary tourism’ because of their (re)proliferation of gender stereotypes regarding marginalisation and domesticity. By writing about actual locations associated with the Brontës and their heritage and, specifically, featuring ‘the ‘box bed’ from Wuthering Heights, Coleman appropriates the settings and objects in Brontë’s novel but attempts to present them as reality. This encourages readers to visit geographic locations and see the objects, thus affirming their place in, and stereotypes of, Brontë Country. This article explores how these afterlives simultaneously (re)proliferate gender stereotypes and reframe perceptions.
‘A living paradox’: The Presence of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Juvenilia of Branwell Brontë
pp. 106-121 Author: Young, J.E.
Abstract:
This article explores an underlying intertextual correlation between Patrick Branwell Brontë’s (1817–1848) juvenilia character Northangerland and the life of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). Derived from a published narrative available to the Brontë family, scholarship on Branwell’s youthful writing often centres on imagination, his reading of Lord George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, yet it is from these same textual sources that this paper demonstrates how Brontë likely encountered Shelley. Concerning atheism and adultery, the Shelleyan narrative echoed in Brontë’s portrayal of Northangerland allowed readers to admire Shelley for his poetic talent, but equally show him to be a paradoxical and somewhat scandalous character. Elucidating the textual correlation between Branwell Brontë’s juvenilia and Shelley’s life provides a fuller understanding of the Brontë siblings’ work and the relevance of Percy Shelley to Branwell’s early writing.
The Brontë Society Annual Lecture 2024
Adapting the Past: Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Collaboration
pp. 122-129 Author: Watson, Graham
Abstract:
This article reproduces the lecture delivered at the Brontë Society’s Annual General Meeting in 2024. Examining established views of Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), it makes two research-based propositions: 1) Gaskell derived the bulk of its content from exchanges with Charlotte Brontë, and 2) the pejorative nature of its reputation originates in unchallenged condemnations made on publication in 1857. It shows that criticisms of The Life often rest on the following assumptions: that complaints of slander from then-living individuals are accepted at face value, that Gaskell fictionalised events, and that the book’s assumed unreliability is confirmed by Gaskell’s public apologies and redactions. By interrogating these with reference to the written record, the lecture argues that the original complaints of slander cannot be upheld, that Gaskell’s research was comprehensive, and that her public admissions were performative concessions to prevent defamation actions and cannot be considered incontrovertible.
Did Brawnell own a violin?
pp. 130-134 Author: Hennessy, John
Abstract:
Branwell Brontë was passionate about music, as a number of his contemporaries, notably Francis A. Leyland, have recorded. It is known that he played the flute, organ and piano, but his having owned a violin is not something which scholars have previously acknowledged. A recent development has opened an interesting debate.
Wuthering Heights as Operatic and Dramatic Inspiration in Italy
pp. 134-143 Author: De Leo, Maddalena
Abstract:
Emily Brontё’s Wuthering Heights (1847) has inspired various Italian writers, artists and singers, but here, an almost forgotten Italian opera re-enactment of Brontë’s novel is analysed. It was written and successfully directed in the 1970s by the Apulian composer and conductor Dino Milella, but it has not been performed since and its score, therefore, is unknown.
Book Reviews
A Brontë Reading List: 2022
pp 144-155
Author: Cook, Peterpp. 158-160
Author: Dr. Ckay Uderneath
Praying With Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice
pp. 161-162 Author: Dr. Ckay Uderneath
Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing, Webs of Childhood, 20–22 September 024pp.162-164 Author: Carolyne Van Der Meer
Grasper, Keeper and Flossy: The Brontë Family Dogs in Fact and in Fiction
pp 165-166 Author: Stewart, Michael
Announcemnts
p 169-170
p 171
p 380
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