by Adriana BartůňkováUniverzita Jana Evangelisty Purkyně V Ústí Nad Labem. Pedagogická FakultaMay 2026Although the novel Wuthering Heights was considered controversial in its time, today it is one of the most important works of British Victorian literature. The main aim of this thesis is to analyze and highlight how the author, Emily Brontë, through aspects of this work, depicts and at the same time criticizes moral norms of the Victorian era in which the novel was published, especially through social relationships and hierarchies. This bachelor's thesis also examines how difficult it was to live with these moral norms in the author's time, especially as a woman.
Zhu Mingzhu, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300380, ChinaJournal of Sociology and Education, Vol. 2 No. 3 (2026)Catherine Earnshaw's suffering in Wuthering Heights is often described as a conflict between two men: Heathcliff, the companion of her childhood, and Edgar Linton, the husband who offers rank and security. This paper reads that conflict less as a romantic choice than as a struggle over forms of life. The moors preserve Catherine's unruly kinship with Heathcliff and her memory of an undivided self; Thrushcross Grange promises comfort, status, and social intelligibility within a patriarchal order. Because the novel places these claims within a world governed by inheritance, class prejudice, and gender discipline, Catherine's marriage to Edgar becomes a compromised attempt to secure a life that she cannot fully inhabit. By examining the novel's spatial symbolism, the social conditions of Catherine's choice, and her own language of selfhood, the paper argues that her tragedy arises from an imposed division between inward identity and social survival. The discussion also considers why Catherine's dilemma continues to speak to contemporary readers, especially where external expectations still press individuals to turn against their own sense of life.
by Marta Sánchez RomeraDepartamento de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana, Universidad de MálagaMay 2026Throughout this dissertation project, I will provide some context on how Victorian values affected the relationship between women, creating a bond that sometimes went further than a simple friendship. Since the category ‘’lesbianism’’ did not exist and homosexuality was widely seen as bad, Victorians romanticised these friendships and were blinded to the fact that something deeper could occur between them. In order to reflect all this, after giving some historical context and theory, I will analyse Villette by Charlotte Brontë, in which there is a clear subtext of sapphic desire, with the aim of revealing how lesbianism was portrayed and seen in the 19th century.
by Sara MaltonJournal of Victorian Culture, vcag014, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcag014 (July 2026)This essay focuses on the nineteenth-century ‘fasting girl’, a phenomenon scrutinized in medical writing and the popular press, as well as the period’s literature. Fasting girls were typically purported to survive on only the Eucharist and sips of water – for weeks, months, or even years. They often became objects of intense public interest, alternately the locus of legal and medical enquiry or sites of pilgrimage. In evoking earlier fasting saints, whose behaviour was considered anorexia mirabilis, the fasting girl claims to embody the miraculous consequences of devotion to her saviour. The medical establishment would increasingly seek to discredit this earlier understanding of fasting. Cases such as that of the Welsh girl Sarah Jacob (1857–1869), who has been ‘resurrected’ by authors from Dickens to Emma Donoghue (in her recent historical novel, The Wonder [2016]), were at the nexus of this transition from the perception of self-imposed starvation as redemptive sacrifice to pathologized illness, anorexia nervosa (1873). Dickens offers varying treatments of fasting women in his journalism and his portrait of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841). Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) identifies maternal healing as a tonic to destructive, idolatrous forms of self-starvation. Finally, in its depiction of dangerous religious devotion and the limits of medicalization, The Wonder offers us a prism through which we can critically examine the ongoing cultural construction of the fasting girl. Collectively, the texts considered here invite a more thorough confrontation with the religious dimensions of female self-deprivation and its vexed relationship to female agency.
Dr. Suvam Nath SharmaDrishti : the Sight # Vol.- XV, Issue - I (May, 2026-October, 2026), pp 122-126The Brontë novels possess canonical status because they refuse exhausted historical meaning and maintain resistance to singular interpretation across generations. Reading the Brontë canon through the lens of weird fiction and contemporary theory reveals how these works systematically dismantle Victorian moral certainties and domesticity’s illusory stability. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë wrote texts that expose moral nihilism as an affective condition wherein established ethical frameworks prove radically inadequate to comprehend human experience and desire. Rather than offering reassurance, these novels stage the eruption of the numinous within domestic interiors supposedly secured by convention. Heathcliff’s demonic force, Bertha Mason’s mônstrum-like presence, and Helen’s recognition of her husband’s fundamental vacancy all constitute manifestations of this numinous threat that dissolves selfhood’s boundaries. Reconsidering the Brontë canon through weird fiction’s diagnostic apparatus illuminates how Victorian comfort depends upon elaborate denial and repression of forces that exceed rational explanation and moral categorization. The permanence of moral chaos and numinous danger in these works constitutes their enduring philosophical wisdom for contemporary readers who inhabit moments of ideological hardening and moral certainty.
Women, Autonomy, and Resistance in Victorian Fiction: A Study of Jane Eyre
Pallavi Bhardwaj. Ritu Sharma and Simran KambojJournal of Technical Education, Vol. 49 Special Issue No. 1 April 2026, p. 116Victorian literature frequently reflects the rigid gender hierarchies embedded within nineteenth-century British0 society. This paper explores the theme of women’s autonomy and resistance in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë within the socio-cultural framework of Victorian England. The novel critiques patriarchal authority and redefineswomanhood through a protagonist who asserts moral, emotional, and economic independence. Through an examination of Jane’s psychological development and key narrative moments, the study argues that Jane Eyre anticipates feminist thought and serves as a foundational text in Victorian feminist discourse.
Esther Liu Godfrey, University of South Carolina UpstateVictorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, Number 149, Summer 2026, pp. 141-161This essay argues that Gen Z readers, equipped with a vernacular psychological literacy derived from social media and therapy culture, are uniquely positioned to reread Wuthering Heights through a diagnostic gaze: a feminist interpretive practice that recognizes the novel’s psychodynamics as patterns of abuse rather than passion. While feminist critics from Deborah Lutz to Arielle Zibrak have examined the liberating potential of portrayals of desire, contemporary students bring to the text a democratized therapeutic vocabulary—terms such as trauma bond, coercive control, and enmeshment—that reframes the dangerous lover’s allure as pathology. Drawing on pedagogical encounters and the cultural afterlife of Wuthering Heights in Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Emerald Fennell’s recent film adaptation, this essay traces how Wuthering Heights persists as a cultural trauma loop: a dopamine-driven cycle of harm and reconciliation that masquerades as romance. Integrating insights from Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Naomi Booth, Jack Halberstam, Christine Jarvis, and Sandra Lee Bartky, I contend that therapy-speak, often dismissed as reductive pop psychology, instead informs a feminist discourse capable of dismantling the aesthetics of romanticized abuse. The diagnostic gaze thus offers a mode of reading that neither pathologizes desire nor romanticizes domination. By recognizing Catherine and Heathcliff ’s relationship as a model of dysregulated attachment rather than transcendent love, Gen Z readers illuminate new ethical possibilities for teaching and reading Brontë today: not the cancellation of Wuthering Heights, but the recovery of intimacy itself.
Santos Zunzunegui Díez, Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko UnibertsitateaSERIARTE. Revista científica De Series Televisivas Y Arte Audiovisual, 10, 45–58 (2026)Recuperando una idea acariciada durante más de veinte años largos años y con la complicidad esencial de uno de sus mejores guionistas, Julio Alejandro, Buñuel lleva a cabo una adaptación de la gran novela de Emily Brontë, Cumbres borrascosas, transponiéndola desde los áridos páramos ingleses a las ardientes tierras mexicanas. Pero sobre todo insertando el amor imposible y transgresor que la novela describe en la tradición hispánica de la más pura necrofilia con la finalidad de proponer una ilustración cinematográfica de uno de los versos más célebres de nuestra literatura, ese «polvo enamorado» que cantó Quevedo, como destino final de cualquier amor.
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‘A hot July day’: Editorial Introduction
pp 211-213 Author: O'Callaghan, Dr. Claire
Research Articles
Rediscovering Anne Carus Wilson
pp. 214-229 Author: Burstein, Moriam Elizabeth
Abstract:
This article recovers the work of Anne Carus Wilson (1787–1859), who was the wife of William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the model for Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre (1847). Anne Carus Wilson has been ignored in accounts of the Brontës, despite her known involvement in the Clergy Daughters’ School. Now virtually forgotten, Carus Wilson was a successful children’s author in her own right, whose output during the 1820s and 1830s included short fiction, a novel, multiple devotional works, periodical articles and a children’s biblical card game. This article argues that analysing her surviving work clarifies how she and her husband may have disseminated their Evangelical Calvinism to students at their various schools, even as she sought to model forms of Christian activism for British children in general.
‘Let me try to wait His will in silence’: Silence and Faith in Jane Eyre
pp. 230-244 Author: Lewis, Ariadne
Abstract:
Silence in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) is often unfavourably contrasted with the power of speech and ‘telling the story’. However, the novel’s silences are much more complex than simple signs of oppression or roadblocks to self-expression. Silences in Jane Eyre reveal Jane’s spiritual growth and a narrative of transformation in her relationship with God and Rochester. Jane initially reads God as silent in response to her prayers, which reading shapes her understanding of divine providence and plan for her life. She sees a similar sort of silence reflected in her earthly relationships, and these experiences of silence shape how she uses silence towards those around her. However, when the ‘mysterious summons’ breaks God’s silence, Jane comes to believe that there is a providential purpose behind the silence of God, allowing her to redeem and repurpose silence in her relationships.
‘Amusing you with an old world story’: Relating to the Past in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 245-257 Author: Walters, Elijah
Abstract:
This essay revisits the topic of narrative structure in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by exploring similarities between Helen’s diary and John Bunyan’s The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680). As Brontë’s novel shifts from the Gilbert frame narrative to Helen’s Gothic diary, she introduces her topics of reform through an interpolation of Bunyan’s seventeenth-century fiction. Brontë’s careful interaction with Bunyan’s text makes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall not simply a commentary on Victorian society but also a transformative engagement with literature from the past.Why Trees Matter in Wuthering Heights
pp. 258-275 Author: Defant, Ivonne
Abstract:
Trees are not a remarkable feature of the Brontë moors—trees are indeed rare–yet their very dearth is rife with significance in terms of both gender and ecology. This article proposes that the trans-corporeal interplay between trees and Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter, Cathy, in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) foregrounds ideas of transformation, connection and preservation. The episode of the fir tree in Lockwood’s dream introduces the reader to Catherine’s past and therein the past of the moorland: ancient forests that once blanketed the landscape participating in its formation. Drawing upon an intersection between matrilineality and the ecological history of the landscape centred on the arboreal, this article demonstrates how Brontë interweaves the identity of the moorland with the identities of mother and daughter. While Catherine’s arboreal embodiment allows Cathy to retrieve the spirit of the mother and of the place, trees enroot the self of Catherine, Cathy and the land, interconnecting and enriching them.The ‘Pets’ of Edward Fairfax Rochester
pp. 276-288 Author: Pope, Liam George
Abstract:
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Rochester’s dog, Pilot, introduces Jane and Rochester, essentially setting into motion the main plot of the novel. To use Ivan Kreilkamp’s term, Pilot eventually becomes something of an anthroprosthetic seeing eye dog for his owner when he is partially blinded following the fire at Thornfield Hall. Anthroprosthesis refers to an anthropomorphic being that fits the role of a living ‘prosthesis’ for an injured or otherwise disabled human character. This article argues that Jane, upon returning to find Rochester at Ferndean Manor, willingly replaces Pilot in his capcity as Rochester’s ‘guide dog’, becoming an anthroprosthetic human guide dog parallel.The Earliest American Reactions to Wuthering Heights: Some New FindingsSpecial Interst Article
pp. 289-297 Author: Evans, Robert C.
Abstract:
This Special Interest Article describes and quotes from over thirty ‘new’ responses to Wuthering Heights that were published in the United States immediately after the novel was first printed there in 1848 and in several later decades of the nineteenth century. These newly collected responses indicate that the book was at first strongly criticised, whereas other reviews offered occasional positive comments, although even these were often mixed with censure. In the decades following the novel’s initial American appearance, it was still sometimes described negatively; however, by the 1870s, opinion had clearly shifted, with Emily Brontë praised for her bold genius. Taken together, these reviews illustrate the vagaries of literary interpretation and the ways in which some books, initially condemned by their earliest reviewers, can eventually be fully accepted into the canon of great literature.
Book ReviewsAnne Brontë and Lord Byron: Lost Echoes of Influence
pp. 298-300 Reviewed by Cook, Peter
Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives
pp. 301-303 Reviewed by Curzon, Rachel
“Wuthering Heights”, a Film Directed by Emerald Fennell, Warner Bros., 2026
pp. 304-306 Reviewed by Seijo-Richart, Maria
The Edinburgh Companion to the Brontës and the Arts
pp. 307-309 Reviewed by Stoneman, Patsy
The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë’s Hawk
pp. 310-312 Reviewed by Van Der Meer, Carolyne
Zhiying ZhangThe Explicator, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2026.2680014 (2026)Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853) is a novel profoundly concerned with the act of looking and being looked at. Vision in the novel is never neutral; rather, it is bound up with power, desire, moral judgment, and gendered discipline. In particular, the ekphrastic episode of the Cleopatra painting in Chapter XIX has elicited substantial critical commentary and functions as a focal point for discussions of gender, spectatorship, Orientalism, aesthetics, and narrative authority. (...)
Alia Rehman, Hira Javed and Iram AyazLiberal Journal of Language & Literature Review, Vol. 4 No. 1 (2026)The paper discusses a thematic and psychological analysis of the notions of love and revenge in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, with particular attention to the figure of Heathcliff. It aims to study how intense frustrated love becomes transformed into destructive vengeance and the way such a vicious circle furthers violence, suffering, and ruination throughout generations. Qualitative research methodology is employed in this study because close textual reading and thematic analysis, as its tools, are necessary to trace causes, development, and consequences of revenge within the narrative. Analysis reveals that the vengeful behavior of Heathcliff originates from social alienation, class prejudice, childhood abuse, and emotional betrayal, mainly Catherine Earnshaw’s denigrating her emotional commitment for social status. The research further discusses an intriguing connection between obsessive love and revenge; it indicates how passion, when strangled by social mores, acts as a catalyst for cruelty and moral degeneration. Most importantly, this study suggests that Brontë had denounced revenge as a self-deprecating impulse, and how such a cycle of revenge is retarded in the second generation through mutual comprehension, forgiveness, and nourishing love. By placing revenge as the central thematic force of the novel, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of Wuthering Heights as a psychological and moral exploration of human passion, suffering, and the possibility of redemption.
‘Between her and the world’: Legacies, Interpretations, Adaptations
pp 97-99 Author: O'Callaghan, Dr. Claire
Research Articles
No Atom Rendered Void: The Aerial and Alchemical Enchantment of Wuthering Heights
pp. 100-117 Author: Duell, Meg
Abstract:
This article maps how elemental and meteorological metaphysics function in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), arguing that the novel’s complex recursive structure is facilitated through an alchemical process by which the collision of air and materiality—the transcendent elements embodied by Catherine and Heathcliff—activates psychic, spatial, mortal and temporal ‘wandering’. These points of elemental friction, defined here as ‘portals of enchantment’, connect their subjects with past and future iterations of themselves and others. Additionally, it explores how the novel’s elemental ‘portals’ extend beyond spatial thresholds into aerial and avian touchstones, allowing Brontë to infuse the novel with folkloric subtext..
This Rustic Muse: Developing a Political Voice in the Poetry of Patrick Brontë
pp. 118-134 Author: Avery, Simon
Abstract:
This article examines a range of the Reverend Patrick Brontë’s poetry—a much neglected body of work in Brontë criticism—and argues that it was here that Brontë was able to develop a political voice and a sense of literature as a vehicle for political exploration and debate. In considering Brontë’s two collections, Cottage Poems (1811) and The Rural Minstrel (1813), in the contexts of war abroad and industrial, economic and social unrest at home, this article explores what the poetry tells us about Brontë’s political thinking, his relationship with political structures and hierarchies, and his anxieties about political cohesion and security. What emerges is a poet whose work, written under the guise of his ‘rustic muse’, offers fascinating interventions into contemporaneous political debates regarding poverty, industrialisation, the city, community, the place of religion in society, nation-state formation and the nature of liberty and equality more generally.
Reading Jane Eyre as a Hagiographic Romance
pp. 28-43 Author: Schiavone, Matteo
Abstract:
This article uses queer medievalism as a critical method to interpret Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), reading it as a hagiographic romance, a hybrid text that blurs clear-cut generic boundaries. As the fictionalised autobiography of a character who finds the strength of self-belief through mystical experiences and the Christian doctrine of endurance, the narrative is akin to medieval hagiographic and visionary literature, which the comparison with The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430s) demonstrates. At the same time, however, similar to Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, it follows the pattern of a chivalric quest romance, as Jane physically moves outwards and goes through several stages of development before being ready to marry Mr Rochester. Ultimately, queered genres create a space where Jane can develop a queer gender identity beyond stifling societal expectations.‘To give the passage quite a contrary turn’: Female Religious Authority and Subversive Hermeneutics in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley
pp. 132-152 Author: Wiegand, Holly
Abstract:
This article argues for a reading of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) as a historiography of women’s challenges to androcentric Anglican structures of authority and measures of biblical interpretation. Shirley stages the possibility and precarity of women’s public religious authority amid socio-religious discourses, underscoring the relationship between Shirley and Caroline as a space for proto-feminist theological and interpretive revisions. Attending to Brontë’s heroine’s push against religious exclusivism foregrounds Caroline’s often-overlooked hermeneutic turns in her dispute with mill overseer Joe Scott, Brontë’s mouthpiece for inherited anti-woman Anglican interpretations. This article contends that class and gender inflect the act and reception of biblical interpretation for Brontë, playing out historical debates about women’s preaching and discussions about working-class Dissenting groups that supported women’s ministries, such as Methodism. It nuances Brontë’s views on the role of women in religion as she too is pulled between traditional dogma and radical woman-centred hermeneutics along class lines.‘Are you not a little severe?’: Lucy’s Wit in Her Narrative Voice in Villette
pp. 153-166 Author: Zhang, Zhiying
Abstract:
This article provides a new perspective on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), analysing the function of wit through the lens of psychoanalytic and comic theories. Primarily based on Freud’s theory of wit, the analysis examines various wit-making techniques, exploring how Lucy employs these methods as a means of self-expression and critique. The use of wit breaks the serious narrative tone, creating a comic effect that allows readers to enjoy the story and empathise with Lucy’s painful experiences. It also allows Lucy to release her suppressed emotional pain and struggles within her narrative. By demonstrating how wit is integral to Lucy’s journey of self-discovery and self-expression, this article contributes to the ongoing scholarly conversation about comic elements in Brontë’s writing.Heathcliff, Harry and Hardin: After as a New Layer to Wuthering Heights
pp. 167-183 Author: de Beus, Emma
Abstract:
This article considers Anna Todd’s After series (2013–2015) as a new adaptive layer to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). It explores the relationship between the two works by considering the adaptive history and context of Wuthering Heights before moving onto an analysis of After, examining its multiple points of origin. The analysis includes fanfiction, the boy band One Direction and other influences on After, both classical and contemporary. The article then undertakes close readings of Wuthering Heights and After to establish clear points of connection and overarching parallels, arguing that a reading of After exposes it as a hitherto unrecognised adaptation of Wuthering Heights. By shedding light on this relationship, it is possible to better understand how Emily Brontë’s novel has found an increasingly varied afterlife in the twenty-first century—one that both speaks to the contemporary climate and reflects new understandings of the novel itself.Book ReviewsA Brontë Reading List: 2023
pp. 184-195 Reviewed by Pearson, Sara L. & Cook, Peter
Abstract:
This reading list is an annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical work on the Brontës published in 2023. We have attempted to compile a comprehensive list of resources by consulting the MLA International Bibliography, Academic Search Complete, and the Brontë Blog (http://bronteblog.blogspot.com). Book chapters and scholarly articles on the Brontës are included except those articles published in Brontë Studies. Entire books on the Brontës are in the reviews section of this journal. The author’s initials in brackets are provided after each annotation.
The Rise of Celebrity Authorship: Nineteenth-Century Print Culture and Antislavery
pp. 195-198 Reviewed by Ayrton, Tricia
Brontë Women’s Writing Festival, 26–28 September 2025
pp. 198-200 Reviewed by Dawn Gant, Rose
A Vain Talent? The Question of Female Artistry in the Life and Work of Anne Brontë
pp. 200-202 Reviewed by Sanders, Valerie
Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel. Injured Minds, Ruined Lives
pp. 202-204 Reviewed by Seijo-Richart, María
The Banagher Brontë Group Festival, Ireland, 15–18 August 2025
pp. 205-207 Reviewed by Wilcock, Joanne
AnnouncementBrontë Studies Early Career Research Essay Prize 2026
pp. 208-209 by O'Callagahn, Claire
The Coquette’s Prison: Rosalie Murray And The Failure Of High-society Marriage As A Path To Autonomyby Donny Syofyan, Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Universitas AndalasJurnal Ceteris Paribus, 5(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.25077/jcp.v5i1.60Research on women's agency in Victorian literature typically focuses on the marginalized figure of the governess. At the same time, the upper-class coquette—who appears to wield power—remains overlooked in critical readings as a victim of systemic oppression. This research examines the coquette’s prison in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, specifically analyzing how Rosalie Murray’s pursuit of high-society marriage serves as a mechanism of self-erasure rather than a path to autonomy. The study employs a qualitative approach rooted in feminist literary criticism and historical realism. The data consist of textual evidence from the novel, analyzed through close reading and character-comparative analysis. The research evaluates the transition from pre-marital performative power to post-marital domestic entrapment. The results indicate that Rosalie’s flirtatious artillery provides only a temporary and illusory agency. Upon marrying Sir Thomas Ashby for rank and wealth, she experiences a catastrophic loss of freedom, becoming a prisoner and a slave within the physical and psychological enclosures of Ashby Park. The research concludes that Victorian high-society marriage, when divorced from moral compatibility, leads to psychological petrifaction. Further studies are recommended to employ a digital humanities approach to map motifs of spatial and psychological confinement across the broader canon of the Brontës and to identify systemic patterns of gender inequality.
Khushbakht Irshad, Monitoring Officer, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education and Monitoring Authority, PakistanYusra Ali, M.Phil Scholar, Department of English, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, PakistanSocial Sciences Spectrum, 5(2), 144–151DOI: https://doi.org/10.71085/sss.05.02.527AbstractThis paper investigates the proportion to which silence and speech is an interdependent power negotiation strategy in female-to-female interaction in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Although comprehensive study on feminist scholarship on the verbal agency of Jane against the agents of patriarchal society has been carried out, there is still relatively little focus on the linguistic relationship that arise between females. This study focuses on the critical aspect of the relationships between Jane and female characters like Mrs. Reed, Helen Burns, Blanche Ingram, and the rivers sisters Diana and Mary with the help of textual analysis. This study uses feminist narrative and discourse-pragmatic approaches as framework. The analysis highlights that Bronte creates an economy of women speech, voices, and silence, whereby morality, affection, resistance, and the bargaining of social order are manifested with the use of speech and silence as tools. Silence serves as a communicative act of purpose for enforcing repression, emotional restraint, moral superiority or subversive defiance. Speech acts, on the other hand, are contention, sympathetic, and power areas. This discussion helps in widening the critical perception of the gendered power relations within the novel. It paved the way for larger discussions about the topic of women use of language for constructing gendered norms in the Victorian novel by emphasizing the role of a female-to-female communication narrative as opposed to the traditional male-female dynamic.
Hannah MarkleyStudies in the Novel, Volume 58, Number 2, Summer 2026, pp. 121-137This essay explores how debilitated appetites in Wuthering Heights spread among the novel’s characters as diseases. While critics comment on the ways Heathcliff’s hunger engenders Catherine’s anorectic refusals, Hindley’s alcoholism and Frances’s tubercular consumption also respond to Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights, exposing more complex entanglements of physical illness, emotional suffering, and traumatic experience. By situating these appetites in relation to nineteenth-century medical ideas about Anorexia nervosa, inebriety, tuberculosis, and miasma theories of disease, the disabling effects of racial persecution (Heathcliff), gendered confinement (Catherine and Frances), and social dispossession (Hindley) disclose biopolitical distributions of risk along the lines of race, gender, class, and disability that underwrote British racial capitalism, structuring both appetite and embodiment in the provincial scene of the everyday.
Muckle, Lacey Nicole; Siegel, Jonah (chair); McGill, Meredith (member); Luciano, Dana (member); Grossman, Jonathan (member);Rutgers University ; School of Graduate Studies, 2026This project focuses on how the ideological and stylistic strategies that Frederick Douglass used in his first autobiography influenced Charlotte Brontë’s immensely popular novel Jane Eyre (1847). Subsequently, Jane Eyre’s widespread influence created a subsection of mid-nineteenth-century reform novels that contain “the rebellious aesthetic,” a narrative style in which authors imported the aesthetic aspects of rebellion from Douglass by-way-of Brontë without considering how different representational strategies might be necessary for different political projects. The first part of this project explains Douglass’s influence on Brontë, and how Brontë’s novel subsequently reproduces the aesthetics of (rather than actually imagines or incites) rebellion. The rest of this project tracks how Douglass’s rhetorical strategies were refracted through Jane Eyre into a set of novels written between the aftermath and enactment of the British Slavery Abolition Act (1833) and the end of the American Civil War (1865). Techniques created by authors of slave narratives came to shape the way white authors represented different political projects. Ultimately, when these authors attempted to portray other social issues using the style of Douglass’s narrative (mediated through Brontë’s novel), the rebellious aesthetic limited how they could imagine or portray different forms of social transformation.
Tianming BaiJournal of Victorian Culture, vcag006, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcag006This essay explores the largely under-read Brontë Parsonage garden. The garden was used as a signifier of the supposed Brontë ‘gloom’ by Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell, two inaugurators of the Brontë myth. By paying attention to how the garden was described in their travelogues, I examine the ways in which later pilgrims to the Brontë shrine in Haworth helped consolidate its reputation for bleakness. The Brontë garden featured in their recollections as a liminal space between English domesticity and Yorkshire wilderness, between femininity and creativity, and between life and death. One myth I want to disentangle is the popular image of Charlotte as the angel who laboured dutifully in the Parsonage garden. It may have been Emily Brontë who cared about gardening. I then argue that the Parsonage garden and the Yorkshire moors are places where later occupants and pilgrims can negotiate their affiliations with the literary family, the region, and a version of the nation the Brontës came to embody. Whereas the Haworth moorland embodies a regionalist perception of Northern Englishness as wild and barren, in the afterlife of the Brontës, the garden usually attests to a notion of Englishness as cultivated, delicate, and disciplined. The various transformations the Parsonage garden underwent in the half-century since the 1860s, the various responses to such changes, as well as recent creative refashioning of the image of the ‘Brontës in the garden’, all speak to the transformation of the Brontë myth and the ever-changing affiliations of locals, visitors, and the public with Brontë heritage.
Xiaoyan DongThe Yeats Journal of Korea (한국 예이츠 저널) Vol.79 (2026.04) pp.33-50This paper examines Jane Eyre, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Mrs. Dalloway as primary texts for a comparative study of female identity under structural oppression. Situating each heroine within her distinct historical context—Victorian England, the mid-twentieth-century American South, and early twentieth-century Britain—the analysis traces how Jane Eyre, Blanche DuBois, and Clarissa Dalloway navigate the intersecting pressures of social institutions, economic dependency, and family structures. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power and Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, the study identifies three distinct modes through which patriarchal power operates: visible coercion, internalized discipline, and total erasure. It then examines the forms of self-alienation these modes produce and the corresponding strategies of resistance each woman develops within her structural constraints. By bringing these three figures into sustained parallel analysis, female identity under patriarchy emerges not as a single story of victimhood but as a differentiated spectrum of entrapment and agency, yielding a more precise understanding of how women negotiate and reconstruct selfhood under systemic oppression.
ARTICLES
Welcome by Sharon Wright, Editor.
Letter from the Chair. Lucy Powrie. Chair of the Brontë Society Board of TrusteesGazette Serial: Through the West Lane keyholeThe March of the Brontës by Gillian Murphy, Curator for Equality, Rights and Citizenship at the LSE LibraryPart 2: The Brontës and the shoemakers by Linda Pierson
Report from the red carpet by Mia Ferullo
Close-up on the Collection: A fashion for mourning by Murray TremellenMembership Matters: Membership reminders / Members'Area update / Getting in Touch / Dates for Your Diary by Hayley Pink, Development OfficerA Mary Taylor Adventure by Catherine RaynerDirectors' Diary by Rebecca Yorke AMA Director, Brontë Society and Brontë Parsonage MuseumThe Slandering of Charlotte Brontë by Graham WatsonThe Brontë Bookshelf: ‘The hawk, like Emily, stands outside of time’. Preface of The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspiredby Emily Brontë’s Hawk by Emma Conally-Barklem
by Shatha Ghazi Alajmi, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Languages and Translation, Imam Mohammad ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia.(M.A.Thesis)Arab World English Journal (ID Number: 322) January, 2026: 1-84This study examines the cross-cultural adaptation of classic English novels into mid-twentieth-century Egyptian film, specifically analyzing Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as reinterpreted in Hatha Al-Rajol Ohebboh (1962) and Al-Ghareeb (1956), respectively. This study, rooted in adaptation theory, film criticism, and reception studies, examines the transformation of these literary materials to embody Egyptian cultural values, religious sensibilities, and cinematic norms. This study examines the narrative, thematic, and ideological transformations that transpire in the transition from text to film, utilizing Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation as both a product and a process, Dudley Andrew’s notions of cinematic metamorphosis, and Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model. It also integrates Hans Robert Jauss’s concept of the “horizon of expectations” as a supporting reference for the primary theoretical framework, analyzing how Egyptian audiences interpreted and responded to these adaptations from the 1940s to the 1960s. The study employs meticulous textual and visual study to illustrate how the films diverge from their British origins to express regionally relevant issues, including familial honor, moral decency, and emotional restraint. These adaptations are not simple replicas but rather efforts of cultural adaptation that contextualize Western narratives inside Arab social and moral contexts. The study emphasizes adaptation as a dynamic, dialogic process co-created by filmmakers and audiences through an examination of production and reception. This work enhances global adaptation discourse, especially in non-Western contexts, and promotes increased academic focus on Arab film as a venue for cultural negotiation, reinterpretation, and narrative agency.
by Alyson BaughDigital Literature Review, 13(1), 130–140 (2026)The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë, was published in the Victorian period, and Netflix’s TV series Maid was released in 2021. Despite being from different time periods, both stories explore domestic abuse, particularly through the significance of space and environment. Both texts use their individual stories to explore the double meaning of space and the reclamation of domestic spaces, and to redefine what makes a home a home.
ZOOM: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell and her Infamous Brontë Biography by Graham Watson
Wed 22 Apr, 7:00pmSince its publication in 1857, Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë has divided opinion. Some critics suggest it is historically unreliable – perhaps Gaskell’s sources were flawed and maybe she exaggerated or even invented details for profit? Now new research into her writing and methods tells a different story: that of a diligent whistleblower silenced by the very forces she sought to expose.Now Graham Watson’s The Invention of Charlotte Brontë traces the events behind Gaskell’s sensational biography and the cultural legend it inspired – from her six-year friendship with Charlotte Brontë to the media scandal that followed the book’s release, when Gaskell was pressured into a false confession of error to protect her publisher from a lawsuit.Graham Watson argues that long-standing criticisms of The Life of Charlotte Brontë, still repeated today, must be challenged, as they first appeared within weeks of its publication – and all came from the very people Gaskell had criticised.Doomed survivor of a family of geniuses, Charlotte Brontë had a life as dramatic as her famous novel, Jane Eyre. Now you can join us as Graham Watson challenges the established narrative to reveal the Brontë family as you’ve never seen them before.The first in the Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell mini-season, in partnership with Elizabeth Gaskell’s House.
Ouana Alassane Sekongo, University Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d’IvoireRevue des Arts, Linguistique, Littérature & Civilisations, Vol 2, Mars 2026In nineteenth-century England, Victorianism was an ideology based on the principle that men are more rational than women. As such, it divided the society into two distinct spheres, which were the private sphere for women and the public sphere for men. This paper aims to highlight that Brontë coins the character Jane, an educated and defiant girl who subverts these social norms and works hard to enter the public space just as men. In addition to textual evidence, the article relies on Judith Butler’s (1990) theory of deconstructing gender norms in order to demonstrate how Brontë’s novel questions the Victorian gender system and opens doors for women to express themselves and reveal their talents. The study concludes that after defying the ideology of Victorianism, Jane has not only got access to formal education, but also worked in the public sphere as a teacher. She, therefore, stands as a resilient and an emergent girl, serving as a role model for 21st century women.
Sushil Ghimire, Balkumari College, Chitwan, NepalMindscape: A Journal of English & Cultural Studies, 4(1), 107–116This study examines Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1848) and Parijat’s Blue Mimosa (1965), two debut novels written more than a century apart, in different worlds, yet connected by a shared portrayal of women’s suffering under patriarchal authority. The research explores how Catherine Earnshaw and Sakambari embody experiences of oppression, discrimination, and premature tragedy as consequences of deeply rooted gender hierarchies. The study adopts a qualitative approach, guided specifically by de Beauvoir’s concept of woman as the “Other” in The Second Sex (1949). According to de Beauvoir, patriarchal societies construct women as secondary, subordinate beings defined in relation to men. Applying this framework, the analysis explores how Brontë and Parijat represent their heroines as trapped in gendered hierarchies yet simultaneously striving for selfhood and autonomy. The findings reveal that although Brontë was writing in nineteenth-century England and Parijat in twentieth-century Nepal, both texts depict strikingly similar patterns of female marginalization, particularly within family structures. Catherine and Sakambari resist patriarchal expectations in distinct ways-Catherine by questioning marital conformity and Sakambari by refusing to conform to prescriptive feminine norms-thereby asserting women’s agency while highlighting the universality of patriarchal oppression. By situating Wuthering Heights and Blue Mimosa in a cross-cultural and transnational dialogue, this study contributes to comparative feminist literary scholarship. It demonstrates how women writers, despite temporal and spatial distance, articulate parallel experiences of oppression and resistance, affirming the role of literature as a powerful medium for feminist critique and consciousness.
Asst. Lect. Mohsin Kamil Shlaka, Imam Al-Kadhum College I.K.CWasit Journal for Human Sciences, 22(1), 1363-1352.This study focuses on the central role of the natural environment, particularly harsh weather and storms. It reveals how nature in the novel embodies an active force that shapes characters' emotions and choices, reflects their inner conflicts, and sustains a constant tension between the human and natural worlds. From this perspective, Brontë offers an early vision of modern environmental thought by highlighting the profound connection between human experience and the surrounding environment.The research methodology employs a descriptive-analytical approach using textual analysis within an eco-critical framework. The procedures include a meticulous reading of the novel to extract natural symbols, environmental allusions, and images of the relationship between humanity and nature, followed by analysis in accordance with the principles of ecocriticism. This textual analysis and the ecocritical framework aim to provide a deeper understanding of the environment's role in shaping the narrative discourse and the characters' psychology.
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