Brontë Studies. Volume 44. Issue 1

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 44 Issue 1, January 2019) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Marking the bicentenary of Emily Brontë:
The Coarseness of the Brontës

Introduction: The Coarseness of the Brontës Reconsidered
pp. 1-4  Author: O'Callaghan, Claire & Franklin, Sophie

‘Horror and disgust’: Reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 5-19  Author: Thormählen, Marianne
Abstract: 
This article started out as a keynote lecture at the ‘Coarseness of the Brontës: A Reappraisal’ conference in Durham on 10–11 August 2017. It raises issues in which the ‘coarseness’ of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) — its most striking characteristic, according to censorious 1848 reviewers — is a central element. These issues include the violent Hattersley marriage, the manifestations of physical desire (especially in women), profane language and the assault perpetrated by the book’s ‘hero’. Arguing that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a mature work of art and no moralizing tract, the article looks at the novel’s relationship with contemporaneous didactic fiction, especially temperance fiction. In addition to examining factors that appalled mid-nineteenth-century readers, it suggests reasons why modern readers may be shocked by aspects of this powerful novel which are not on record as upsetting people in 1848.

Elizabeth Gaskell and the Coarse Authorship of Charlotte Brontë: Religious Perspectives on Women’s Writing
pp. 20-32 Author: Eyre, Angharad
Abstract: 
This article explores how the work of Charlotte and Anne Brontë is situated in the context of religious writing about coarse subject matter, especially missionary memoir. It argues that Ellen Nussey, a friend of the Brontës, played an influential role in the editing of Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Brontë, and that Nussey and Gaskell presented the family in a way that encouraged readers to associate the work of the Brontës with religious and moral genres of literature. It also argues that when Gaskell was writing her biography even religious writing about coarse subjects was becoming less acceptable, and that the respectable woman writer Gaskell portrayed was, therefore, limited to a role of moral martyr.

‘I may have gone too far’: Reappraising Coarseness in Anne Brontë’s Preface to the Second Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 33-42  Author: Lamonica Arms, Drew
Abstract: 
This article presents a close reading of Anne Brontë’s ‘Preface to the second edition’ of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) written on 22 July 1848, focusing on Anne’s use of biblical references and rhetorical constructions to defend her novel against accusations of unnecessary coarseness. Casting herself as an unpopular prophet, Anne followed tropes that Charlotte introduced in her own preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre (1847). Unlike Charlotte, who lambasted the ‘carping few’ and rejected their hypocrisy in criticizing her novel, Anne presents herself as duly ‘censured’. Anne’s preface contains a careful examination of her own motives in representing ‘vice and vicious characters’. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of the ‘confession’, this article explores the confessional and testimonial aspects of Anne’s preface as she articulates her literary principles. Underlying her writing is the conviction that faithful description, however ‘coarse’, was both instructive and morally necessary.

‘Ay, ay, divil, all’s raight! We’ve smashed ’em!’: Translating Violence and ‘Yorkshire Roughness’ in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley
pp. 43-55  Author: Franklin, Sophie
Abstract: 
By taking Yorkshire Luddism as Shirley’s (1849) framework, Charlotte Brontë places political violence at the centre of its narrative. Despite this, much of the novel’s inclusions of violence are largely undescribed and even unwitnessed, often displaced to another site, such as a letter or nameless voice. When politically motivated attacks committed by working-class characters are represented, these moments are mediated by an upper-middle-class spectator or translator. This paper seeks to identify and explore the presence and significance of politically motivated violence in the novel, emphasizing its centrality within the text and highlighting its connection with nineteenth-century attitudes to issues of regional dialect, the legitimacy of force and ‘Yorkshire roughness’.

‘The volume was flung, it hit me’: Coarseness, Bird Imagery and Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds in Jane Eyre
pp. 56-67 Author: Habibi, Helena
Abstract:
Like coarseness, avian imagery is ubiquitous in Jane Eyre (1847). From the outset, the two are intricately bound when John Reed brutally hurls Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds at Jane. Resonances of Jane’s, and Charlotte Brontë’s, profound connection to Thomas Bewick’s avian volumes reverberate far beyond the opening scenes of the novel, revealing a greater symbiosis between these two texts than critics have hitherto acknowledged. This examination of Brontë’s symbolic use of birds alongside Bewick’s influential ornithological texts reveals how avian imagery in the novel acts as a referent for its gender-politics, which encompasses a critique of a particularly masculine form of coarseness.

Hindley’s ‘reckless dissipation’: Making Drunkenness Public in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
pp. 68-81 Author:  Lock, Pam
Abstract:
This paper discusses the place of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) in contemporary public discourses about male drunkenness and alcoholism. Much has been written on the sisters’ experience of their brother Branwell’s drinking in relation to the harmful habitual drunkenness depicted in their novels. However, I propose that the pivotal role of alcoholism (a term only coined in 1849) in the Brontë sisters’ writing was a product, not only of personal experience, but of their knowledge of contemporary medical and public discourses on harmful drinking. The ‘coarseness’ of Emily’s descriptions of Hindley’s decline into dissipation shocked critics at the time, but are commensurate with contemporary medical and temperance accounts. Emily’s artistic interpretation of contemporary theories on the complex progression of comfort-drinking into compulsive inebriation addresses and challenges received ideas about ‘alcoholism’, grief, marriage, class and heredity.

‘I fear you will burn my present letter on recognising the handwriting’: The Self-Fashioning of Patrick Branwell Brontë in his Epistolary Writing
pp. 82-94 Author:  Braxton, Kimberley
Abstract:
During the period 1845–48 Patrick Branwell Brontë can be seen using his skills as a writer to fashion multiple personas which enabled him to disguise the coarse nature of his reality, and deny responsibility for his numerous failures. Branwell adopted this method of self-presentation in his epistolary writing, and manipulated the form in order to present the personas which assisted in his denial. The coarseness of Branwell’s life broke forth into his correspondence and, in his state of desperation, he adopted the alter egos of Henry Hastings and Northangerland, the fictitious representations of his coarseness. The letters of Branwell are a greatly overlooked source. Yet, he clearly adopted the creative techniques he honed in his juvenilia and poetry for his epistolary writing. The consideration of Branwell’s letters is essential in assisting our understanding of him as a writer.

‘Gross flattery’: The Search for the Worth of Words in Branwell Brontë’s 1837 Letter to William Wordsworth
pp. 95-108 Author:  Sheerman, Lucy
Abstract:
In 1837, shortly after Charlotte Brontë wrote to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey, Branwell Brontë sent a letter and sample of his poetry to William Wordsworth. The siblings were seeking patronage and approval for their poetry, as well as a readership beyond the confines of Haworth Parsonage. Although Southey replied to Charlotte, Branwell’s letter met with no response and Southey reported that Wordsworth was ‘disgusted’ by it. This essay analyses Branwell’s letter and the poem, in particular examining the influences that shaped the younger poet’s writing and which would have been clearly legible to Wordsworth. In particular, it focuses on the influence of James Hogg, a great literary hero of Branwell. Taking into consideration Wordsworth’s largely negative assessments of Hogg’s poetry, and also of his coarseness, it seeks to explore why Branwell’s writing provoked such a strong reaction.

Coarseness, Power and Masculinity in Daphne du Maurier’s The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë
pp. 109-122 Author:  Varnam, Laura
Abstract:
This article examines Daphne du Maurier’s use of coarseness as a mode of strategic self-fashioning in her biography The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960). I argue that du Maurier’s representation of Branwell’s coarseness is a crucial part of her attempt to rehabilitate his reputation through empathy and understanding. Coarseness is presented in the biography as a powerful resource for Branwell’s performance of masculinity, in relation to his sisters and his ‘coarse’ friends at Luddenden Foot. I also examine the power of coarseness in enabling Branwell to establish literary and imaginative independence from Charlotte, with whom he created the Angrian kingdom. Finally, I show how Branwell wields coarseness as a weapon when his sisters begin to exclude him from their society during his decline.

‘He is rather peculiar, perhaps’: Reading Mr Rochester’s Coarseness Queerly
pp. 123-135 Author:  O'Callaghan, Claire
Abstract:
This article re-examines the accusation of coarseness directed at Edward Fairfax Rochester, the male protagonist of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). Elizabeth Rigby condemned Rochester as coarse for challenging normative modes of male gender and sexuality. In re-thinking Rigby’s critique, this paper provides an original reading of Brontë’s novel that explores Rochester’s ‘coarse’ behaviours as representative of queer masculinity. Drawing on contemporary queer theoretical discourse, the article suggests that Brontë’s male protagonist articulates a range of queer masculine possibilities that valuably registers a resistance to dominant ways of being in the nineteenth century. As such, I propose that Jane Eyre offers insight into the flexible ways with which Brontë conceived of male subjectivity.

‘Swallow it’: Imagining Incest in Inter-war Writing on the Brontës
pp. 136-148 Author:  Pouliot, Amber
Abstract:
For nearly one hundred years, sex, drugs and violence have featured in biographical fiction and drama about the Brontës. This paper focuses on the pervasiveness of fantasies of incest within the family. Influenced by the ambiguous sibling/lover relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1847), biographers and creative writers from the nineteenth century to the present have characterized the relationship between Branwell and his sisters as subversively sexual. This paper traces the long history of how incest became embedded in the Brontë narrative – from Gaskell’s 1857 biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, to Polly Teale’s twenty-first-century drama, Brontë – but it focuses on the inter-war period, when biographical fiction and drama about the family first developed. It argues that unless we pay attention to the history of their representation, we will continue to see the same version of the Brontë story again and again.