Brontë Studies. Volume 45, Issue 1

For some reason we never published the table of contents and abstracts of this Brontë Studies (Volume 45 Issue 1, January 2020) which is available online. We now correct this omission:

Editorial
pp. 1-2  Author: Amber M. Adams and Josephine Smith

The Brontës and Christmas
pp.  3-12  Author: Choe, Jian
Abstract: 
This essay considers the Brontë sisters’ engagement with Christmas in their lives and art and examines the extent to which they shared the contemporary vision of Christmas. With the invention of the modern Christmas by the Victorian urban bourgeoisie, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed a vast proliferation of Christmas publications and culture. The sisters’ literary representation of the season could be regarded as a response to the new trend. Charlotte’s depictions seem both to endorse and to contest the dominant ideology of the Victorian Christmas. Emily casts a nostalgic eye on the old English Christmas, harking back to the diminishing tradition in the age of modernisation. Anne’s vision of Christmas is characterised by its distinct moral and spiritual undertones. In their brief lives, the sisters’ Christmas celebrations, modest and untainted, were reflected in their writing. To explore the Brontës’ Christmas is to encounter Christmas untouched as yet by the needs of industrial capitalism and its concomitant bourgeois culture, which would fundamentally transform the whole fabric of modern society.

The Impact of Clinical Depression on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
pp. 13-26 Author: Carlson, Susan Anne
Abstract: 
Charlotte Brontë’s clinical depression influenced her process of writing Villette, her subject matter and the construction of the novel’s narrator, Lucy Snowe. When Charlotte wrote Villette, she described her own mental disability through the character of Lucy Snowe. Using the perspective of disability studies, this article interprets Lucy as a narrator who shows clear signs of mental illness, suffers a breakdown and then navigates a world in which her depression must remain a secret. Charlotte Brontë saw Lucy Snowe as the culmination of her worst fears: a woman who could not escape her own damaged self.

'We think back through our mothers if we are women’: Virginia Woolf and the Brontës
pp.  27-45   Author: Newman, Hilary
Abstract: 
Virginia Woolf’s literary mothers included Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Unfortunately, at the time Woolf was writing, during the earlier part of the twentieth century, Anne Brontë was very much the neglected Brontë sister, and Woolf did not buck this trend. There are many references to Anne Brontë’s sisters, Charlotte and Emily, however, which occur across the various genres in which Woolf wrote, including her novels, essays, polemics, letters and diaries. The Hogarth Press, which Virginia Woolf established in 1917 with her husband Leonard, published several books of criticism on the Brontës. Woolf engaged with some of these critics in her own essays. Her comments reveal that she wanted to respond to the Brontës as a fellow-writer and not simply as a reader.

Nationalist Discourse in Wartime (1937–1945): Wuthering Heights in China
pp. 46-62  Author: Min, Li
Abstract: 
About half a century after its publication in 1847, Wuthering Heights came to China and became part of the historical process of this country; as a result it was constantly transformed to meet the demands of Chinese political and cultural reality. It was adapted into two dramas in the 1940s: To Die for Love by Sun Daolin (1921–2007) mainly performed in the Japanese-occupied areas; and Everlasting Resentment by Zhao Qingge (1914–1999) mainly performed in Kuomintang-controlled areas. The dramatization of Wuthering Heights involves the construction of nationalist discourse to meet Chinese social demands during wartime.

The Spatial Experience of the Sky in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights
pp. 63-70 Author: Lindskog, Claes
Abstract:
Discussions of the sky in the Brontës’ works have tended to limit themselves to the weather, making Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights seem very similar to one another in this regard. If, however, attention instead turns to the sky as a spatial phenomenon, there is a considerable difference between the two novels, symptomatic of a greater difference in the possibility of personal freedom. Thus, while the sky represents a sense of liberation in both novels, in Jane Eyre it really provides a refuge for the mind and in Wuthering Heights it rather signals the impossibility of relief.


REVIEWS

The Brontë sisters: life, loss & literature
pp. 71-73 Author:  Duckett, Bob

Charlotte’s angels
pp. 73-74 Author:  Powell, Sarah

Emily Brontë reappraised: a view from the twenty-first century
pp. 74-76 Author:  Duckett, Bob

Brontës, Bohems’ and the Fellowship of Dreams 1834: The Formative Years
pp. 76-81 Author:  Watson, Graham