Psychological Postfeminism

A couple of Brontë-related papers just published:

Picturing Charlotte Brontë’s Artistic Rebellion? Myths of the Woman Artist in Postfeminist Jane Eyre Screen Adaptations
Catherine Paula Han
Adaptation,  https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apz034
Published: 29 March 2020

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) has been regularly adapted for the screen since the silent era. During the 1990s, a trend emerged in which cinematic and television versions of Brontë’s novel paid increased attention to the protagonists’ identities as amateur artists. To explain this phenomenon, this article examines Jane Eyre (Franco Zeffirelli, 1996), Jane Eyre (ITV/A&E, 1997), Jane Eyre (BBC, 2006), and Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011). It proposes that these productions contribute to the evolution of Brontë’s authorial mythology by heightening their heroines’ similarities with the writer, another amateur artist. In so doing, these adaptations benefit from the reputations of Brontë and her work as rebelliously feminist. Nevertheless, these women artists’ rebellions are distinctly postfeminist. To demonstrate its argument, the article contextualizes contemporary Jane Eyre adaptations within their postfeminist cultural landscape. Postfeminism, however, is a contested term. Hence, this analysis participates in broader debates that interrogate postfeminism as a concept and its persistent fascination with nineteenth-century creative women. Through comparisons of the adaptations, this article will delineate the development of the woman artist trope to reveal how postfeminist conceptualizations of women’s creativity have shifted since the 1990s. In particular, the woman artist displays an increased desire to ‘return home’. Such retreatist narratives exploit but also obscure the fact that Brontë has long signified the perceived tension between traditional, highly domestic female gender roles and women’s creativity. As such, these postfeminist adaptations have a shaping effect on the myths that continue to circulate about Brontë’s feminism and authorship.

The impact of psychology in novels of women writers of Victorian age: With special reference to Brontë Sisters, George Meredith, George Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell
by Dr Anshika Makhijani, Jagran Lakecity University, Bhopal
Journal of Composition Theory, 2020

The Victorian Age is one of the most glorious epochs in the history of England. It witnessed an unprecedented progress in all the fields of life. It was an age of material affluence, potential awakening, democratic reforms, unrest, educational expansion, humanitarianism, idealism and imperialism. It was essentially an age of prose and the novel. In this perspective we find that many women writers came into sight at this vital moment in history when women were importunate to be given voice, to achieve their rights and to be given an opportunity to come out of the shells of quiet acquiescence enforced upon them and achieve something of their own. This paper attempts to evaluate their contributions towards achieving women’s rights in English history.