Ideological Discourse and Spontaneous Love

Two recent examples of Brontë-related scholar research done in Spain:

The Ideological Discourse of Charlotte Brontë in 'Shirley'

Vicente Segura Martínez

Complutense Journal of English Studies (CJES), Vol 28 (2020), pp. 65-73

This paper analyses the linguistic changes arising from the formation of workers’ culture during the Industrial Revolution, as well as the effects of the pastoral work of the Anglican church, and its reflection on the Victorian literature produced by Charlotte Brontë. Specifically, this analysis is based on the parallelism established by this novelist between the values that lie behind the concepts of unionism and solidarity and her fight against the social conventions concerning marriage, as reflected in the novel Shirley. In fact, the human values that derive from these concepts were an inspiration that Brontë uses to provide cohesion and coherence to the plot of the novel within a narrative framework in which she minimizes the class difference between two young women: Caroline and Shirley. Brontë thereby shows that this class difference is not an obstacle for both women to share and feel the positive effects of these values within a social context dominated by social conventions regarding marriage.

Wuthering Heights and Kleist's Novellen. Rousseauian Nature, Spontaneous Love, Infancy and the Performative Subversion of the Law

María Valero Redondo

Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies, Nº 62, 2020, pp. 147-165

This article analyses the numerous thematic similarities between Wuthering Heights and Heinrich von Kleist’s Novellen, especially “Der Findling”. I justify this seemingly unconventional comparison on the basis that both Kleist and Emily Brontë were deeply influenced by Rousseau’s works and by his novel, Julie, ou, la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761). The works of both authors share a typically Rousseauian theme: a hostility toward urban civilization and a strong intimacy with nature. This theme is loaded with ideological force and is present in at least four subthemes: the communion with nature, natural childhood, the nature of spontaneous love and the parodic reiteration of the normative community. Thus, although there is no evidence of Brontë’s direct knowledge of Kleist’s work, I suggest that their shared recourse to a common precursor may account for the uncanny similarity between Kleist’s Novellen and Wuthering Heights.