In Iraq and Japan

Brontë scholars in Iraq:

The Impact of the Woman in two Selected Novels of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Mostafa Majid Abass, Dheyaa Ramadhan Alwan

Journal of Tikrit University for the Humanities

2022, Volume 29, Issue العدد (7) الجزء(2), Pages 31-47

The study deals with the impact of women writers who used feminist studies as a medium for advocating improvements and support for women's unequal roles in society. The study concerns two female writers, they are Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Kate Chopin's The Awakening. They show that women conquered barriers to achieve control and independence before getting married. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the protagonist has changed her attitude toward the mother's role as well as the wife in a traditional Victorian marriage. She refuses the assigned positions. By closer analysis of the general perception of women writers and the popular concepts used by Chopin and Brontë to demonstrate the narrowness of patriarchal culture and its absence, the novels raise awareness about women's exploitation and help to create a road to women's long overdue emancipation and gender equality, concerning their fundamental human rights to freedom during this time. The study sheds light on similarities between the two novels, which portray Victorian society.

And in Japan: 

‘Forsake thy books, and mateless play’: Emily Brontë’s Closed Book
Yui Wakatsuki

Journal of the Ochanomizu University English Society, No. 10（2020), p.21

This essay focuses on the ambiguous representation of books in Emily Brontë’s works. In order to tackle the key question of why books are hated and destroyed by the central characters in Wuthering Heights, I take a phased approach from three perspectives. First, the social and domestic circumstances around books in nineteenth-century England and the Brontë family are overviewed. In not only Emily’s works but also the whole of society at that time, the position of books was unstable and fluid. Then I interpret the examples of books represented in the actual texts of the Brontës. Between Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, there are unmissable similarities in their representations of books, especially in the context in which books are expected to function as family bonds. Finally, I return to the initial question of Emily’s problematical way of representing books, which is conspicuously different from that of the other sisters. Referring to some of her poems as well as her only novel, and also to the Lacanian idea of ‘death drive’, this essay maintains that it reflects her failed attempt to recover her lost beloved and childhood through her own poetic language.